How to configure an IP address in Solaris 11

Oracle made a huge changes in the networking stack with Solaris 11. The use of many network related files have been deprecated in Solaris 11. Below are some of the files which are not used in Solaris 11 for persistent network configuration :

/etc/defaultdomain
/etc/dhcp.*
/etc/hostname.*
/etc/hostname.ip*.tun*
/etc/nodename
/etc/nsswitch.conf

Network Configuration Profile

Solaris 11 uses profile-based network configuration. It has 2 configuration modes :
1. Automatic – Uses DHCP to obtain network configuration (IP address, router and DNS) from any of the connected ethernet interfaces. Do not support hot swapping of interfaces and IPMP.
2. Manual (DefaultFixed NCP) – interfaces needs to be manually configured using dladm and ipadm commands. Also called as DefaultFixed NCP. Supports hot swapping of interfaces and IPMP.

Configuring the IP address

Step 1 : Set the NCP
We would set the NCP to DefaultFixed profile in order to configure the IP address manually.
To check the current NCP setting:

 netadm list
TYPE        PROFILE        STATE
ncp         Automatic      disabled
ncp         DefaultFixed   online
loc         Automatic      offline
loc         NoNet          offline
loc         DefaultFixed   online

As seen in the output above, the NCP is set to DefaultFixed. In case it is not set, use netadm command to set it to DefaultFixed :

# netadm enable -p ncp DefaultFixed

Step 2 : Check the link status
The command “dladm show-dev” does not work in Solaris 11. The command to check the link status in Solaris 11 is :

# dladm show-phys
LINK              MEDIA                STATE      SPEED  DUPLEX    DEVICE
net0              Ethernet             up         1000   full      e1000g0

Now if you see, there is a device alias name net0 for e1000g0. Starting Solaris 11, all the network ports would be identified by an alias in a generic format of net#.

Step 3 : Create a new interface
The ipadm command creates the new interface to be configured :

# ipadm create-ip net0

Check the newly created interface :

# ipadm show-if
IFNAME     CLASS      STATE      ACTIVE      OVER
lo0        loopback   ok         yes         ---
net0       ip         down       no          ---

Step 4 : Creating IP address

# ipadm create-addr –T static –a local=192.168.1.10/24 net0/geeklab

-T specifies either static, dhcp or addrconf (for IPv6) types of addresses.
The string geeklab can be any random string used to identify the interface.

To check the interface status of the interface :

# ipadm show-if
IFNAME     CLASS    STATE    ACTIVE OVER
lo0        loopback ok       yes    --
net0       ip       ok       yes    --

To check the configured IP address :

# ipadm show-addr
ADDROBJ                TYPE     STATE        ADDR
lo0/v4                 static   ok           127.0.0.1/8
net0/geeklab           static   ok           192.168.1.20/24
lo0/v6                 static   ok           ::1/128

Unplumb/delete the interface

In Solaris 11, If we want to unplumb the interface, we have to delete it. Also, even in case you want to change the IP address of the interface, you have to delete it first and then re-create it to assign the IP address it.

# ipadm delete-ip net0

Sunday, 21 October 2018