Solaris 11 Command Cheat Sheet : Managing Services

By: Ramdev
August 17, 2015

+ In this post we will be Discussing about :
What is the Service Management Facility?
Understanding the SMF Fault Managed Resource Indicator (FMRI)
Enabling, disabling and restarting services
Listing information about services
Configuration layers in the SMF repository
Listing service property configuration
Setting service property configuration
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What is the Service Management Facility?

The Oracle Solaris Service Management Facility (SMF) is responsible for managing system and pplication services, replacing the legacy init scripting start-up mechanism common to other UNIX operating systems. SMF helps improves the availability of a system by,  ensuring that essential services run continuously even in the event of any software or hardware failures with an automatic restart capability. SMF is a part of the wider predictive

Self-healing capability in Oracle Solaris. Another crucial component of this is the Fault Management Architecture (FMA), responsible for reporting and isolating failed hardware components.

Understanding the SMF Fault Managed Resource Indicator (FMRI)

Each SMF managed service instance is unique described by an FMRI, that an administrator can use to enable or disable the service, find out information about or modify configuration properties related to that service. For example, the file system automounter service  described by svc:/system/filesystem/autofs:default

FMRI Segment Description
svc:/ FMRI scheme
system/filesystem Service category
autofs Service name
default Service instance

Many SMF commands allow FMRI abbreviations by specifying the instance name, or any of the trailing portion of the service name, assuming it is unique on the system. For example, administrators could also refer to the above service as filesystem/autofs:default, autofs:default, and autofs. We will deliberately use multiple abbreviations in this cheat sheet.

Enabling, disabling and restarting services

Enable service svc:/network/smtp:sendmail:

# svcadm enable smtp:sendmail

Disable service svc:/network/telnet:default:

# svcadm disable telnet

Restart service svc:/network/httpd:apache22:

# svcadm restart apache22

Listing information about services

Show all enabled services (including temporarily disabled services):

# svcs

Show all enabled and disabled services:

# svcs -a

List detailed information about svc:/system/zones:default:

# svcs -l zones:default

List processes associated with svc:/network/netcfg:default:

# svcs -p network/netcfg

Show why services that are enabled but are not running (or preventing other services from running):

# svcs –xv

Display all services which depend on the svc:/network/ssh:default:

# svcs -D network/ssh

List all services svc:/network/ssh:default depends on:

# svcs –d network/ssh

Show all service state notifications that are configured on a system:

# svcs –n

Configuration layers in the SMF repository

Service configuration is defined in a number of layers within the SMF configuration repository that helps preserve any local administrative customizations during system upgrade, particularly when the underlying vendor provided default configuration changes. A service property could have different values at different layers of the repository. A simple priority mechanism is used to determine which  value is used by the service.

Configuration Layer  –>   Description

manifest             –>          Values provided as part of SMF manifests located in /lib/svc/manifest/

system-profile –>          Values provided as part of SMF profiles located in /etc/svc/profile/generic.xml

site-profile         –>          Values provided as part of SMF profile located in /etc/svc/profile/site/

admin                   –>          Values provided by interactive use of SMF commands or libraries

Listing service property configuration

List all properties (including inherited properties) of the service instance svc:/network/ssh:default:

# svcprop ssh:default

List properties specific to the service instance svc:/network/ssh:default:

# svcprop –c ssh:default

List the pkg/port property of the service instance svc:/application/pkg/server:default:

# svcprop –p pkg/server pkg/server:default

List all properties within the pkg property group of the service instancesvc:/application/pkg/server:default:

# svcprop –p pkg pkg/server:default

Interactively display the general/enabled property for the servicesvc:/network/ssh:default:

# svccfg

svc:> select ssh:default

svc:/network/ssh:default> listprop general/enabled

svc:/network/ssh:default> exit

# svccfg –s switch:default listcust –L

Setting service property configuration

Configure the config/nodename property on the svc:/system/identity:node service instance::

# svccfg

# svc:>select identity:node

# svc:/system/identity:node> setprop config/nodename = “myhost”

# svc:/system/identity:node> refresh

# svc:/system/identity:node> exit

Configure the config/nameserver property on the svc:/network/dns/client service with two IP addresses:

# svccfg –s dns/client

svc:/network/dns/client> setprop config/nameserver =  (“192.168.0.1” “10.0.0.4”)

svc:/network/dns/client> select default

svc:/network/dns/client:default> refresh

List all configuration changes (at all layers) to svc:/system/nameservice/switch:default:

# svccfg –s switch:default listcust -L

Delete an administrative customization to the config/nameserver property in the svc:/network/dns/client service:

# svccfg –s dns/client

svc:/network/dns/client> delcust config/nameserver

svc:/network/dns/client> refresh

Delete the config/nameserver property from the svc:/network/dns/client service (and thus masking it):

# svccfg –s dns/client

# svc:/network/dns/client> delprop config/nameserver

Extract an SMF system profile in order to apply configuration to other systems:

# svccfg extract –a > system-profile.xml

Apply an SMF system profile to a system:

# cp system-profile.xml /etc/svc/profile/site

# svcadm restart manifest-import