OpenSolaris on Amazon EC2: Information and News: Signup for news on OpenSolaris AMIs

List of OpenSolaris AMIs

Technical Support Team

For OpenSolaris 2008.05 ( ami-0c41a465):

Q:  What additional software is available after the installation of  Solaris 2008.05
A:  The default installation will point toward the opensolaris.org  package authority.  There are a large number of packages available  for install in that repository.  The "pkg" command will assist in  retrieving software.
Refer to http://dlc.sun.com/osol/docs/content/IPS/ggcph.html for information on the new IPS (Image Packaging System) in OpenSolaris 2008.05

In addition to standard software package a package group has been made available so the user wanting to have the complete software suite  can do so with the invocation of a single pkg command.

Q:  Is there a package which will install a set of web tools (a SAMP stack) on OpenSolaris 2008.05?
A:  Yes, there is a web stack package available which includes Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python.  Installation is done with a single command:

#  pkg install amp-dev
A list of packages installed with this group is listed at:
http://dlc.sun.com/osol/docs/content/IPS/webstacktbl.html

Q:  What package groups are available for OpenSolaris 2008.05?
A:  There are many developer packages available.
amp-dev:  SAMP, a web stack with Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python.
ss-dev:  Sun Studio Express 5/08
gcc-dev:  GNU compilers, make, gdb and other GNU programs.
java-dev:  Glassfish, ant, Sun Studio, Netbeans

Installation can be done with:
#  pkg install <package name or package group name>

More details can be found at "Installing Developer Packages".

Q:  The time on the instance is set back in 1970.
A:  This is due to a bug in OpenSolaris 2008.05 (CR 6574993).  There are no current workarounds but setting up and running ntp helps.  ntp can be
configured to use an open ntp server.  It is also possible to run ntpdate after boot to set the time properly.  A list of public ntp servers can  be found at:  http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Servers/NTPPoolServers

-bash-3.2# ntpdate 0.pool.ntp.org
Please note that setting the time after boot still leaves a number of system files and directories with the errant time.


Build 79 :
Q:  The time is not set correctly, is there a way to fix it?

A:  After boot, run the command "rtc -z GMT" as root.  This will update the kernel with information on the timzone of the hardware clock.  To
change the timezone, edit /etc/TIMEZONE with the proper TZ entry.  See  the timezone(4) manpage for pointers to valid TZ entries and TIMEZONE(4)
manpage for more information on the /etc/TIMEZONE file.

Generic :
Q:  Is there additional storage on the instances?
A:  Yes, depending on the model you launch there are one to three additional storage devices.  A quick way to access the storage is to
use ZFS.  The following commands will create a ZFS filesystem on the instance.

   OpenSolaris 2008.05 32 Bit small:  zpool create storage c4d1

   SXCE Build 79 - 32 Bit small:  zpool create storage c0d1
   SXCE Build 79 - 64 Bit large:  zpool create storage c0d1 c0d2
   SXCE Build 79 - 64 Bit xlarge:  zpool create storage c0d1 c0d2 c0d3 c0d4

The above commands will allocate all of the storage from the instances disks into a large zfs pool accessible at /storage.  See the zpool(1m) and
zfs(1M) man pages for further information.