SPARC Enterprise M-class Servers The Secrets of Olympus

The Sun SPARC Enterprise M-class server service processor (XSCF) has several commands that are new or different from previous enterprise-class servers. Most users are probably aware that the 'man' facility is available for all commands; however, as someone once said (I think it was Scott McNealy), "man has the answer to any question, conveniently organized by answer." In other words, if you don't know what command to use, man isn't going to help. Luckily there are a couple of things that can help...

The XSCF man facility does include a standard Intro(8) topic, which provides a complete list of commands and a short synopsis. For example:

    XSCF> man intro

    System Administration                                    Intro(8)

    NAME
         Intro - eXtended System Control Facility (XSCF) man pages

    DESCRIPTION
         This manual contains XSCF man pages.

    LIST OF COMMANDS
         The following commands are supported:

         Intro, intro            eXtended  System  Control   Facility
                                 (XSCF) man pages

         addboard                configure   an    eXtended    System
                                 Board(XSB)  into  the  domain confi-
                                 guration or assigns it to the domain
                                 configuration

         addcodlicense           add  a  Capacity  on  Demand   (COD)
                                 right-to-use  (RTU)  license  key to
                                 the COD license database

         addfru                  add a Field Replaceable Unit (FRU)

         adduser                 create an XSCF user account
    ...

On the other hand, you may sort of know the command you want to run, but aren't sure of the specifics. For example, to set up the network I sometimes forget if the command is 'setnet' or 'setnetwork'. Like a standard bash shell, the tab can be used to complete the command. for example, 'setnet<TAB>' will expand to 'setnetwork'.

Also, like the bash shell, you can use the double-tab to display a list of possible completions. This comes in handy when you know you need a 'set' command, but you don't recall specifically which command; you can do 'set<TAB><TAB>' and get a complete list of all 'set*' commands. For example (using 'setn<TAB><TAB>' which is a little less verbose):

    XSCF> setn<TAB><TAB>
    setnameserver  setnetwork     setntp         
    XSCF> setn

Finally, all of the XSCF commands consistently implemented the -h option to display the command's synopsis. This isn't the full man page, just the synopsis. For example:

    XSCF> setnetwork -h
    usage: setnetwork [-m addr] interface address
           setnetwork -c {up | down} interface
           setnetwork -h

That's usually enough to help you figure out what arguments you need to provide. And when it isn't, you always have man to provide all the details.