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Not too long ago, I was assisting someone by configuring a few Sun Solaris nodes to resolve to a DNS server. It dawned on me that this could be a nice tutorial to discuss here. Note that I have only used this method on Solaris 8, 9 & 10 and have yet to attempt it on OpenSolaris. When that has been tried, I will update this post with the appropriate information. In my experience, I have yet to see OpenSolaris deployed on an enterprise level. It may still be too new for adoption. The mentality is usually, “if it is not broken, then there is no reason to fix it.”

The OpenBoot PROM:

I am more accustomed to working from a Sun SPARC system utilizing a Sun Microsystems keyboard but the same can be done without it as long as one knows how to enter the OpenBoot PROM. Using a Sun keyboad, you simply press “Stop + A” and let us say you are in the ALOM (Advanced Lights-Out Manager), you would type “#.” and if you are booted into the OS, open up a command terminal and type “halt”. There are numerous ways to access the OpenBoot PROM, so please reference the user’s guide to verify which method you must invoke.

If the OS is not installed:

Place the first disc in the series into the CD-ROM drive and type “boot cdrom” at the OpenBoot PROM. The host will start reading the CD-ROM drive.  Follow all necessary steps until the installation process scans system disk information.  This is where the OS attempts to find a location to accommodate a temp copy of the installation software.

After this, the host will reboot and when it does continue with a Networked installation, using DHCP and a DNS Name Service ONLY under the desired domain name. Continue with the installation until it is completed.

After the OS is installed:

Boot into the OS and edit the following files:

1.  /etc/nodename: edit or create this file - it should contain the hostname only      ex) sunbox
2. /etc/hostname.<interface>      ex) /etc/hostname.hme0 - this file should contain “inet <hostname>” only without the quotes and the hostname should be the same as the hostname in /etc/nodename file. So in this example it would read: inet sunbox
3. /etc/hosts: edit the line where it says unknown next to the IP address of your host to the hostname.domain hostname.
   ex) 10.96.42.1        sunbox.hydrasysllc.com sunbox

Reboot the host and it should resolve to the server properly.