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OpenSolaris Project: Enhanced SMF Profiles

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Approachability
Networking
OS/Net (ON)
Service Management Facility (smf(5))

Material

Introduction

Motivation

Users would benefit from and upcoming projects will require the ability to change configuration data for multiple services in the service configuration facility (SCF, a.k.a. the SMF repository) from a file, all at once. Since these changes should be upgradable (i.e., changes to the file should be propagated) and users will want to undo these changes, the repository must be extended.

Conceptual direction

It seems that an appropriate base concept for this change is the organization of service configuration properties into profiles. To illustrate, consider the general/enabled property of the system/cron:default and network/telnet:default services:

This is the state after a Solaris 10 system has booted for the first time and the administrator has disabled the telnet service. The services were created as disabled, were then enabled by the generic_open.xml profile, but then telnet was disabled as mentioned. No record of what changes were made when were retained, so undo or upgrade (of generic_open.xml, in this example) is not generally feasible.

Suppose we allowed properties to specified in layered profiles:

Here the base profile represents the default properties of the services, the property changes prescribed by the generic_open.xml file have been overlayed in a generic_open profile, and local administrative changes (svcadm disable telnet, in this case) have been overlayed in the local profile. To clients, only the top-most value is seen, which results in the same effect as the first diagram. In this situation, though, each profile may be removed or upgraded independently.

This project will flesh out the necessary concepts and implement the requisite changes to the repository and associated SMF tools.

Discussion

Comments and questions should be directed to the smf-discuss mailing list. See the Discussions link on the left side of this page to subscribe, unsubscribe, or view the archives.

Announcements

02 Apr 2008 Phase 1 features
02 May 2007 Second design draft available
27 Jun 2006 Initial design available