Section 12.3. Sun Solaris

12.3. Sun Solaris

IPv6 support is available since Solaris 8. The Solaris software is downloadable from Sun Microsystem's homepage, or you can buy the CD.

The current release is Solaris 10. It brings some new features, including IPv6 support for both BIND 8.4.2 and BIND 9.2.3. Solaris 10 includes support for the Basic and Advanced Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6 (RFCs 3493 and 3542). Default Address Selection (RFC 3484) is also fully supported. IPsec/IKE with IPv6 and configured and automatic IPv6-over-IPv4 tunnels are supported, too. Java Runtime Version 1.4.0 supports IPv6 in a transparent manner. Applications using Java Runtime do not need any modifications to work over IPv6.

12.3.1. Enable IPv6 and Get Started

IPv6 is enabled during the OS installation. For the configuration of the IPv6 address, a choice between static or automatic address definition is possible. Automatic means that the system will use Neighbor Discovery to obtain an IPv6 address; static means that the administrator configures the IPv6 address manually. All IPv6-specific adapter configurations are stored in /etc/hostname6.<interface>.

12.3.2. Utilities

All utilities described in the following list are available after the Solaris installation and have IPv6 support. The online documentation contains a good description of the command-line utilities and possible parameters.

If you want to display IPv6-related information by default when using the tools ifconfig and netstat, you need to change the file /etc/default/inet_type and add the entry DEFAULT_IP=BOTH.

ifconfig

There are new parameters available to get IPv6-related adapter information. The manpages show all the options.

netstat

In addition to IPv4 information, it is possible to display IPv6 information. Use the following switch: netstat -f inet6. If you changed the default inet type, netstat -p displays the ARP table for IPv4 and the neighbor cache for IPv6. netstat -rn displays the routing table for IPv4 and IPv6.

route

route can be used for both IPv4 and IPv6 routes. Use the option -inet6 to perform operations on IPv6 routes or to change the default inet type.

ping, traceroute

ping and traceroute used with IPv6 addresses or IPv6 DNS record entries display IPv6-related information.

snoop

snoop is a well-known network analysis tool included with Solaris. The latest version has IPv6 support. IPv6 traffic can be viewed by using snoop ip6.

A lot of good information about Solaris system administration is available at http://www.sun.com/bigadmin.