Summary

This chapter covered a plethora of file systems used in Solaris. The first half of this chapter was dedicated to virtual, or pseudo, file systems. Most virtual file systems reside in memory and do not consume physical disk space. Virtual file systems exist to improve the performance of Solaris.

The Process File System (PROCFS) manages a list of running system processes, as well as the /proc directory. The Loopback File System (LOFS) creates a virtual copy of a file system in a new mount point. The Cache File System (CacheFS) speeds up system performance by caching information located on slow network links or slow data devices such as CD-ROMs. The /tmp directory is managed by the Temporary File System (TMPFS), which again speeds up Solaris. The Swap File System (SWAPFS) manages virtual memory in Solaris; without virtual memory, you would need to purchase excessive amounts of RAM for your computer.

After discussing virtual file systems, core files and crash dump configuration was examined. A core file is generated when an application has a fatal error. Crash dumps are generated by Solaris when a critical system error occurs.

The Network File System (NFS) is one of the most important network services in Solaris. NFS enables you to place files on a server and make those files readily available to all clients on the network. You learned a bit of NFS history, which files and daemons are important, how to set up NFS, how to set up NFS logging, and NFS troubleshooting.

Finally, this chapter concluded with a discussion of the automounter, AutoFS. AutoFS provides for automatic mounting and unmounting of file systems, eliminating the need for clients to use the mount and umount commands. AutoFS uses three types of maps for configuration: master, direct, and indirect.