OpenSolaris isn’t exactly easy on the new administrator, but I think I’ve finally got things going. It worked all right out of the box, but configuring a static IP address was a little involved. Some tips:

• Don’t believe what all the ‘how to get started with solaris’ guides say about setting a static IP address by editing /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname.device; OpenSolaris has a new system for that. Edit /etc/nwam/llp and change ‘rtls0 dhcp’ to ‘rtls0 static 192.168.12.34’ (replacing rtls0 with the device name of your ethernet card and 192.168.12.34 with the IP address you want).

• You have to manually enable DNS if not using DHCP! Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf and look down to the ‘hosts: files’ line. Change it to ‘hosts: files dns’.

• Otherwise, follow the usual instructions for filling out /etc/hosts, /etc/defaultrouter, /etc/hostname.device, /etc/nodename, and /etc/resolv.conf.

Now, to get some useful stuff going.

• Install pkg-get from blastwave.

• /opt/csw/bin/pkg-get install emacs mysql5 apache2 ap2_modphp5 php5_xsl php5_gd php5_devel autoconf

• /opt/csw/bin/pkg-get upgrade

• /opt/csw/php5/bin/pear config-set http_proxy none

• /opt/csw/php5/bin/pecl install dtrace

Here’s a BigAdmin article about installing Apache, MySQL and PHP on Solaris.