Installation guide

TABLE 2–1 Solaris 2.6 Features at a Glance (continued)
Feature Description
Raw I/O Improvements were made to low-level I/O support routines that dramatically improved
throughput for I/O to disk devices without a file system (raw devices). (Raw devices are
often used for database files.) The driver for the SPARCstorage
TM
Array was rewritten to
improve its throughput.
Network/Web Performance
Kernel Sockets The kernel sockets implementation provides improved compatibility with SunOS
TM
4.x and
BSD sockets and enables higher socket performance.
TCP Large
Windows
TCP large windows provides the support described in RFC1323. It improves performance
over high bandwidth networks such as ATM, or high delay networks such as satellite
links, by using windows that exceed the normal 64-Kbyte limit.
Zero Copy TCP/
Hardware
Checksum
Zero copy TCP has been used to eliminate copying from user-space to kernel-space.
Support for hardware checksum has been added as well. Performance is improved by
avoiding software computation of the checksum, off-loading the work to a network
adapter that supports it. This is currently only supported on the SunATM
TM
card.
Ease-of-Use and Management Improvements
Installation
Solaris Web Start
Browser-based
Installation
Solaris Web Start is a browser-based utility that guides users through selection and
installation of both Solaris and bundled application software.
Installation
Documentation
A documentation reorganization makes finding information on how to install Solaris
software easier.
x86 Device
Configuration
The Configuration Assistant interface is part of the new booting system for the Solaris
(Intel Platform Edition) software. It determines which hardware devices are in the
machine, accounts for the resources each device uses, and enables users to choose which
device to boot from.
x86 Configuring
Peripherals
The kdmconfig program is used to configure the mouse, graphics adapter, and monitor
on an x86 system. If an Owconfig file already exists, kdmconfig will extract any usable
information from it. In addition, this updated version of kdmconfig will also retrieve
information left in the devinfo tree by the devconf program, and use that information
to automatically identify devices.
Changed Solaris
CD Layout
Slice 0 on the Solaris CD has been reorganized to make it more intuitive and extensible.
What’s New at a Glance 2-3