Introduction to SMF Demo (5 Minutes)

Description

This demo introduces the Service management facility, which replaces the original rc.d scripts.

OpenSolaris Versions Supported

2008.05 or newer.

Points to Hit

• SMF is better than rc.d scripts
• SMF can handle dependencies
• SMF can restart processes in case they fail
• SMF is easy to administer and you can get access to log files fast
• For SMF basics see e.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Management_Facility

Demo Prep

No setup necessary.

Gotchas

None known.

Demo

• Start the GUI via System > Administration > Services:

!!

• For more on using the GUI, see the SMF GUI Intro demo script.
• List available services by running svcs | more. Explain what users see in the listing and what is an FMRI (Fault Management Resource Identifier)
• Show the total number of enabled services by running svcs | wc -l.
• Show the total number of services available by running svcs -a | wc -l.
• Check if any services failed by running svcs -x. The list should be empty on a healthy system.
• Look for the sendmail service - svcs | grep sendmail. You'll get the FMRI: svc:/network/smtp:sendmail
• Find all processes related to this service - svcs -p sendmail. Get the process IDs.
• Kill both sendmail processes by running pfexec kill ID, where the ID is the number you got in previous step.
• The processes will be restarted automatically. Verify they are running again by using svcs -p sendmail. There should be new process IDs. Explain what just happened - SMF takes care of restarting the service for you, which is why we see new process IDs.
• Get more info about the service by running svcs -l sendmail. Point out the dependencies: sendmail cannot run without svc:/network/service, etc.
• Point out the other information: the log file location, etc.
• View the logfile, copying the location from the svcs -l output.
• Disable sendmail (after all, we're just running on a laptop, not a server ) with svcadm disable sendmail.
• Use svcs -x sendmail to view the service state. Note the Reason will be "Disabled by an administrator".
• Use svcs -p sendmail to show that the processes are gone.
• Use svcadm enable sendmail to restore your system to its original state.

Note, mysql also works well with this demo.

Demo Cleanup

None