Migrating from Linux to Solaris or OpenSolaris

If you are familiar with a Linux distribution but less familiar with OpenSolaris or Solaris, the information on this page might help you to more quickly become proficient with OpenSolaris and Solaris.

Solaris Adoption Learning Center, including:
- Linux to Solaris Migration Kit, including a migration tool and a migration guide
- Linux to Solaris Administrators Guide[PDF]; Dan Sinclair, Edsel Adap, and Frederick Sing-yan Tam; January 2007

OPENSOLARIS NETWORK ADMINISTRATION For Administrators Familiar with Linux [PDF]

Immigrants Page of the Advocacy Community on OpenSolaris.org. This space is dedicated to bridging the gap and easing the transition between other UNIX operating systems and the OpenSolaris OS. This space is a place for experienced users of other UNIX operating systems to explore and address issues involved in the transition to OpenSolaris. If you know what you want to do, but not how to do it, this is the place for you.

Differences in Commands Between Linux and Solaris or OpenSolaris

Linux vs. OpenSolaris: Basic Comparison [PDF]; Martin Man; February 2009

Major Differences Between Linux and Solaris; John Ryan; May 2008

Rosetta Stone for Unix; Bruce Hamilton: "A Sysadmin's Unixersal Translator OR What do they call that in this world?"

Privileged access. Root login is not enabled in the OpenSolaris OS. The OpenSolaris OS sets root to be a role using the Solaris RBAC (Roles Based Authentication) framework. After you log in, you can then become root. See "User Accounts and Roles" in Getting Started With OpenSolaris 2009.06 for more information. For temporary privileged access, use the pfexec command instead of the sudo command. See Creating a Zone for usage examples. See "Introducing pfexec, a Convenient Utility in the OpenSolaris OS" for more information. See also the following man pages: profiles(1), sh(1), exec_attr(4), prof_attr(4), user_attr(4), attributes(5).

RHEL-to-Solaris Transition Reference; Ben Rockwood; March 2006. This article gives the Solaris equivalent commands for many common RHEL commands.

New-to-Solaris FAQ on OpenSolaris.org provides some good info about differences between development environments

Package Management Commands Comparison: comparison of OpenSolaris IPS commands with equivalent Linux and Solaris commands

An Accelerated Introduction to Solaris 10: Part 1; Ben Rockwood; March 2006. This blog post discusses Solaris Filesystem Layout, including subdirectories of /usr; The Automounter; Sudo and Root; NFS Shares and /etc/exports; Basic Monitoring; Software and Packages; Managing Services; and Managing Disks. Note: While this article is a good overview and contains some very useful information, some information is getting out of date. For example, OpenSolaris uses the Image Packaging System. Also, you might want to use pfexec instead of sudo. If you use sudo, make sure your username is in /etc/sudoers.

An Accelerated Introduction to Solaris 10: Part 2; Ben Rockwood; March 2006. This installment covers Device Management, Networking, and Software RAID.

Porting Applications to OpenSolaris

Sun Application Migration Service

Setting Up Your Development Environment on OpenSolaris

Software Porters OpenSolaris Community on OpenSolaris.org
- Creating a Development Desktop on OpenSolaris with Sun Studio and SFE (spec-files-extra)
- SourceJuicer Contrib Process
SourceJuicer OpenSolaris Project This project automates the OpenSolaris IPS package build process, provides a package collecting robot, makes it easier for developers to contribute and review contributions, and provides bug and test management tools in support of OpenSolaris contributors. SourceJuicer provides automated package submission and build services to community developers. It is the gateway to the OpenSolaris /pending and /contrib repositories.
- SourceJuicer documentation
- SourceJuicer Help including Writing IPS Spec Files

LinCAT Linux Compatibility Assurance Toolkit. These tools include how-to guides and applications that identify potential library call differences in C/C++ source code, translate shell scripts, and recreate Linux system configuration data under the Solaris OS.