Solaris Express does have a bunch of legacy leftovers that can confuse new users, especially those familiar with G UlLinux. However, with a little tweaking it becomes familiar and eminently usable. I will not cover installation here as that has been covered by other articles elsewhere (refer to docs/coll/1636.1 ?l=en). Here are a few tips:

•Change root shell: usermod -s Ibinlbash root (OpenSolaris has logic to fall back to the default Bourne shell if Ibinlbash is not available for some reason).

•The default home directory of the root user is I. It can be changed to Iroot by: usermod -m -d Iroot root

•Keep in mind that in OpenSolaris the base directory for all local users is lexportlhome. Ihome is used in a name service environment like NIS or LDAP to autoŽmount user home directories from a central NFS server.

•You should tweak the PATH to your liking at the end of the letclprofile file. A suggestion is: PATH=lusrlbin:1 usrlucb:!usrlsbin:lusrlX II Ibin:!usrlopenwinlbin:lusrlsfivl bin; export PATH

•lusrlsfivlbin has a bunch of GNU utilities prefixed with 'g' like gtar, ggrep, etc, since these names clash with the same native OpenSolaris utilities. In addition there is a complete GNU environment in lusrlgnulbin

•To set less as the default pager, add these to the end of the letclprofile file: PAGER=lusrlbinlless; export PAGER

•You need to learn about the Service Management Framework as the age-old letclinit.d mechanism is obsolete in OpenSolaris.

•GNOME 2.20 is included. You can go to GNOME
Menu -;> Administration -;> Users and Groups to manage users easily with a GUI. Selecting a user and clicking on Properties brings up a dialogue box. You can select the user privileges tab and assign individual rights to the user. This is a very powerful feature of Solaris RBAC that allows privileges to be granted that would otherwise require root access (Figure 1).

•The default login manager used on Solaris Express is Dtlogin. You can change to GDM by doing the following steps:
•From Dtlogin screen, select Command Line Login
from the drop-down Options menu.
•Login as the root user to the command line
•Execute: svcadm disable cde-Iogin
•Execute: svcadm enable gdm; exit 0
•You should now get GDM up and running
•You can configure GDM by executing: gksu lusrl sbinlgdmsetup
• Use prstat as an alternative to top.
•Network devices on OpenSolaris are named after
the driver, not generically as ethO. For example, on motherboards with Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet cards the interface will be bgeO, bgel, etc. Use ifconfig -a to list available network interfaces. The interfaces may not already be plumbed and visible, in which case, execute: ifconfig -a plumb.

•OpenSolaris includes a feature called Network AutoŽMagic (NWAM) that can auto-detect network interfaces and DHCP, and connect. To check whether NWAM is active, execute: svcs nwam. If this says Disabled you can enable it using: svcadm enable nwam

•If your NW card is not auto-detected, you can grab Masayuki Murayama's network driver install bundle from Jrrwinakglentrylscorched_ 3d_andJnasayukCsan. You can subscribe to should you need assistance in installing these drivers.

You can grab additional G OME and GDM themes from spice up your desktop. Note that installing GDM themes via the gdmsetup GUI may not work. In that case, change the directory to lusrl sharelgdmlthemes and unzip the theme archive there.

•If your sound card is not auto-detected, you can grab the OSS drivers from:

•If you have an Nvidia display card or a supported Intel accelerated graphics card you can install Compiz Fusion by following the simple instructions at: comlerwannlentrylnew _easy_install_bundle Jor

•You can get additional pre-built FOSS for OpenSolaris from /, Companion SW /companionl, and also build your own (latest versions) from lspec-jiles-extral
There is a script available that automates several of the steps mentioned above. Download it from:sun. comJpradhaplentrylsolaris .first_boot _essential_ con,figumtionsl

For any assistance or queries, subscribe to ug-bosug@ opensolaris.org and the friendly UNIX weenies will surely help you out. The next article will cover the observability and debugging features of OpenSolaris.