Miscellaneous FAQ

Questions that don't have a home of their own right now.

ping on opensolaris is not descriptive enough as in linux
Use the -s ( ping -s ) option and this makes the output identical to that on linux.

ping -s  hangs while ping  works
This is almost certainly a name service issue and not a ping issue. does a reverse name lookup of the IP address that it extracts from the received packets. To turn off the lookup, use the -n option.

How do I force a kernel crash on Solaris/x86?
First, a sub question - why the hell do I want to do that? The answer is that this is helpful in analysing certain system anomalies. If the system is so dead that you can't even type, forget the rest of this.

There are a few ways of doing it.


 * 1) Use the command "uadmin" as : uadmin 5 1. Refer uadmin(1M) and uadmin(2) for details.
 * 2) Use "reboot -d" to dump during the reboot process.
 * 3) Enter kmdb using mdb -K. Then type $<systemdump. (This actually sets the eip (instruction pointer) to 0 and continues).

If you only want a crash dump without interrupting service, run "savecore -L" as root, and the kernel will write a crash dump of the running system.

When I connect my iPod to the system for charging, I lose the GUI on the iPod.
Use the "rmformat" command and figure out the device node associated with the iPod. Then, use "eject " and lo, you get the GUI on the iPod and it continues to charge.