Sun Solaris: Oracle Solaris 11.4 help and commands

Updated November 2026

Solaris began as Sun Microsystems' Unix and introduced ideas that spread everywhere: NFS, ZFS, DTrace and zones. Oracle bought Sun in 2010 and still maintains Solaris for customers running it on SPARC and x86 servers.

Versions and support

Oracle Solaris 11.4 is the current and probably final major release. Instead of 11.5, Oracle delivers continuous updates as Support Repository Updates (SRUs). Oracle has committed to Premier Support until at least November 2031 and Extended Support until at least November 2037.
Solaris 10 and 11.3: Extended Support was extended to January 2027. Plan to move off them now.
Updates require an Oracle support contract. Without one you can use the free release for development and testing, but you get no fixes.

Open-source descendants

When Oracle closed the OpenSolaris source in 2010, the community continued it as illumos. Distributions based on it include OpenIndiana (general purpose), OmniOS (servers) and SmartOS. They share ZFS, zones, SMF and DTrace with Solaris, though they have diverged since 2010.

Essential commands

Task	Command
Version and SRU level	`uname -a`, `pkg info entire`
Update the system (new boot environment)	`pkg update`
Install a package	`pkg install editor/vim`, search with `pkg search -r name`
Boot environments	`beadm list`, `beadm activate NAME`
Services (SMF)	`svcs -a`, `svcs -xv` (what is broken and why), `svcadm enable/disable/restart`
Hardware	`prtconf`, `prtdiag -v`, `psrinfo -pv`
Faults	`fmadm faulty`
Disks	`format`, `diskinfo`, `iostat -En`
Network	`ipadm`, `dladm show-link`, `netstat -rn`
Performance	`prstat -Z`, `vmstat`, `mpstat`, `iostat -xnz 2`, `dtrace`
Shut down or reboot	`shutdown -y -g0 -i5`, `reboot`

Updating safely with boot environments

pkg update installs updates into a new boot environment, a ZFS clone of the root file system. The running system is untouched until you reboot into the new one, and if anything goes wrong you boot the old one again from the boot menu or with beadm activate. This makes Solaris updates unusually safe.

pkg update -nv          # preview what would change
pkg update --accept     # create a new BE with the updates
beadm list              # the new BE is marked R (active on reboot)
init 6

ZFS

zpool status -x               # any pool with problems?
zpool list
zfs list -o name,used,avail,mountpoint
zfs create -o compression=on tank/data
zfs snapshot tank/data@before-upgrade
zfs rollback tank/data@before-upgrade
zfs send tank/data@snap | ssh backup zfs receive pool/data

Run zpool scrub regularly to find and repair silent data corruption. The same commands work on FreeBSD and Linux with OpenZFS.

Zones

Zones are lightweight virtual Solaris systems sharing one kernel, an important forerunner of today's Linux containers. Kernel zones run their own kernel.

zoneadm list -cv
zonecfg -z web1 create        # then: set zonepath, add net ..., commit
zoneadm -z web1 install
zoneadm -z web1 boot
zlogin web1

On SPARC servers, Oracle VM Server for SPARC (LDoms) also divides one machine into logical domains, each with its own Solaris.

Security

Solaris 11.4 includes compliance benchmarks: compliance assess -b solaris -p Recommended checks the system and compliance report writes the results. Use RBAC roles instead of shared root, and apply SRUs monthly or at least every quarter. See the security guide for the general steps.

Learn more

Oracle Solaris documentation
Oracle Solaris blog: SRU announcements and features
illumos documentation