Playing around with NIC card settings.

Setting NIC speed and duplex

Solaris is often unable to correctly auto-negotiate duplex settings with a link partner (e.g. switch), especially when the switch is set to 100Mbit full-duplex. You can force the NIC into 100Mbit full-duplex by disabling auto-negotiation and 100Mbit half-duplex capability.

Example with hme0:

1. Make the changes to the running system.
# ndd -set /dev/hme adv_100hdx_cap 0
# ndd -set /dev/hme adv_100fdx_cap 1
# ndd -set /dev/hme adv_autoneg_cap 0

2. Make kernel parameter changes to preserve the speed and duplex settings after a reboot.
# vi /etc/system
Add:
# set hme:hme_adv_autoneg_cap=0
# set hme:hme_adv_100hdx_cap=0
# set hme:hme_adv_100fdx_cap=1

Note: the /etc/system change affects all hme interfaces if multiple NICs are present (e.g. hme0, hme1).

Procedure to add the new disk to Solaris Zone..

By default it is not possible to add raw device to zone without taking a reboot on zone, but here is some cool stuff for usage to avoid the downtime.

I found a little hack to accomplish the objective of adding raw device to zone without rebooting it. Here is a way out - 

1) Add the device to the zonecfg 

#zonecfg -z barvozone1
zonecfg:barvozone1> add device
zonecfg:barvozone1:device> set match=/dev/rdsk/c3t60050768018A8023B8000000000000F0d0s0
zonecfg:barvozone1:device> end
zonecfg:barvozone1>exit

2) use the mknod command to create the device in the zones dev folder

#ls -l /dev/rdsk/c3t60050768018A8023B8000000000000F0d0s0
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root          67 Feb 18 15:34 /dev/rdsk/c3t60050768018A8023B8000000000000F0d0s0 -> ../../devices/scsi_vhci/ssd@g60050768018a8023b8000000000000f0:a,raw

#ls -l /devices/scsi_vhci/ssd@g60050768018a8023b8000000000000f0:a,raw
crw-r-----   1 root     sys      118, 128 Mar  5 23:55 /devices/scsi_vhci/ssd@g60050768018a8023b8000000000000f0:a,raw

# cd /barvozone1/zonepath/dev

# mknod c3t60050768018A8023B8000000000000F0d0s0 c 118 128

That's it. The raw device is now visible within zone and now you can start with your stuffs without any downtime. Isn't it cool?