SmartOS

[gea]

SmartOS

If you don't know SmartOS
That is the most minimalistic Illumos distribution (Opensource Solaris fork). Similar to ESXi in good old days it runs compeletely in RAM after bootup. Systemfiles and folders are either restored or placed on the datapool like /var or /opt. A reboot and you have a clean system There is no update, just provide another or newer system.

Main use case of SmartOS is virtualising where it is a strong alternative to ESXi or Proxmox with Bhyve, KVM, LX (Linux) container or Solaris zones.
I currently look at SmartOS as a member system of napp-it cs where managing SmartOS is possible after

install os
pkgin update
pkgin install perl
pkgin install mc
pkgin install smartmontools
ssh as root (Putty, WinSCP)

download napp-it cs_server and run

Not as easy is SMB. SmartOS wants this in a zone but I don' t.

Workaround/Discuss:

Topicbox

What do you mean about SMB on SmartOS in a global zone as an alternative to OmniOS or OpenIndiana?

 

[sko]

What do you mean about SMB on SmartOS in a global zone as an alternative to OmniOS or OpenIndiana?

smartOS is basically a hypervisor. you *do not want* to run anything directly on the hypervisor, let alone SMB...
Just create a zone, delegate the datasets to that zone and run it there.

also: none of those 3 packages you installed (on your client?) have anything to do with smartOS or are 'needed' - just connect via SSH and use the standard tooling (mainly vmadm) to create and manage VMs and zones...
For a single (or a few) host(s) this is usually the simplest solutions and/or some orchestration via e.g. ansible.
You could also install the full triton datacenter stack (or parts of it) - but this is usually geared towards larger infrastructures and makes a lot of assumptions in this regard.
At some point we've ran 5 smartOS hosts as VM/zone hosts; but as most other hosts/infrastructure was and is running Free- and OpenBSD, I've mostly migrated to FreeBSD, from which smartOS ported bhyve; so migrating those VMs to FreeBSD was dead-simple. Currently there are 3 smartOS hosts left which will be phased out sometimes this year...
Again: replacing it has nothing to do with smartOS; but simply streamlining the infrastructure for easier maintenance. I really like smartOS and how clean and well thought-out the whole OS is (and that's a general thought about illumos).

 

[gea]

smartOS is basically a hypervisor. you *do not want* to run anything directly on the hypervisor, let alone SMB...

I do

Just create a zone, delegate the datasets to that zone and run it there.

I do not want to install anything for a very basic use - if possible.

Others can setup things differently especially a VM srver setup, but very basics can work without any preconfigurations
beside Perl that is needed for my remote management. Mc and smartmontools are not needed but nice to have for a use case like a storageserver..

 

[sko]

I do not want to install anything for a very basic use - if possible.

then smartOS is the wrong tool for your job. it is an *immutable* image, i.e. you keep it 'as is' apart from its main config file for fast and easy migration and recovery.
Anything you want to keep its packages, settings etc - like a fileserver - belong in zones. Those are then easily migrateable between hosts an can (should) be backed up. The host just runs the immutable image, so the only thing you need to backup is the config file.

 

[gea]

SmartOS is one among many ZFS servers that I want to remotely manage with a web-gui and a common feature set - including basic share options and replication from any to any. I know that OmniOS is a better fileserver option for a Solaris based system but I want to include similar basic share options on SmartOS than I do on ZFS systems based on BSD, other Illumos, Linux, OSX or Windows.

If that does not work (like SMB cli management on OSX or TrueNAS), then ok. But it seems to work on SmartOS after a simple backup/restore of some files.

 

[sko]

SmartOS is one among many ZFS servers

again: smartOS is a hypervisor distribution. if you want a fileserver, run it in a zone.
The triton stack offers web-GUI for management and there is also project fifio, which is more geared towards also working on smaller infrastructures (e.g. no dedicated servers for management nodes needed). But smartOS in itself is always intended to run 'as is' - everything else belongs into zones.

you *could* hack in e.g. installation of additional packages and seeding the booted image with additional configuration, but this ist *strictly* not what smartOS was designed for and completely negates the purpose of an immutable OS image...

 

[gea]

You can use any tool as intended or you can use it for a different problem that may require some modifications

I see three limits regarding SmartOS

1. every modification must happen under user control
ex via an option in the sharing dialog "enable guest user" to allow SMB access
(this is what I intend as a minimum to allow a data move/copy over anonymous SMB or NFS )

2. Modifications should not affect regular use
I would say this is the case by a simple add a passwordless guest user entry, enable smb/server and user guest via smbadm.

3. After a reboot the state should be clean and default.

 

[gea]

I have it included it now this way to behave like on Free-BSD or Proxmox
You can share a filesysystem with guestok. If you activate "enable guest account" an
anonymous user entry is added and the kernelbased SMB in GZ enabled.



Local usermanagement is currently not intended as adduser and passwd is not available and the user files (Unix and SMB) are not persistent.