how to restart network interface in Solaris 10 ?

Hello,

from this url : http://www.cuddletech.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=573

On Solaris the network setup is "integrated" into the various system files in /etc. Here is a run down of how you'd manually setup a new interface on Solaris:

   1. Add the name of the system to /etc/nodename. It will be the only thing in this file. This is the common name of the system reguardless of how many hostnames the system really has.

       root@anysystem devices$ cat /etc/nodename
      anysystem

   2. Add the hostname and IP address to /etc/hosts.
   3. Add any appropriate subnet masks to /etc/netmasks. These netmasks are based on the various networks your system might be part of. For 192.168.100.0/24 you'd add the line: "192.168.100.0 255.255.255.0"
   4. Add the hostname that you added to /etc/hosts to /etc/hostname.(interface). That is, if you wanted to add a new IP to the "nge0" (nVidia Gigabit Ethernet) interface, I'd put "192.168.100.42 cuddlistic1" in /etc/hosts and "cuddlistic1" in /etc/hostname.nge0. The hostname is the only thing that goes in that file.
   5. Add DNS information to /etc/resolv.conf
   6. Add the default router address to /etc/defaultrouter. If your gateway was 192.168.1.254 you'd "echo 192.168.1.254 > /etc/defaultrouter". Again, the IP of the router is the only thing that goes in that file.
   7. Now either reboot or, preferably, svcadm restart svc:/network/physical.

If you wanted to use DHCP intead, you'd simply ensure that the primary hostname was in /etc/nodename and then, instead of all that other stuff, touch /etc/dhcp.(interface). So if you want nge0 to use DHCP just touch /etc/dhcp.nge0 and your done.

This all might see like too much work and very tedious at first, but it really is much cleaner because everything hinges on itself. On most Linux systems the /etc/hosts file isn't all that important because you could remove the hostname of your system from it and you'd still be working, however on Solaris you can change you IP address simply by editing /etc/hosts and restarting the interfaces. Personally, although the Solaris method is a little longer, its much easier to manage a large number of interfaces than having everything about each interface in seperate files.

You can check the routing and interface stats just like you do anywhere else, using netstat, and of course, ifconfig works like you expect it should.

I hope that help you

Regards