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Configure LDAP Server on SmartOS using OpenLDAP

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I had a hard time finding a guide for installing and configuring a basic LDAP server on SmartOS. Therefore, I wrote this blog. This is a very basic installation that will get LDAP server up and running. There is no SSL encryption in this guide. I understand its importance, but it is outside the scope of this writing. This guide is for people to get something up and running. I assume that you already have a SmartOS local zone running on your machine. Refer to my previous post if not. The global zone of SmartOS is immutable, therefore, you’ll not be able to do any installation on it. This is by design. Install Package SmartOS uses NetBSD’s package manager. The command is pkgin. The following command will install the openldap server package on your local zone. pkgin install openldap-server Configure LDAP Server The default directory for the configuration files is cd /opt/local/etc/openldap/. Here you’ll find sldapd.conf. SmartOS hasn’t adopted the new way of configuring LDAP server (i.e.

Configure a Basic DNS Server on SmartOS using Bind9

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Photo by Kelvin Ang on Unsplash SmartOS is a Unix operating system that is focusing on virtualization. It’s based on the Illumos kernel (i.e. Open Solaris) It consists of an immutable OS that can be loaded into the memory via a USB key. Administrators can leverage the Solaris technology such as ZFS, zone, DTrace and Crossbow. It can also create VMs using KVM and bhyve technologies.

Opinion on The Eye of the World

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Photo by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash The Eye of the World is the first book of The Wheel of Time series. It was written by American writer Robert Jordan. This is my second time reading this book. The first time I didn't enjoy it at all and ended up skipping through the second half of the book. I decided to give this book another shot, and I want to read page to page and not skip anything. This is my first high fantasy book. High fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy. It usually contains stories of epic nature. For example, epic battles, characters and settings. A prime example is The Lord of the Rings series by J. R. R. Tolkien. The Plot Young boys’ lives were shattered after their village was attacked by super natural elements. They escaped and on the run. With the help of powerful characters, they are making way to a safe haven. The Good The setting is very attractive to me. The epic backdrop. The environments were well written. The action senses were keeping me on the edge of my seat.

SmartOS is a Joy to Use

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Photo by  Marc PEZIN  on  Unsplash I had a renewed interest in the Solaris operating systems. It was a sad time when Oracle closed the Opensolaris project and killed Solaris. But it's direct descendant Illumos project is still alive and well. There are three well know distribution based Illumos -- Omnios CE , Openindiana and SmartOS . Omnios CE is community driven server oriented distribution Openindiana aims to be the direct descendant to Opensolaris SmartOS is a live OS that provides virtualization What Illumos Offers ZFS - The de facto file system for production systems in my opinion. DTrace - Dynamic tracing for identifying software issues. Zone - a container technology based on Jail (from BSD). Crossbow - Network virtualization technology. What SmartOS offer SmartOS is a live OS. This means you burn the OS onto a USB key and boot from it. It's diskless. The update process involved burning another USB key and boot from that. Many components are immutable (e.g. /etc an