On September 18, we posted a product review of NuSphere, written by Stew Benedict. Since then we have received information from NuSphere clarifying one of the points Stew made in the article regarding the Solaris install and Apache.

Stew wrote,"The Solaris install failed on Apache, which didn't know how to deal with sparc-sun-solaris2.8 rather than sparc-sun-solaris2.6. Solaris 2.8 has its own copy of Apache by default, but then you have to try to to integrate all the pieces."

NuSphere replies, "We can assure your readers that NuSphere actually runs quite smoothly on Solaris 2.6, 2.7 and 2.8. However, there may be a problem associated with starting Apache. This is not a NuSphere issue but a kernel tuning issue. Here, direct from our support knowledge base, is the problem in more detail with the work around."

Problem: When I am trying to start Apache after a fresh install of NuSphere on a Sun Solaris box I am receiving the following error:

        /usr1/nusphere/apache/bin/apachectl startssl
        Ouch!
        ap_mm_create(1048576,   "/opt/nusphere/apache/logs/httpd.mm.3927")
        failed. 
        Error: MM: mm:core: failed to acquire shared memory segment
        (Invalid argument): OS: No such file or directory
        /usr1/nusphere/apache/bin/apachectl startssl: httpd could not be started

Answer:

This issue is a kernel tuning issue on your system. It is directly related to SHMMAX. The default value on most Sun Solaris 2.7+ systems for this resource is set to 1048576. In order to resolve this problem you may need to adjust shmsys:shminfo_shmmax. You can adjust this value in your /etc/system file by setting it to 67108864 or greater as displayed here:

set shmsys:shminfo_shmmax=67108864

Please refer to your Sun Solaris manual to determine if you need to regenerate the kernel after the change.