Changing the IP Address in Solaris 10 U3
Published on 18 Dec 2006 · Filed in Explanation · 295 words (estimated 2 minutes to read)Changing the IP address of a system running Solaris (Solaris 10, specifically) is different than a lot of other operating systems out there. Really, all you have to do is just edit a few files and then take the interface down and back up again. However, there seems to be a “gotcha” with Solaris 10. (I don’t know how far back this procedure goes—it is unclear to me if this is new to Solaris 10, or if it extends back to Solaris 8 or 9.)
Most of the sites out there I found indicated that you only needed to edit the /etc/hosts file (which is actually just a symlink to /etc/inet/hosts) and place the new IP address of the server in that file. Since I wasn’t changing the hostname or default gateway, there was no need to edit /etc/hostname.pcn0 (the hostname file for the only interface in the system), /etc/nodename, or /etc/defaultrouter. So I edited the /etc/inet/hosts file, rebooted the server, and expected to see the new IP address show up on the network.
It didn’t work. A bit more research indicates that in Solaris 10, the operating system uses /etc/inet/ipnodes over /etc/inet/hosts. This is a bit odd since ipnodes is only supposed to be used for IPv6, and I know that I specifically disabled IPv6 in this installation. Some additional targeted searches I performed, however, showed that this was indeed the case even if IPv6 is disabled.
Upon editing /etc/inet/ipnodes and rebooting the server, the IP address change took effect.
So, if you need to change the IP address of a server running Solaris 10, change the following files:
/etc/inet/hosts
/etc/inet/ipnodes
Upon a reboot, the server will now have the new IP address.
(By the way, Solaris 10 U3 runs perfectly under ESX Server.)