I feel obliged to point out that this blog post is roughly 7 years old. People change, opinions evolve. In just a few years, vast technological landscapes can shift. And don't get me started on config files. Please consider this text in the context of its time.
When tools like ipadm were introduced to Solaris, one of the first questions in most presentations at that time about this topic was the location where the data is stored. I showed it to customers, however always with the strict suggestion: “Don’t dare to edit this file, it may change without further notice”. Well, the location where this data is stored has changed with Solaris 11.4.
When you look into the SMF service, you will see a number of properties used to persist the networking configuration of your system.
root@batou:/# ipadm
NAME CLASS/TYPE STATE UNDER ADDR
lo0 loopback ok -- --
lo0/v4 static ok -- 127.0.0.1/8
lo0/v6 static ok -- ::1/128
net0 ip ok -- --
net0/additional static ok -- 192.168.30.241/24
net0/v4 dhcp ok -- 192.168.30.204/24
net0/v6 addrconf ok -- fe80::a00:27ff:fe14:e57a/10
root@batou:/# svcprop svc:/network/ip-interface-management:default
[...]
interfaces/lo0/address-family astring ipv4 ipv6
interfaces/lo0/v4/ipv4-address astring 127.0.0.1
interfaces/lo0/v4/prefixlen count 8
interfaces/lo0/v4/up astring yes
interfaces/lo0/v6/ipv6-address astring ::1
interfaces/lo0/v6/prefixlen count 128
interfaces/lo0/v6/up astring yes
interfaces/net0/address-family astring ipv4 ipv6
interfaces/net0/additional/ipv4-address astring 192.168.30.241
interfaces/net0/additional/prefixlen count 24
interfaces/net0/additional/up astring yes
interfaces/net0/v4/dhcp-wait integer 120
interfaces/net0/v4/primary-interface boolean false
interfaces/net0/v4/reqhost astring ""
interfaces/net0/v6/interface-id astring ::
interfaces/net0/v6/prefixlen count 0
interfaces/net0/v6/stateful astring yes
interfaces/net0/v6/stateless astring yes
This makes it much easier to deploy much more complex network configurations via AI (Automated Installer), for example.
