Solaris 11.4 SRU 90 Name Service Checks

Solaris 11.4 SRU 90: Stricter Name Service Validation

I recently upgrading to Solaris 11.4 SRU 90 and found a new service SMF service in a degraded state: svc:/system/check/name-services, which didn't like my DNS client options "timeout:1 attempts:5"

The svc:/system/check/name-services uses the new "/usr/sbin/nscfg check" option to ensure the correct syntax.

# Failed service
$ svcs  svc:/system/check/name-services:default
STATE          STIME               FMRI
degraded       2026-03-04T06:25:11 svc:/system/check/name-services:default

# Checked FMRI name-service logs 
$ tail -4 /var/svc/log/system-check-name-services:default.log
[ 2026 Mar  4 06:25:10 Executing start method ("/lib/svc/method/check-naming"). ]
[ 2026 Mar  4 06:25:11 check-naming: One naming service configuration issue detected: ]
Error: issue in svc:/network/dns/client: bad value in property config/options = timeout:1 attempts:5
[ 2026 Mar  4 06:25:11 Method "start" exited with status 103. ]
[ 2026 Mar  4 06:25:11 "start" method requested degraded state: "One naming service configuration issue detected."

This confused me initially as the legacy /etc/resolv.conf file looked perfectly fine.

# resolv.conf looks correct
$ grep options /etc/resolv.conf 
options timeout:1 attempts:5

# Manual check of SMF Name Service syntax
$ /usr/sbin/nscfg check 
Error: issue in svc:/network/dns/client: bad value in property config/options = timeout:1 attempts:5 

The new validation requires multiple options to be defined as a proper astring array. To clear the degraded state, update your configuration using the following syntax:

# Correctly format the options as an array
$ svccfg -s svc:/network/dns/client setprop config/options = astring: \("timeout:1" "attempts:5"\)

# Apply the changes
$ svcadm refresh dns/client

Once updated, svc:/system/check/name-services should return to online.