Oracle Solaris 11.4 SRU 93 is now available via “pkg update” from the support repository or by downloading the SRU from My Oracle Support Doc ID KB631614. Highlights of the changes in this release are given in the release announcement and important information to read before installing it is provided in the Readme linked from the above support document. This blog post provides more details about selected new features and interface changes in this SRU, as well as some preparation work for changes coming in future SRUs.
SRU 93 is the first SRU to be delivered on the new cadence described in Announcing a new simplified Support Repository Update (SRU) schedule for Oracle Solaris 11.4. SRU 93 is also the first SRU to contain fixes announced in Oracle’s Critical Security Patch Update Advisory, covering the issues listed for Solaris in the Oracle Systems section of the Oracle Critical Security Patch Update Advisory – June 2026.
Security and Compliance Features
Kernel Crypto Framework policy in SMF
Policy settings for the Kernel Crypto Framework (KCF) are now stored in the properties of the 'kcf' property group of the system/cryptosvc SMF service, allowing them to be set via SMF profiles when configuring systems. The system will migrate the existing settings from /etc/crypto/kcf.conf on upgrade to SRU 93 or later, and regenerate /etc/crypto/kcf.conf via an SMF stencil when future modifications are made. The cryptoadm(8) command has been updated to set properties in SMF when KCF policies are changed.
Data Management Features
ONC RPC and NFS over Sockets
ONC RPC in Solaris has traditionally been implemented in both kernel and user space with the XTI networking interfaces over STREAMS. Starting in SRU 93, the RPC interfaces offer the option to use socket interfaces for connections instead. For backwards compatibility, programs must explicitly enable the use of sockets instead of STREAMS.
Man pages for rpc_clnt_create(3c), rpc_control(3c), and rpc_svc_create(3c) were updated to document the new socket interfaces, including RPC_USE_SOCKETS_SET and RPC_USE_SOCKETS_GET. Any program that uses RPC which enables the use of sockets should be aware that its service transports and client handles could then be associated with open socket descriptors. If such a program directly accesses and operates on its file descriptors, it is advised to first fstat(2) the descriptor to detect if it is a socket and react accordingly, as documented in the updated RPC man pages.
The NFS server in the kernel, and the following user space programs were updated to use RPC over sockets instead of STREAMS:
rpcbindrpcinfo- autofs:
automountautomountdmount
- NFS:
statdmountddfmountsdfsharesshowmountclear_locksmountumount
Networking Features
TCP_QUICKACK socket option
When used with TCP sockets, getsockopt(3C) and setsockopt(3c) will now accept the TCP_QUICKACK option. When the value is set to 1, it will disable the delayed acknowledgment (ACK) timer on an endpoint and instead send acknowledgements immediately on packet receipt. A value of 0 leaves the delayed acknowledgment timer in place. This is documented with the other TCP socket options in the tcp(4p) man page.
Performance and Observability
CTF support for the .SUNW_ldynsym symbol table
When CTF data in Solaris is associated to the dynsym symbol table instead of the default, larger symtab, SRU 93 can also use the .SUNW_ldynsym symbol table to provide access to local symbols that are not found in the dynsym symbol table. This will automatically happen when generating CTF on SRU 93 and later, using either the -s option to ctfconvert or ctfmerge, or the -zctf=dynsym option to ld. The previous behavior to not include .SUNW_ldynsym is available via the new --dynsym-only option to ctfconvert and ctfmerge or the -zctf=dynsym-only option to ld.
mdb exit code
To aid when writing scripts that call mdb(1), it will now exit with an exit code of 3 if there was an error in the last dcmd pipeline to be run.
System Management Features
Asterisk modifier for the plus SMF stencil transform
There is a variety of transforms for SMF stencils as described in the smf_stencil(5) man page. The caret transform offers the asterisk modifier that allows to suppress the output if the associated property is empty, extending also to multi-value properties. SRU 93 introduces the same modifier for the plus transform. The smf_stencil(5) man page provides more details.
New properties for system/auto-update service
Two new configurable properties have been added to the system/auto-update SMF service:
config/pkg_image– path to the IPS image to update, defaults to'/'if unset.config/postupdate-hook– path to an optional program that always runs after the pkg update but does not contribute to service state.
The postupdate hook program will be passed the value of the config/pkg_image property, the return value from pkg, and the new bename (if there is one) as arguments. The existing reboot-check-hook program will also now be passed the new bename as an argument, where previously no arguments were passed.
The postupdate hook will always be called after pkg update completes, unlike the reboot check hook which is only run when a new boot environment has been created and activated, and the value of the config/auto_reboot property is true.
Enhancements for Developers
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure SDK for Python added
SRU 93 makes the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure SDK for Python available in the new library/python/oci package in the Solaris package repository.
Perl 5.42 added
SRU 93 adds packages for Perl 5.42 alongside the existing Perl 5.38 packages. Upstream security support for Perl 5.38 is scheduled to end in July 2026, so users should start migrating their Perl code to the new version now.
PHP 8.5 added
SRU 93 adds packages for PHP 8.5 alongside the existing PHP 8.2, 8.3, and 8.4 packages. Upstream security support for PHP 8.2 is scheduled to end in December 2026, so users should start migrating their PHP code to the new version now.
Other Changes
Time Zone data updated to 2026b
The system time zone database has been updated to the 2026b release from the IANA Time Zone Database project. Most notably, this will cause the America/Vancouver time zone to stay on UTC-7 year round, and not change the time in November 2026 when Daylight Savings Time would previously have ended in British Columbia.
Before Upgrading to SRU 93
Migration from older libpng versions to libpng 1.6
Previous SRUs provided packages for versions 1.0, 1.2, 1.4, and 1.6 of the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) library, libpng. Upstream ended support for versions 1.5 and earlier in 2017 and recommends all users port to version 1.6. In SRU 93, the packages for versions 1.0 and 1.2 have been obsoleted and will be removed on upgrade. A future SRU will do the same for version 1.4. All locally built applications and ISV applications that use the system provided image/library/libpng10 or image/library/libpng12 packages need to migrate to image/library/libpng16 before upgrading to SRU 93. Those using image/library/libpng14 need to migrate to image/library/libpng16 as soon as possible.
Migration from OKM to KMIP
Support for Oracle Key Manager (OKM) via pkcs11_kms(7) has been removed from SRU 93. Systems should be migrated to using a key management system using the OASIS KMIP standard supported by pkcs11_kmip(7), such as Oracle Key Vault (OKV).
Migration from PCRE to PCRE2
Previous SRUs provided packages for both ABI versions 1 and 2 of the Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) library, as provided by library/pcre (version 8.45) and library/pcre2 (version 10.42). Upstream ended support for the version 1 API/ABI after June 2021 and recommends all users port to version 2. Migration of the Solaris delivered packages to the new version was completed as of SRU 90, after being delivered incrementally over a number of SRUs. In SRU 93, the package for version 1 has been obsoleted and will be removed on upgrade. All locally built applications and ISV applications that use the system provided libpcre need to migrate to libpcre2 before upgrading.
Preparation for Upcoming SRUs
The following are a subset of the removals planned for future SRUs. See End of Feature Notices for Oracle Solaris 11 for the complete list of removals announced so far.
Migration from MySQL 8.0 to 8.4
SRU 78 added packages for version 8.4 of the MySQL database alongside the existing packages for version 8.0. Upstream support for MySQL 8.0 ended in April 2026 and it is planned for removal in a future Solaris 11.4 SRU. Administrators of MySQL 8.0 databases should follow the instructions in MySQL 8.4 Reference Manual: Upgrading MySQL to migrate their databases to version 8.4 before upgrading to an SRU in which 8.0 has been removed.