A: Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) are an integral part of the authentication mechanism for the Solaris. PAM provides system administrators with the ability and flexibility to choose any authentication service available on a system to perform end-user authentication.
By using PAM, applications can perform authentication regardless of what authentication method is defined by the system administrator for the given client.
PAM enables system administrators to deploy the appropriate authentication mechanism for each service throughout the network. System administrators can also select one or multipleauthentication technologies without modifying applications or utilities. PAM insulates application developers from evolutionary improvements to authentication technologies, while at the same time allowing deployed applications to use those improvements.
PAM employs run-time pluggable modules to provide authentication for system entry services.
E:The Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) is a method for adding authentication support to connection-based protocols. Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) is a framework for authentication and data security in Internet protocols. It decouples authentication mechanisms from application protocols, in theory allowing any authentication mechanism supported by SASL to be used in any application protocol that uses SASL. Authentication mechanisms can also support proxy authorization, a facility allowing one user to assume the identity of another. They can also provide a data security layer offering data integrity and data confidentiality services. DIGEST-MD5 provides an example of mechanisms which can provide a data-security layer. Application protocols that support SASL typically also support Transport Layer Security (TLS) to complement the services offered by SASL.
Reference: softpanorama.org, Solaris PAM

Image Packaging System (IPS) is a new network based package management system included in Oracle Solaris 11. It provides a framework for complete software lifecycle management such as installation, upgrade and removal of software packages. IPS also enables you to create your own software packages, create and manage package repositories, and mirror existing package repositories.
Oracle Solaris software is distributed in IPS packages. IPS packages are stored in IPS package repositories, which are populated by IPS publishers.
E: The following command displays property information about the local repository.
$ pkgrepo get -s /export/repoSolaris11
SECTION PROPERTY VALUE publisher prefix solaris repository description This\ repository\
serves\ a\ copy\ of\ the\ Oracle\ Solaris\ 11\ Build\ 175b\ Package\ Repository.
repository name Oracle\ Solaris\ 11\ Build\ 175b\ Package\ Repository
repository version 4
The value of the publisher prefix specifies that solaris is to be used in the following cases:
When more than one publisher's packages are present and no publisher is specified in the
package name in the pkg command
When packages are published to the repository and no publisher is specified.
Reference: Oracle Solaris 11 Express Image Packaging System Guide
Reference: Copying and Creating Oracle Solaris 11 Package Repositories, Checking and Setting
Repository Properties

Explanation/Reference:
Explanation:
By default, the pkg info command only lists information about installed packages on the system; however, we can use a similar command to look up information about uninstalled packages, as shown in here:
Example:
Listing Information About an Uninstalled Package
# pkg info -r php-52
Name: web/php-52
Summary: PHP Server 5.2
Description: PHP Server 5.2
Category: Development/PHP
State: Not Installed
Publisher: solaris
Version: 5.2.17
Build Release: 5.11
Branch: 0.175.0.0.0.1.530
Packaging Date: Wed Oct 12 14:01:41 2011
Size: 44.47 MB
FMRI: pkg://solaris/web/[email protected], 5.11-0.175.0.0.0.1.530:20111012T140141Z Note: pkg info command displays information about packages in a human-readable form.
Multiple FMRI patterns may be specified; with no patterns, display information on all installed packages in the image.
With -l, use the data available from locally installed packages.
This is the default.
With -r, retrieve the data from the repositories of the image's configured publishers. Note that you must specify one or more package patterns in this case.

If you're logged on to the system, you can run prstat -Z to generate a summary of cpu/memory utilization by zone.

Reference: ipadm(1M) - the new ifconfig(1M)