Random mumblings of an SSE Scott Howard's Weblog

Sun Explorer version 5.7 was released a few weeks ago, and is available for download from http://sunsolve.sun.com/explorer

 As well as the usual list of new features and bug fixes (full list available in the Release Notes) we've now officially added support for uploading via HTTPS through a proxy server, which we managed to miss when we first added HTTPS upload support in 5.5.

Unfortunately one bug did slip through - if you're using either the "scextended" or "alomextended" modules to connect to the system controller on an F3800->E6900 or V210/240/440 over the network, and the SC/ALOM is configured to use telnet rather than SSH then Explorer will fail to connect to the SC/ALOM.  The easiest workaround is simply to stay with Explorer 5.6 until 5.8 is released, or just configure your SC/ALOM to use SSH in stead of telnet.

Version 5.6 of Sun's Explorer data collector has been released, and is available for download from http://sunsolve.sun.com/explorer

(It was actually released a few weeks ago whilst I was on holidays - sorry for the late notification!)

This version includes a total of 25 bug fixes and new features, which are detailed in the Release Notes if you happen to be interested.

 Although it's not normally critical to stay on the bleeding edge of Explorer versions, using a relatively current version can assist if you ever need to contact Sun Support - and having it pre-installed can save precious minutes when you do have a problem.

If you've got any comments or suggestions on how we can improve Explorer please let me know by using the "Comment" link below - I'm a member of the Explorer Change Control Board, and we're always open to suggestions on how to improve it.

Anyone that has ever raised a call with Sun Support will know of Explorer - it's the tool we use to collect a snapshot of the state of a system to assist in supporting that system.

A few days ago we successfully released Explorer 5.5, which is now available at http://sunsolve.sun.com/explorer along with a list of changes and documentation.

One of the biggest features in this version is something people have been asking for for a while - the ability to automatically upload an Explorer to Sun over HTTPS.

When configuring Explorer 5.5 it will ask :

If you answer "y", then uploading Explorer to Sun is as simple as running "explorer -P".

At this stage you can't set a proxy server in Explorer itself, but it will honor the "HTTPS_PROXY" environment variable, so you can run it as follows :

You can also set it by adding a HTTPS_PROXY entry to the /etc/opt/SUNWexplo/explorer/default file, but keep in mind that this will be overwritten if you reconfigure Explorer.