Thursday January 22, 2009 Happy Trails...until we meet again...
Today ends my tenure at Sun.
Tonight will be the last night I host the SVOSUG meeting, if anyone is interested in taking over the user group, it's yours!
I will be looking for work on Embedded Linux.
I can be reached at aland (at) softorchestra (dot) com if you need to get in touch with me.
Live Free or Die!
Thursday December 18, 2008 Reminder: [SVOSUG] Dec. Meeting tonight
I have my dish cooking for the potluck tonight, my kids are hoping that nobody shows so I will bring the ribs back home, but I told them don't count on it.
Here's a reminder for folks to stop by for some holiday cheer with SVOSUG at the mansion. I can't think of a better place to have a potluck myself.
I'm still working on my dish...the network is the BBQ, or the BBQ is the computer, or the BBQ is the network, or whatever...but I can monitor this cook from my browser. :-) We're cruising along at 255 degrees...and into the dish about 1:20...
Rumor has it that Chez Meyer will be a no show, his pulled pork butt was a no-show at the Solaris Halloween party, where Chez Liu eased himself into the blue ribbon spot...Can Chez Liu pull it off again? He's got a couple things up his sleeve...the weather Gods once again came through! Let's hope it holds up! :-) 20 percent chance of rain, it's cloudy, but that can't stop Al's 'que...*lol*
( Dec 18 2008, 12:37:03 PM PST ) Permalink
Monday December 15, 2008 [SVOSUG] Dec. Meeting THIS Week 12/18/08
When: Thursday, Dec. 18, 2008
Where: Sun's Santa Clara Campus Mansion
(SCA07 just across the road from the Auditorium)
What: Holiday Potluck, Social, and 2008.11 Celebration!
Time: 7:30pm-10:00pm
Yahoo Maps
Just a reminder, the December SVOSUG meeting will move to this week, to 12/18/08.
We'll be having our annual Holiday Potluck/Social. Please feel free to join us for some holiday cheer along with some tech talk. If you are inclined to bring something for the potluck, your welcome to, but nobody is required to bring anything for the potluck. Bring yourself, some conversation, and enjoy the evening with fellow OpenSolaris, Linux, and BSD folks. Everyone is welcome to share some Holiday Cheer with us!
After being shown up by Chez Liu at the Halloween party this year, I might be bringing some good 'ol fashioned BBQ, smoked slowly over hardwood lump.
Help will be available if you would like to install the latest OpenSolaris 2008.11 which was just released. This is a dandy release that has been underway for quite some time, lots of new features have been added and this is shaping up into a very nice distribution.
This release was a good way to wrap up the year, IPS has really come a long way, and OpenSolaris is maturing into a nice system.
Happy Holidays to all, drive safely over the holidays, and let's all hope for a great 2009!
Wednesday November 19, 2008 Holy Cr@po!a Batman, is that /bin/sudo I see in OpenSolaris nowadays???
Sometimes I get frustrated, just like many others, at how slow Sun is to change. One example is how Sun has dug their heels in towards sudo opposed to their implementation of roles based access. I mean this in regard to having root access to manage a system.
I'm ok with either one, but the majority of open source systems use sudo, and in the case of rbac/pfexec, it makes OpenSolaris different.
This type of change is monumental at Sun, IMO, and recently there has been more and more of it. It's not as if OpenSolaris has embraced sudo, RBAC is still in place and nothing has changed in that regard. But changes do seem inevitable, for everyone, and for better or worse it's good to see OpenSolaris changing/morphing into the systems that it will end up being.
I would venture to say that with IPS, zfs, and snapshots, OpenSolaris is standing up to be a great platform, the "New Solaris", and change is inevitable.
This new concept of managing our systems seems to be the nexus of it all...
Yeah, as any evolution, there's some rough edges...but things are getting smoother all the time and OpenSolaris has gotten a lot more comfortable for me to develop on.
It is time to let go of the past, and embrace the future. OpenSolaris has really started to turn into a commendable system, IMO.
Tuesday November 18, 2008 SVOSUG November Meeting will move to Tues., November 25th!
SVOSUG will move to Tues. next week due to Thanksgiving being on Thursday.
We will be offering to help folks install the most current OpenSolaris bits on their systems if you would like, on the metal or inside VirtualBox.
One most excellent feature that was just added to OpenSolaris is the ability to load/install with 512mb of memory. This not only holds true to install on laptops with less memory, but allows laptops with lower memory to host other environments within VirtualBox by only requireing 512mb of memory for the xVM.
I would also like to toss out some Lightning talks, and hope that others in the community will have some to add.
I have a couple lightning talks I will be giving, one on the new Fast Reboot added to build 100, and another on a couple tips to help your build performance.
If you have something your involved with on OpenSolaris, or something you've discovered, please feel free to give a short mention on it so that others might learn from it.
Bring a systems (to install), bring a talk, or just bring yourself, we'll meet in the Mansion on the Santa Clara campus next Tues., November 25th at 7:30pm.
Have you tried x86 Fast Reboot?
I was doing some non-scientific testing with the recent x86 Fast Reboot option which was added to reboot, thanks to Sherry Moore.
On one of my test systems I'm seeing about 32 seconds to reboot -f (1M) , opposed to 1 minute and 20 seconds for a typical reboot (1M). Systems are limited to being supported, since you need quiesce (9E) added to all drivers to allow the Fast Reboot.
If the only drivers without quiesce() support on the system are display and/or audio, you can set force_fastreboot=1 in /etc/system. If the NIC (wired or wireless) driver doesn't have quiesce(), you can unplumb the interface first then do fast reboot.
This is about 35% of a full reboot through BIOS on the machine I'm testing on. This is a system not running the desktop GUI, so mileage may vary.
This is very useful! The more we are able to work with systems to manage devices, we will have a more effecient system. Kudos to Sherry for this effort!
Wednesday November 05, 2008 James Gosling at SVLUG tonight!
James Gosling is doing a QA presentation at the Silicon Valley Linux User Group (SVLUG) tonight.
If your in the valley, with some time on your hands, drop over there.
Maybe I'll see you over there!
Wednesday October 22, 2008 We have some giveaways for the meeting!
We have some giveaway RBBB (real bare bones boards) from Modern Device. There could be some other stuff to raffle off, but we will have a couple of these RBBBs for certain.
I soldered mine up earlier this evening, it took me over an hour. John Plocher says he can do these in 15-20 minutes, and I think I can shave quite a bit myself after doing one, now I understand what parts need to go where.
(linky pics for visual impaired)
Wednesday October 08, 2008 SVOSUG 10/23, Arduino Night, buy a kit, build a kit, bring a board
When: Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008
Where: Sun's Santa Clara Campus Mansion
(SCA07 just across the road from the Auditorium)
What: Arduino Night, buy a kit, build a kit, bring a board
Time: 7:30pm-10:00pm
Yahoo Maps
We are planning our next SVOSUG meeting, and I have mentioned this idea to several folks with great response, so I would like to start planning early enough since this meeting will present a lot of options to folks attending.
To learn about the Arduino if you are not familiar with it, please go to the Arduino website at the following link. If you use Mac OSX, Linux, or Windows you can get the development software at a link from that site, and if you use FreeBSD you can find the development tools inside the ports collection, use pkg_add or make the port. If you use OpenSolaris, we will have the start of the tools available which you can use. We hope to
continue working on these to have a stable set of tools just like the other platforms, and we are just getting this going (but do have it working).
http://arduino.cc/
As I have mentioned at several user groups, including the last SVOSUG meeting, we have been planning to build the Freeduino which is an inexpensive kit that is sold by Modern Device.
http://moderndevice.com/
These kits cost anywhere from $10-$15 depending on QTY in which you buy them. We will have some kits, cables, breadboards, and other chiatchkas which can be used with boards for development, but for many people we have determined it could be easier to buy a pre-assembled kit ahead of time. For that matter, if you want to ensure that you have a kit, should you want to build, buying one ahead of time will be the safest bet. You can get the
Freedunio kit assembled from Modern Device, but I don't believe we will have any of those to provide, we will most likely only have bare bones kits. One of the big advantages of this board is that it can easily be plugged into a breadboard to connect other devices and/or route connections. This is convenient for development. You can get a serial to USB cable for these also, but that will cost about $20.
The Diecimilia is a pre-assembled board that is available from several places, and this design originates from Arduino, AFAIK. One advantage of these boards is that they have a lot of options you can buy and connect to them, please see the MakerShed page as they have a lot of stuff listed. The Arduino is very popular with the Maker Groups around the country. There are many options known as shields that plug onto the Diecimilia, for various audio type devices (sound, piano synth), sliders, lights, USB, Ethernet, serial, cables, etc...so this is a very attractive package for many folks.
http://www.makershed.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=43&Redirected=Y
Given that there are so many options, and such a diverse set of skills within all of the local communities, people attending will have to make some decisions on what model they would like.
I must add, 2 people have built the kits I know, one has done it in 20 minutes, and another person has done it in just over 1 hour. We will have several soldering stations, but due to time constraints, we will be limited on how many can be soldered up, hence the 15 kits we have ordered to have on hand.
I like to build things, so building one is attractive to me. I have a kit already, but will most likely solder mine before hand and will use that as another data point. This is also a good opportunity to learn how to solder and build a kit, there will be folks to help you if you do not know how.
There is so much information, and so many places to buy, that we decided to reccomend only a few online stores to purchase from, but you can order from many more places on the net, and the Tech Shop in Menlo Park often has them for sale, but there is such demand for them that they sell out quickly.
The places that we reccomend are: (not in any specific order;-)
Modern Device, both kits and Diecimilia (BBB is the bare bones
board kit, i.e., Freedunio).
http://www.moderndevice.com/
Maker Store, shipping is quick but prices are a tad higher, good
selection.
http://store.makezine.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=43
Adafruit Industries, ladyada has done a lot of great stuff to help the Arduino community, quick shipping, and good prices, decent inventory.
http://www.adafruit.com/
Spark Fun Electronics, I love to look around this site, lots of widgets, boards, and other goodies...
http://www.sparkfun.com/
If you are unsure what you think you might like, please attend the meeting and and see several different boards, it might help you decide and understand the best option to hook up one to your computer. You will ultimately need some type of cable, to connect to your computer along with the board.
We will have several cool demos to represent the type of development you can easily do with these boards, and that in itself will be interesting to many people, even if you are not interested in doing development yourself.
We hold no favorites, the kits we have available are on a first come first serve basis (i.e., ALL communities, SVOSUG, BayLISA, and SVLUG), but we haven't decided a good way to pre-sale these kits to people, other than taking your word on good faith that you will show up and buy it. We suspect the kits will go fast as
they are inexpensive and fun to build, but I emphasize that it is safest to get a kit or board ahead of time to have it in your possession. Also, building is not the best option for all folks, so keep that in mind. We will be available to help you if you are not familiar with soldering.
Monday September 22, 2008 Stephen Smalley to speak at SVOSUG on Thur. 09/25/08
When: Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008
Where: Sun's Santa Clara Campus Mansion
(SCA07 just across the road from the Auditorium)
What: Security technologies to confine flawed and malicious software
Time: 7:30pm-10:00pm
Live Broadcast at this link through ustream on the SVOSUG web page, if you can't make the meeting in person.
NOTE: Tamarah Rockwood will have an art exhibit that will feature the OpenSolaris Community Innovations Award Entry she submitted. It is possible she will offer some cookies for the event also, but we won't hold her to her gracious offer.
You are invited to hear Stephen Smalley, of the US National Security Agency
(NSA), speak on security technologies to confine flawed and malicious
software.
Stephen was instrumental in bringing the Flux Advanced Security Kernel
(Flask) and Type Enforcement (TE) technologies to Linux through the SELinux
project. Flask is a flexible form of mandatory access control (MAC) that has
been gaining popularity since its introduction in SELinux, SEBSD, and
SEDarwin.
Stephen is now involved as a project lead on the OpenSolaris.org Flexible
Mandatory Access Control (FMAC) project that is integrating FLASK and TE
into OpenSolaris.
Stephen Smalley Bio:
Stephen Smalley is a Technical Director in the Defense Computing Research
Office of the National Information Assurance Research Laboratory of the NSA.
Mr. Smalley received a 2005 Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Fellows
award for his technical achievements within the Intelligence Community.
Prior to his work on OpenSolaris and SELinux, Mr. Smalley performed research
and development in the area of operating system security through the
development and analysis on a series of secure research operating systems.
Mr. Smalley received his B.S. degree in Computer Science and Mathematics
from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
For additional info please see the following URLs:
OpenSolaris.org Flexible Mandatory Access Control Project Page:
http://opensolaris.org/os/project/fmac/
NSA SELinux Reference:
http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/
Yahoo Maps to the Mansion
We may also have some pizza and sodas.
Wednesday September 10, 2008 Stephen Smalley coming to speak this month!
Stephen Smalley of the National Security Agency will be speaking this month at the SVOSUG meeting, on Sept. 25th, in SCA03, that is the room above the auditorium we used to meet at. We're moving over this month for the added space.
I will be inviting anyone around town that might be interested to hear Stephen talk about Flask and Type Enforcement. This is an excellent opportunity for all of the open source communities to hear and ask any questions about this technology they might have.
Flask and Type Enforcement is the technology used in SELinux today, and the same technology being worked on for OpenSolaris, where Stephen is leading the FMAC project with John Weeks, of Sun Fed.
You can find out more about FMAC at the OpenSolaris project page.
Sun Fed will be supplying pizza and beverages for this event. Please join us on the evening of Sept. 25th at 7:30pm.
Tuesday July 22, 2008 [SVOSUG] Summer Break, taking July off...
NOTE: Phillip "Flip" Russell is no longer working at Sun, and has helpedfor the past few years with SVOSUG. I would like to thank Phillip for
helping out and hope that you'll keep in touch with us.
I had been planning to host the meeting last week when Lori Alt was
visiting, but Lori was busy on Thurs., but we did tape a video for ZFS
Boot that can be seen on John Weeks' ustream account:
(first 10 minutes have some white noise in the audio)
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/563014
I would also like the let folks know about some dates coming up.
The August meeting will be moved up to PenLUG in Redwood City, please join
along in meeing with PenLUG. This will be on the same night SVOSUG
normally meets on, 4th Thurs., or August 28th.
http://www.penlug.org/twiki/bin/view/Home/MeetingAgenda20080828
Sept. 3rd, James Gosling is speaking at the Silicon Valley Linux User's
Group. Here's a good chance to hear James speak at a small local venue.
http://www.svlug.org/meetings.php
Sept. SVOSUG meeting will be back at the Mansion, and I have a tentative
speaker but don't have it confirmed yet. Stay tuned for this announcement
soon.
Oct. SVOSUG meeting is being planned as a Arduino build-a-thon. The parts
to build an Arduino are only about $10-$15. We need to have a cross
compiler for OpenSolaris (gcc-avr) to support the Arduino, which is a full
open hardware and software platform to develop on. John Plocher recently
wrote a couple snazzy programs on the Arduino, one uses 2 servos with a
web cam to allow panning of the webcam with 2 potentiometers. This was
done with about 25 lines of c code, compiled and uploaded to the Arduino.
He also wrote a musical type program. Yes, John has discovered the
Arudino...and so can you...stay tuned for more info, we'll help you build
one for youself out of parts. This will be based on the Freeduino, bare
bones board. We will be inviting the local LUGs and BayLISA to join us.
http://www.moderndevice.com/
Have a nice summer break, I'm hoping for one myself.
( Jul 22 2008, 05:40:00 AM PDT ) Permalink
Wednesday July 16, 2008 Jonathan Adams is speaking at BayLISA tonight (07/17)
If you're in the bay area, don't miss out on Jonathan Adam's presentation at BayLISA tonight.
You can get info on the BayLISA website.
Hope to see you there!
Thursday June 26, 2008 [SVOSUG] Summer Thinktank, give your input, Tonight!
**** REMINDER **** REMINDER **** REMINDER **** REMINDER ****
Tonight!
Hope to see you there!
Tuesday June 24, 2008 [SVOSUG] Summer Thinktank, give your input, 06/26
SVOSUG members, help us decide what to do with our user group in Silicon Valley.
I've been running SVOSUG for 3 years and quite honestly I'm getting bored with the same old format...and we've had great presentations at SVOSUG, I've been quite happy with the group over the past few years. However, I don't believe it scales for the future, and I don't think user groups offer the same advantage they used to, with the web, use of video, and online-collaboration.
I don't feel we're able to accomplish too much as a user group, and there could be ways to expand and continue to grow the group in the future by changing the format.
A couple ideas that I have had are:
1) Shorter presentations so that folks could watch the content at their leisure, even if they're not local. I think of lightning talks in this regard, and could offer folks within the community to get up give a short presentation that is 5 minutes, and scale out our community, not just SVOSUG. The key here would be using the meeting to create content, as we've been doing, but to make the content more usable. I haven't figured out how to leverage it better.
2) Technical Architect Groups (TAGs) where a small group of folks with common intersts can get together and work on something together. This could possibly happen the same day as the meeting, and allow people to get together and discuss something that they could go off and work on over the next month.
3) More community participation from non-Sun folks. How can we get folks to talk about things they're doing. As an example, have you built a nice system that is low power, or small form factor? Have you been tunneling through VMs on your network to allow users to access inside a Virtual Box VM? How about ekiga, do you use it on OpenSolaris?
4) Possibly going around the room and just having people mention briefly what they're working on, what they doing, and if people are interested in such, they could talk after the meeting or in email/opensolaris.org.
5) ? (give a suggestion to something you think would work)
I will open my call-in number which is toll-free so that if anyone would like to voice an idea that is not local and/or how we can help you, please do.
Toll Free: 866-545-5227
Intnl/pay: 865-673-6950
Conference: 809-64-14
Please feel free to join us, for a drink, a snack, some good open source talk, and a chance to talk to some of the OpenSolaris engineers. Feel free to bring your own bottle, a snack, or something to share if inclined, no entry required so feel free to join us without concern of bringing something.
When: Thursday, June 26, 2008
Where: Sun's Santa Clara Campus Auditorium (SCA07, the Mansion)
What: Summer Thinktank
Time: 7:30pm-10:00pm
Google Maps:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=4070+George+Sellon+Circle,+Santa+Clara,
SVOSUG Project Page, for video:
http://opensolaris.org/os/project/svosug/
If you haven't been to the Mansion before, as you enter the Sun campus on Palm, from Lafayette, the Mansion is the first building on the left, as I recall. There is parking all around, a small lot in the rear, parking on Palm, and a huge lot on the other side of the Auditorium.
Tuesday June 03, 2008 Silicon Valley Linux User Group, Wed. June 4th
I'll be speaking at the Silicon Valley Linux User Group on this Wed. If you're free, please stop by.
The information for the meeting is at this link, and here's a map.
Thursday May 22, 2008 [SVOSUG] Darryl Gove - Solaris Application Programming, Thur 05/22
**** REMINDER **** REMINDER **** REMINDER ****
Tonight is the meeting, feel free to stop by for a drink and conversation.
( May 22 2008, 09:55:33 AM PDT ) Permalink
Wednesday May 21, 2008 [SVOSUG] Darryl Gove - Solaris Application Programming, Thur 05/22
Darryl Gove, author of the recent Prentice Hall publication, "Solaris Application Programming", will be joining us for this month's meeting. This is an excellent book for OpenSolaris developers at large.
This month we're planning to change the format, in interest of a community meeting where members of the community can be more interactive with each other.
The typical format for a user group is to have a 1-2 hour presentation, with questions...and rather than focusing on a large presentation, I'd
like to try and have several small presentation, including the members of the community who have helpful or interesting things they're doing on OpenSolaris. I've thought of having several laptops that users could wander around to and watch a short presentation, but not sure we can have that setup this month or not.
We will continue meeting in the Mansion, and will try to use the space inside to suite our needs, please join us in this special space and enjoy the company of your fellow OpenSolaris and other open source community members as well.
I spoke at the BayLISA meeting last week, and will be speaking at SVLUG on June 4th, and EBLUG on June 18th. I'm inviting other communities to join us, and would like to hear from some of them if they would like to give the community a perspective on the system(s) they use, what they use them for, and/or if they have interest in OpenSolaris.
Please feel free to join us, for a drink, a snack, some good open source talk, and a chance to talk to some of the OpenSolaris engineers. Feel free to bring your own bottle, a snack, or something to share if inclined, no entry required so feel free to join us without concern of bringing something.
When: Thursday, May 22, 2008
Where: Sun's Santa Clara Campus Auditorium (SCA07, the Mansion)
What: Darryl Gove - Solaris Application Programming
Time: 7:30pm-10:00pm
Google Maps Link
SVOSUG Project Page, for video:
http://opensolaris.org/os/project/svosug/
If you haven't been to the Mansion before, as you enter the Sun campus on Palm, from Lafayette, the Mansion is the first building on the left, as I recall. There is parking all around, a small lot in the rear, parking on Palm, and a huge lot on the other side of the Auditorium.
Monday May 19, 2008 Community offer to John Loiacono at Adobe!
I was encouraged to read about future support for Solaris x86 with AcroRead posted at the Adobe Site.
I posted a comment to Adobe, and would like to post it here, as I am offering to wash John Loiacono's car when Adobe finally releases Adobe for Solaris on x86 platforms. Any other OpenSolaris community members that would like to join in on this festivity would be more than welcome to do so. The Adobe offices are in downtown San Jose.
I hope Adobe will update the SPARC version also, and although old, this is much newer than the 4.0.5 version most users on Solaris x86 is been crippled with for years, actually it could be more than a decade old...the SPARC version is only 3 or 4 years old I think.
We would need to make some stipulations for such an offer though, such as:
1) Both x86 and SPARC versions of AcroRead will receive a full wash, including windows and interior.
2) wash only the outside of the car, no windows or interior if SPARC version is not updated at same time.
3) Additional spiff for Thanksgiving 2008 delivery, a full tank of gas.
4) Additional spiff for July 4th 2008 delivery, in addition to a full tank of gas, you will also receive a lube job, it just don't get much better than that, Johnny!
I am very encouraged to see this on the Adobe page, very encouraged indeed.
Wednesday May 14, 2008 Bay Area OpenSolaris Presentations
I will be speaking around the Bay Area, the first of which is be BayLISA tomorrow, Thurs. May 15th, at Yahoo in Sunnyvale.
I will be handing out some OpenSolaris usb sticks which have the OpenSolaris image on it, so you can install from it. These are really handy, and a nice piece of swag. Jesse Silvers did a great job at getting these made up, a very nice design. Also joining me will be John Weeks to give some backing on the FMAC project. Don't miss these events, should be a good time for all.
BayLISA - Thursday, May 15th at Yahoo in Sunnyvale
Silicon Valley Linux Users Group (SVLUG) - Wednesday, June 4th at Symantec/Veritas in Mountain View
East Bay Linux Users Group (EBLUG) - Wednesday, June 18th at Hurricane Electric in Fremont
Hope to see you folks there! Especially look forward to seeing some of my friends in the Linux communities.
( May 14 2008, 11:25:52 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]