It gives me immense pleasure to announce that OpenSolaris 2008.05 HAS BEEN LAUNCHED at CommunityOne Today!!

Today, Sun has opened an exciting and critical new chapter in it's open source story by announcing the first release of a new binary distribution of the OpenSolaris operating system, OpenSolaris (TM) 2008.05, now available for free download at www.opensolaris.com.

Oh btw, Check out the brand new, AWESOME OpenSolaris.com! :

Here's a message from Rich Green (Executive Vice President, Software at Sun Microsystems):

Today's release launched at CommunityOne marks a fundamental and deliberate change in the way we are packaging and distributing our software for both developers and deployers. We are significantly lowering the barriers to adoption by modernizing our offerings with powerful tools and technologies designed to optimize the user experience, get developers up and running quickly, and encourage community collaboration with some of the greatest innovators on the planet. We are listening to our communities and taking the important next step in building a new level of volume in the enterprise and web economy markets.

OpenSolaris 2008.05 features LiveCD technology, which allows users to experience OpenSolaris immediately without installing the operating system. When users are ready, they can start the fast and easy installation with a single click and simply add software via the new Image Packaging System (IPS). This is a network-based package repository that enables users to easily customize their implementations directly over the network by installing just the packages they need to build, test, trouble-shoot and deploy their innovations. OpenSolaris 2008.05 also includes a compelling new set of features such as Solaris (TM) ZFS, the Solaris default file system that allows users to protect and store their data with a new instant roll-back and continual check-summing capability, Dynamic Tracing (DTrace), which offers real-time debugging and acceleration of application development and Solaris containers, that enable easier development of virtualization-aware applications without worry about 3rd party software compatibility.

Highly scalable, OpenSolaris can be deployed on nearly 1000 systems, ranging from single machines through multi-CPU and multi-core systems, from every major vendor. With this kind of innovation, community engagement, scalability, usability, familiarity and access to Sun's world-class support, OpenSolaris not only opens up a new level of global participation and innovation, it opens enormous long term opportunities for Sun.

I am extremely proud of the efforts made to make today's milestone release possible, but our work is not done. To make mass adoption of OpenSolaris possible, we will need to continue our focus on getting new contributions to our repository packages. Throughout FY09, we will encourage the participation of our internal and external developer communities to build, optimize, and repackage all of Sun's software along, with popular community open source projects, to make OpenSolaris the most innovative, compelling, and comprehensive software system in the market.

Additional Important urls and links:

CommunityOne Launch

JavaOne Information, Schedules of keynotes, sessions

For access to latest OpenSolaris release, www.opensolaris.com

To Learn more about OpenSolaris, installation guide, IPS and other features: http://opensolaris.org/os/community/documentation

How to Participate in OpenSolaris documentation:
http://opensolaris.org/os/community/documentation/feature_docs/
 
The IPS Getting Started guide is available on OpenSolaris.org:
http://dlc.sun.com/osol/docs/content/IPS/ggcph.html

            
 

Sun has launched yet another great new and exciting opportunity for us to win fabulous prizes for just doing what we do best -- blogging about our favourite IDE and operating system's newest versions, describing our experience with their new features, how they score up to others, describing our user experience, sharing new usage tips, code samples, plugins or just about anything related to the new OpenSolaris and Netbeans IDE 6.1! - The Student Reviews Contest!

Prizes: 

• 1 chance to win the grand prize of $250 in Visa Debit Card, and
• 5 chances of winning second prizes - each of $100 in Visa Debit Card.
  

Contest Period:
This contest begins at 12:01 A.M. Pacific Time (PT) Zone in the United States (e.g. San Francisco time) which is 7:01 A.M. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) on May 5, 2008 and ends on June 6, 2008 at 11:59 P.M. (PT) which is 6:59 A.M. (GMT) on June 7, 2008

All we have to do is:
1. Download OpenSolaris OS and/or NetBeans IDE 6.1. (If you have DVD, that works just as well.)
2. Test the product and post a review!
3. Submit the URL of your review.
4. Do it before June 6, 2008.

Need ideas for what to post to claim the top prize? Here are some suggestions:

a) Describe your OpenSolaris OS installation experience and what it took for you to make it up and running on your hardware platform
b) Run benchmarks and show how OpenSolaris OS performed against a competing OS
c) Create a "how-to" on solving a specific problem using OpenSolaris OS  or NetBeans IDE 6.1 (use detailed instructions, code snippets, commands and outputs etc. as appropriate)
d) Share your deep insight about OpenSolaris OS  or NetBeans IDE 6.1, including your favorite features
e) Give suggestions on how to enhance the OpenSolaris OS or NetBeans IDE 6.1
f) Build a cool plug-in to share with the NetBeans Community.

Here is a sample of  what a review could potentially look like (read through all the 5 pages):

Judging:
All Entries will be judged by a panel of experts based on the following equally weighted judging criteria: novelty and originality of the review; usefulness and character of the substantive feedback; the review's interest and appeal to other users of OpenSolaris or NetBeans IDE 6.1; clarity in the expression about the user experience; how the review demonstrates or showcases specific features; and/or the ability to use the review to improve any aspect of OpenSolaris or NetBeans IDE 6.1.

Note:

• For this contest, students need to review either NetBeans IDE 6.1 or OpenSolaris OS. You can review both and submit as many entries as you want, but you can win only one prize.
• NO other products including previous NetBeans 6.1 Beta versions, Solaris Express Developer Edition, OpenSolaris Developer Preview, Solaris Express Community Edition, and Solaris 10 5/08 or eariler are included in this contest.
• OpenSolaris OS is what used to be called Project Indiana. It will be launched officially in CommunityOne on May 5th.
  

Read the rules (pdf). These are available on the contest site as well.

All submissions will also be featured on the contest website with pictures if provided.

So what are we waiting for people, let's see some winners from JIIT!

On April 18th, me and my friend Tauheed (Sun CA of JMI, Delhi) were invited to give talks at Krishna Institute of Engineering & Technology in Ghaziabad, not too far away from my college. The event was organized by the ever enthusiastic good spirited guy -- Arun Singh, who takes deep interest in Open Source and never misses a single open source conference happening around Delhi, and his friend Gautam who is an avid blogger and freelance content writer. KIET is an old college, and as such the infrastructure isn't that cool, though all that really matters when you go to give a talk is the right audience, which we fortunately did get.

 

This event, which they call TechFandu.in, was, in my knowledge, an attempt to do something like Freed.in, in their college, and although it didn't really turn out to be upto even close to such an event, I'd like to cheer these guys for their efforts none the less, because it was just their first time.. they do have the fire within, just need guidance and support.. and the right opportunities..

The talks were attended by an audience of roughly 40 odd enthu students of KIET, along with a faculty and 2 coordinators.

Tauheed gave a fine talk on OpenSolaris, how it started, why and how is it better than Linux and any other OS out there, what all sits beneath the hood empowering a developer to do super-cool things with it, and where is it heading.. A well presented talk which left the audience with a good impression of OpenSolaris and it's greatness. People did ask him a lot of questions near the end of the talk, which he handled well, and were really interested to try it out on their own systems.. The coordinators distributed OpenSolaris starter kits at the end..

 

Coming to talk about the reason I was there.. My talk, which was (finally) one on Sun SPOTS! I was waiting long for this and no one was gonna stop me from making it the best one I could give on a technology close to my heart.. the highly fascinating, creative and most innovative piece of hardware Sun Microsystems has put in our hands to show off to the whole world.. the Small Programmable Object Technology, aka Sun SPOTs..

I told what it is, why it was made, how does it work, why you should use it, how do you tell it what to do, how sun has made it super-easy for you to tell it what to do, what so many geeks in the world are doing with it, and.. what all tricks you can do with it!

 

My talk was interspersed with a variety of Sun SPOT demos including the all-famous Ectoplasmic Bouncing Ball demo and the super-cool AirText demo. I didn't have a second free-range Sun SPOT available for demo (for a reason you'll know when you read on till the end of this post..), so I showed off the cool ball-bouncing-off-of-one-spot-to-the-other effect by connecting the free-range Sun SPOT in my hand to a virtual one on my laptop (using the sample app provided). Everyone watched with gaze and astonishment, as I started waving my hands in the air with the Sun SPOT, showing a magical illusion of words appearing in mid-air, saying "I am a Sun SPOT"! I gave them an inside view of how things work, how the ball bounces and how the text shows in mid-air, with the help of simple and elegant java code running atop the world's smallest Java Virtual Machine -- project Squawk, doing all the magic to bring that smile on your face. I then passed the SPOT around in the audience..

 

At the end of the talk, came out my secret weapon. Yes, that's right, my lil creation, RoboControl, the network controlled ^Sun SPOT powered^ robot, which has taken me places I could never have imagined to go.. leaving all the people sitting there amazed at the power a SPOT gives to a Java programmer. I talked a bit about the RoboControl architecture, demoed the apps, and then made the Robot follow around Tauheed at the end.. :)

The overall response was great, and although the people out there were totally unaware of java, robotics, and open source altogether, I showed them how cool it is to have a Sun SPOT and Tauheed surely made them install SXDE as soon as they went home..

Photos Slideshow

| View | Upload your own

[Download Presentation]
Videos [1] [2] [3] [4]

I had taken a video interview of my friend and peer Nilay Khandelwal, studying in the 3rd year, in the Computer Science Engineering Branch. I took the interview on the night of our Virtual InstallFest. We talked about Nilay's scoop on the latest face of OpenSolaris -- namely Project Indiana, the good things he liked about it, how is it better than the previous versions of OpenSolaris, and his general experience during the installation, etc.

Watch us talk about the most anticipated OpenSolaris version till date in the following video:

The release of Project Indiana is just around the corner (on May 5th). Me and some other CA's got the chance to get hands on to the bleeding-edge RC0 version from Sun, in order to get feedback about the release from as many students as we can. I was to conduct an InstallFest of sorts on campus at the end of which students would provide feedback about their installation experience, what they liked or didn't like about the new face of Solaris. I was very excited to get this opportunity to provide feedback directly to the OpenSolaris engineering team and the higher-ups at Sun, from students of JIIT! However, at such a short notice, there were problems in conducting an InstallFest in our labs, and past experience suggested that not many people show up at such an event, owing to the need of people carrying their rigs all the way from hostel to the academic block to participate. I thought out a much better way to conduct an InstallFest this time, which was bound to get good participation and would save all the trouble.. we conducted an InstallFest in the Hostel itself.

We successfully conducted a very unique novel event at our college on Sunday, which I like to call the "Virtual Installfest". What is a Virtual InstallFest? Well, In a regular installfest, members of a user group meet at a common place, bring their systems (CPU's or Laptops) along, help each other install their favourite OS, help each other troubleshoot particular problems, drink cola and have fun. A virtual install fest is one which is conducted with no physical gathering of the participants, rather one which is done digitally over the network. It is a new means of conducting InstallFests which avoids having to require the participant to take their CPU’s or Laptops anywhere and just participate in the event from the comfort of their Hostel Rooms. Yes, thats right, an InstallFest in which You don’t have to move around your precious hardware anywhere! Just be wherever you are and join us in the event!

Well, how exactly did it all happen?

To start with, I setup a local intranet website with Drupal, which:

• Had simple pages describing the concept of a virtual installfest, the details of how to participate in the event, prizes and giveaways, and links to launch the live screencast, join the chat conference, submit the feedback form, and the downloads section (more on all this later..)
  
  
  
  InstallFest Home
  
  
• Allowed a participant to register for the InstallFest, entering his personal details, and PC/Laptop configuration too. (Drupal custom profile fields)
  
• After registeration and logging in only could a participant get access to the Downloads section and the Feedback form (restrictions enforced by using the Taxonomy Access Control module for Drupal)
  
  
  
  Downloads Section
  
  
• Fill up a feedback form, which could be accessed from a link in the main menu as well as from a tab in the user's account section. The feedback form was a Drupal "content type" with CCK fields, which allowed rich-text entry too using TinyMCE. I used the nodeprofile module to restrict maximum population for that content type per user to 1, and to make it show in the user account page.
  
  
  
  Feedback Form
  
  
• Participants could logout and log back in anytime to edit their respective feedback forms.
• New downloads were made available at the Downloads section as and when required (sound drivers, etc were provided when participants requested in the chat conference).

The downloads provided were:

• OpenSolaris "Indiana" RC0 (latest build)
• VirtualBox for Windows
• VMWare 6 for Windows (trial)

The host (me in this case), conducted several "sessions", and in each session I installed OpenSolaris RC0 inside of a virtual machine (VirtualBox), broadcasting a Live Screencast of my screen to all the participants with the help of the RealVNC server and it's java client. I just set new connections to be shared by default allowing multiple clients to connect, and ofcourse, disabled remote keyboard / mouse inputs so that people couldn't take control of my system :)

All participants and the host were connected together in a chat conference. I installed OpenSolaris and everybody followed along, and whenever anyone had any problems, he could stop me by messaging in the chat conference. I responded with the solution over the conference, so that even others can rectify it if they encounter a similar problem. It turned out to be a true installfest thanks to the chat room, as in the later sessions, participants from earlier ones started helping new comers troubleshoot problems, which is the true spirit of an installfest I believe.. The chat conference was made possible with phpFreeChat, which is an amazing AJAX-based IRC-like chat application written in PHP. Setting it up was as simple as modifying some parameters in index.php.


I tried taking a screencast of the installation to replay later, but it just took too much processor usage, and made the installation slow, so I dumped that idea and just did the installations myself everytime.

As far as the prizes and giveaways are concerned, all participants were given OpenSolaris starter kits. All participants who successfully installed OpenSolaris on their systems (or inside of virtual machines) and filled up the feedback forms were entered into a lucky draw, the winner was awarded an OpenSolaris Mug, Netbeans 6 DVD, and a Sun Cap!

To conclude, the virtual installfest was a great success. Total participation was 43 students, despite it being a holiday and most of the students were outside hostel, and the event been conducted in a single hostel. I'm sure it'll scale well next time if I conduct it across the campus.

I have uploaded the local installfest website at http://installfest.jiitsunclub.org. It can be accessed by anyone, but registrations have been disabled. I just created a view using the "Views" module of Drupal, to allow sun-insiders to see the feedback. One may choose to see it first in a tabular form, to click on the person's name to see the complete feedback or just get all the feedbacks received on a single page. I have setup a "coordinator" role, and only users of this role would be able to access the "View Feedback" section.

I encourage other campus ambassadors to take up this idea and conduct similar virtual installfests in their institutes as it is an easy to conduct event, gets good participation and uses technology to the max! If anyone wants the drupal installation I had setup, I'll be happy to mail it to you.

Useful Links: 

• Blog post announcing the Virtual InstallFest
• Virtual InstallFest Poster (PDF)
  
• Virtual InstallFest Details (PDF)
• Virtual InstallFest Website (with the feedbacks) 

VIRTUAL INSTALL FEST

LUCKY DRAW!

1. Install OpenSolaris      2. Submit the feedback form      3. WIN prizes!

What’s an Install Fest?
An InstallFest is an opportunity to get hands on help in installing and/or configuring OpenSolaris on your computer. Unlike the monthly meetings where you can only talk about your Solaris issues, at the install fest you can bring those problems to your peers and show them what is going on. It is also about getting to know your peers in the local Open Source User Group, and being able to share expertise and knowledge in a very informal environment.

What is a Virtual InstallFest?

• You don’t have to move around your precious hardware anywhere! Just be wherever you are and join us in the event!
  
  A virtual install fest is one which is conducted with no physical gathering of the participants, rather one which is done digitally over the network. It is a new means of conducting InstallFests which avoids having to require the participant to take their CPU’s or Laptops anywhere and just participate in the event from the comfort of their Hostel Rooms.
• Technology that will make a Virtual InstallFest possible: Video Streaming, Chat conferencing, File Sharing and Web Service over a LAN!
  
  Web Service: Participants register on a local website, and then get links to:
  • Download OpenSolaris Distro ISO
  • Download the post-install questionnaire
  • Get a link to view the live webcast
  • Get a link to join the chat conference

  Installation on a virtual machine: The host will install OpenSolaris on his system inside of a virtual machine
  
  Live Video Streaming: Host provides a live screencast of his system over the network, for others to see and follow along the installation process on their own systems.
  
  Chat Conferencing: The host and all the participants are in a live chat conference. If anybody has any trouble following the installation, gets stuck with any errors, etc they can immediately prompt the host to pause so that his problem can be resolved. The host responds with the solution over the conference, so that even others can rectify if they encounter a similar problem. The participants can also find it useful to share views, opinions or exchange messages related to their installation experience in the conference, just as they would physically in a standard InstallFest.
   

• It is upto the participant to choose to install either inside a virtual machine or on bare-metal on his system directly. It would be more interesting to install OpenSolaris directly from an install fest-perspective, though, you may install inside of a virtual machine like VirtuaBox or VMware if you don’t have enough space to install it as a separate OS (please note that installing inside of a virtual machine requires substantial amount of RAM.. > 512 MB recommended).

What do I need to do?

1. Open your browser and go to http://installfest (note that you will have to add “installfest” in your browser’s proxy exceptions)
2. Download and Install VirtualBox on your system (from downloads section)
3. Login and join the chat conference at http://installfest/chat
4. Catch the live webcast link and open it in your video player.
5. Wait for the event to start, once all participants have joined.
6. The host starts the installation on his system, which you can see streaming live to your video player. Install along on your system. Ask for any doubts or questions in the chat conference.
   
7. Once the installation is over, download the feedback form, fill it up with useful feedback. This feedback will be sent to the OpenSolaris engineering team to suggest the overall user experience in the installation process and initial use phase. We want to send them this feedback to let them know what university students feel about the OS and what they could do to improve it. This feedback is of utmost importance.
   

What to bring? Where to go?

You don’t have to go anywhere! Just logon to http://installfest at the stipulated time of the event and follow the instructions. Have fun installing Solaris!

What’s an Are there any prizes or giveaways?

Yes! :)

• All participants who successfully install OpenSolaris on their systems (or inside of virtual machines) and fill up and submit the questionnaire to us will be entered into a LUCKY DRAW.
  
  First Prize: An OpenSolaris Mug, Netbeans 6 DVD, and a Cap!
  
  
• Each participant will be given the OpenSolaris Starter Kit. It consists of 2 DVD’s, one with OpenSolaris Community Edition Distro and the other one with various flavors of OpenSolaris including Belenix, Nexenta, etc.

[Poster] [Details in PDF]

I was selected as a Speaker to represent Sun Microsystems at the National Seminar on "Emerging Trends in Information Technology" (TechBYTE 2008) on March 29th, 2008 organized by the department of IT, JIMS (Jagan Institute of Management Studies) at their Rohini campus in association with Computer Society of India.

The topic of my session was "Web 2.0 Development with jMaki Framework)". I started my talk telling the audience about my being a student, and a Sun Campus Ambassador, representing Sun Microsystems at the conference. Given the nature of the topic and the audience, I first familiarized them with Netbeans, the concept of Web 2.0 and AJAX, and then delved further into the jMaki AJAX framework, a deep discussion of its architecture and features, interspliced with appropriate demos, concluding with its advantages of other approaches. I had shown the Sun Tech Days jMaki demo by Mr.Arun Gupta. The audience was very enthused with this fascinating technology by Sun Microsystems and it gave me immense pleasure to showcase it at such a professional seminar.

The one-day event witnessed participation from eminent speakers from Intel, AMD, Novell, VMware, HCL, Tata Communication and Nortel. The chief guest Mr. Baijayant J. Panda, Member of Parliament, India (Rajya Sabha) inaugurated the ceremony.

The programme was well attended by corporates, faculty and students. Senior professionals from IT giants and academia like Dr. S Hariharan, VP, Tata Communication, Dr. Amity Pareenja, Tata Communication, Dr. R.K. Vyas, Professor (CS), Delhi University, Prof. V.B. Aggarwal were present at the occasion and shared their views with the enthusiastic audience.

The IT symposium covered the latest innovation in areas like Mobile Computing, Automata, Artifical Intelligence, E-Commerce, Semantic Web, CRM and Knowledge Mining, etc. to serve as a knowledge forum that would connect the participants to emerging thoughts and opportunities available in the IT sector.

The conference speakers and session chairmen included the following eminent personalities from the Industry and academia:

Dr. S Hariharan, V.P., Tata Communication
Dr. Amit Pareenja, Tata Communication
Mr. Kourshik Chatterjee, HCL
Mr. Ravi Gupta, Intel
Prof. V.B. Aggarwal
Mr. Sawan Gupta, Nortel
Mr. Ajay Pal, VMware
Mr. Saurabh Pachnanda, AMD
Dr. R.K. Vyas, Professor (CS), Delhi University
Mr. Rajesh, Novell

I would like to express my sincere gratitude towards Sun Microsystems for providing me such great opportunities to stand at par with senior and experienced professionals and to speak amongst them on a common platform. Such recognition inculcates great addition of value, boosts confidence and encourages one to do much better in future endaevours.

A NetBeans Blogging Contest has launched and runs through April 18th!

Sun is giving away $500 for 10 winners and T-Shirts for 100 winners with the best blogs (plus a chance to get your blog featured on Netbeans.org!). This is a GREAT opportunity for developers --including students-- to learn about NetBeans IDE, have some fun, and possibly get rich and famous! Well maybe not rich, but there are cash prizes and noteworthy blogs will be linked from NetBeans.org :-)

Blog about NetBeans IDE 6.1 Beta for...

10 chances to win a $500 American Express Gift Certificate!

100 chances to win a cool NetBeans T-Shirt!

[Read More]

Thanks to Gregg Sporar, my netbeans plugin's (RegExPlugin) screencast video has been uploaded to the Netbeans.tv screencast section.

I'm excited to tell you that I just saw my screencast on Netbeans.tv homepage! :)

Watch the screencast here! 

Today, I have successfully made my first contribution to a Sun Open Source Community, specifically, Netbeans!, and my first submission to Sun Microsystem's Code For Freedom Contest.

My contribution is an an easy to use all-in-one regular expressions plugin (builder, tester, organizer) for the Netbeans IDE.

Flashback 

I had initially sought to develop this tool as there weren't such a feature in  Netbeans. I had checked out the Netbeans Plugins portal  and Netbeans contrib project and found out  two plugins which dealt with regular expressions  but supported only some aspects of what I had in mind. A much more powerful tool could be developed. I  had discussed the idea on the nbdev@netbeans.org mailing list and received enthusiastic response for the development of such a plugin and suggestions for features it should have. Thus, I started off with this plugin and tried to incorporate as many of the features they suggested as possible.

A little background on Regular Expressions

Regular expressions are a way to describe a set of strings based on common characteristics shared by each string in the set. They can be used to search, edit, or manipulate text and data. You must learn a specific syntax to create regular expressions — one that goes beyond the normal syntax of the Java programming language. Regular expressions vary in complexity, but once you understand the basics of how they're constructed, you'll be able to decipher (or create) any regular expression.

There is a lesson available on Sun's website which explains how to use the java.util.regex API for pattern matching with regular expressions. This lesson starts with the basics, and gradually builds to cover more advanced techniques.

There's a good tutorial on learning regular expressions available here.

My Plugin: Regular Expressions Plugin (RegExPlugin 0.1)

What is it?
A simple and easy to use all-in-one solution which helps a developer in all aspects of working with regular expressions - Learning, Building, Testing and Organizing.

What all does it do?

• Building
  • Building a regular expression is as easy as browsing the built-in regular expressions language reference, double clicking on the language elements to insert them into your regular expression.
  • Paste your regular expression from Java Code, convert it into a regular expression (all \\’s to \’s converted automatically), modify and/or test it, then automatically convert it back to a java string.
• Testing
  • Uses java.util.regex API for robust regular expressions matching
  • Syntax Validation
  • Matches the regex against an input text and shows match results in the form of a tree, with matches at the first level with their matched groups at the second level.
  • Match results show individual groups matched with exact position and sub-sequence.
  • Clicking on a match highlights the sub-sequence in the input text window.
  • All regular expressions compilation options supported – Multiline, Dotall mode, etc.
• Complete Regular Expressions Language Reference
  • No need to leave Netbeans to refer language reference for regular expressions
  • Divided into intuitive categories- Characters, Character Classes, Grouping Constructs, Substitutions, various types of Quantifiers, etc.
  • All the language constructs described in java.util.regex.Pattern javadoc are included.
  • Click on a language element to see it’s description in the pane below.
  • Very helpful for newbie’s and learners. Gets you up to speed quickly.

Download: At Netbeans Plugin Portal

Usage: To open the regular expressions plugin window, go to Tools > Regular Expressions Plugin.

Demo Video: I've made a small video showcasing the features of the plugin by showing how to build and test a regular expression for checking email addresses:

Do check out the plugin and point out any bugs / suggestions / any valuable input you can give for it's improvement.

Here's a small initiative I took long ago when I was just appointed as a Campus Ambassador:

View Larger Map

It now shows locations of 57 campus ambassadors. (locations added by the CA's themselves!)

At it's inception, it was meant to keep myself updated about locations of CA's only in India. It was exciting in the early days. As and when I came to know about a new CA, I would add him/her to the map :)

I had shared the map with the Indian campus ambassadors at the sun campus ambassadors google group, so that they could update their locations on it.

A couple of months ago, there was discussion going on at the ambassadors@sun.com alias about a world map proposal, where I pitched in to talk about having a google map mashup and that's when this map started getting extended to cover locations of all CA's in the world.

The CA map is made possible with the new "Collaborate" feature of Google Maps. They've recently added this feature, which lets one add a list of collaborators to the map so that any of the collaborators can edit the shared map / invite other collaborators! So, anyone having a working google account can edit this map. One can also login to Google Maps, save it to "My Maps", and even embed it into their blog / website (like I've done so here..)

If you are a Campus Ambassador and would like to add yourself to the map, please send me your google account id and I'll be happy to add you to the collaborators list. This is how it's working right now, although I think we would need to automate the process to be able to scale it upto 500 campus ambassadors.
 
Click here to open the map in google maps

These are my notes on a recent experience I've had which required me to get Solaris up and running on 47 systems in our computer lab on a very short notice. I'm posting on it on my blog in order to document this effort in the form of a step by step guide so that it may help other sun campus ambassadors or anyone else who ever happens to fall in a similar situation.

The Problem 

Let me make the problem clearer. You have to get solaris running on all these systems (having only Windows XP installed) and you neither have enough time in your hands nor the permission to install Solaris on all of them. Oh, and they don't have CD/DVD drives, so booting Live CD's like Belenix is not an option either.

Possible Solutions

There are lot many ways to do this. These are the possible solutions that came to my mind that time:

1. Network Installation of Solaris- Solaris 10 provides a lot of ways to do a automated network installation of Solaris on many machines having the same or even different hardware configuration: Web Start, Custom JumpStart Instalation, Solaris Flash Archives, etc. (Note that this is not an option if you're not permitted to install Solaris or if the target systems don't meet the hardware requirements of Solaris)
2. Booting a Live CD: The simplest solution (if the target systems do have CD/DVD drives) is to burn a lot of copies of Belenix, Nexenta or Schillix LiveCD's and to boot all the systems off of them.
3. Booting Solaris from USB drives: This is something that was accomplished by one of the very active and successful campus ambassadors of last year, Anil Gulecha, who is now our Tech Lead :). He was the first CA to make such a great contribution to the OpenSolaris community.
4. Booting a Live CD's ISO over the network: This is one of the more trickier ways. This goes one step ahead of just booting the systems off of live cd's, to first network booting the Solaris GRUB on all the systems, mounting the live cd's iso (eg. belenix) from the network (via NFS / FTP / etc.) and then booting from the network mounted ISOs. This would however require a lot of Network bandwidth and good I/O speed on the server as all these systems would repeatedly access data over the network from the server for almost each and every action, application opened, and command run.
5. Remote Desktop Sessions using a Windows X-Server/XDMCP client, to a Solaris VM running on a high-end windows server (i.e. Instant Thin-Client Access to Solaris from within Windows!)

The last solution is the one I finally used. Its IMHO, the easiest and most elegant solution involving no software installation / tricky stuff on the client systems at all. It does not put any load on the clients and puts very little load on the server. It involves the following steps...

[Read More]

The JumpStart Workshop on Solaris conducted by Sun in partnership with NIIT's sun certified trainers has been executed as a 4 day workshop at JIIT. The workshop was rescheduled and stretched over a period of 4 days with the theory sessions conducted from January 24th through January 26th and the final practical (lab) session on this Monday (January 28th).

The general response for the workshop has been better than expected. We had received 54 registrations for the Solaris track and half the number for the Java track. The course started from a basic level understanding of working with unix system shells, common unix and solaris commands all the way upto access control lists in Solaris,etc. The course content was provided by Sun Learning Services. All students were given the SLS course handbook along with an SXDE DVD to install Solaris on their comps at home.

There was slight miscommunication on the part of NIIT on the first day though. They did not mention the requirement of having a Solaris workstation ready in the lecture theatre. The machine in the lecture theatre was way too slow for a Solaris installation and so remote session to a windows box with a solaris VM saved the day (and the rest of the lecture sessions too).

On the last day of the workshop, we had a lab session in CL4 (the one where we had the installfest). This lab session required all those 47 computers in the lab to have Solaris running on them, which wasn't possible owing to their hardware configuration (512 MB of RAM and no space left for installation). This in turn presented itself as a great opportunity for me to tinker of smart ways to get up Solaris running on them without actually installing it. More on that in the next blog post :)

• Photos from the lecture sessions
• Photos from the lab session

 

We were planning to have an Install Fest for Solaris and Linux since December and we finally organized one today. And it was my very first one too!

Thanks to our college authorities, today, we had our very first InstallFest in one of our smaller labs (CL4). The event was organized on a very short notice. We had announced about it just 2 days back and as such not many people showed up. Never the less, a total of 16 students walked in with their CPU's and laptops till the afternoon. We had asked people to bring their CPU/Laptops (along with any piece of hardware which needs troubleshooting during installation). Keyboards, mice and monitors were provided in the lab. Latest copies of major distributions of OpenSolaris (SXDE, SXCE, Solaris 10) and Linux (FC8, Ubuntu 7 and others) were made available for the x86 / x64 architectures. We made the participants enter details about their PC/Laptop configuration before we started working on them, to handle hardware compatibility issues.

 

It was a good learning experience. Except a few people from our year, all the participants were my juniors and I had a nice time helping them install the most advanced operating system on the planet - Solaris. Contrary to most people's beliefs, installing Solaris is not a tough job, if you follow some rules and know what you're doing. Everyone was impressed with the new GUI installer in SXDE 9/07. After having their comp's installed and configured with our help, some of the participants themselves started helping others, and that's what made the event a success, as that is the true spirit of an InstallFest, getting to know your peers in the local user group, and being able to share expertise and knowledge in a very informal environment. There were quite a few hurdles along the way, but I was able to resolve most of the problems during the installation of Solaris. Some of the machines required a lot of repartitioning (resizing and moving around) as they already had operating systems and data was needed to be untouched. There were some peculiar problems, like the keyboard not working during some part of the setup (which was solved by using an older version of SXDE), but thanks to an internet connection and the vast amount of online resources (documentation, sun.com articles and blog posts) by Sun and it's employees, we could resolve such problems as they came. We installed many machines with dual and triple boot configurations (solaris + linux + windows). I distributed some SXDE 9/07 DVD's at the end.

All in all, the InstallFest proved to be a great opportunity for the participants (though less in number), to get hands-on help in installing / troubleshooting the installation and configuration of their favorite *nix OS and to imbibe the community spirit.

On Wednesday, January 16th, 2007, we conducted a hands-on lab on netbeans plugin development. Around 20 odd students showed up. The event was conducted in our shiny new CL1 lab, with new Core 2 Duo powered Lenovo's. We started off explaining the utility of having plugins in Netbeans, showing some useful examples like the Drag and Drop plugin and the AutoSave plugin. We then explained the highly advanced modular architecture of netbeans, making them acquianted to some basic terms we were going to use throughout the lab, and giving them an overview of what all one can "plug in" into the Netbeans UI and functionality through plugins - menus, toolbars, settings, window components, property editor, file types, drag & drop, etc. Then we went into some detail by talking about the System FileSystem  and how modules install things into this configuration system to plug-in new features and also gave an introduction to the 2 of the most common API's and their use. Then came the main part of the event - The hands-on workshop, when we guided them step-by-step through the creation of a simple google toolbar plugin project showing how easy it is to extend NetBeans via writing a plug-in module, and moreover, how to share your plugin once you've made it! Varun then gave a demo of a plugin he has been working on called the "WikiWizard" showing use of various API features he has used, followed by a brainstorming session to generate some module contribution ideas for the code for freedom contest. I've put up a collection of useful links up here related to Netbeans Plugin Development with links to useful resources - articles, tutorials, samples, API documentation - all that one needs to learn to make plugins in Netbeans.

Outline:

1. Introduction to Netbeans Plugins
2. Essential Background about the Netbeans Platform
3. About the System FileSystem - Actions, Menu, Loaders
4. Introduction to Netbeans API's (UI Utilities API, Nodes API)
5. Netbeans Plugin Quick Start Lab (Google Toolbar) [Lab]
6. How to deploy and distribute your plugin (nbm)
   
7. Demo of WikiWizard Plugin
8. Brainstorming Session