Session persistance on Indiana RC2

I've releases the alpha-works-for-me version of the session persistance scripts for Indiana RC2 (to be OpenSolaris 2008.05). the tar file can be downloaded from here. You can keep track of this bug for further enhancements.

Howto create LiveUSB: Untar the file when running from the LiveCD, and run ./usbdump. Verbose output is set to on, so a lot of text would scroll by. Just follow the instructions on screen. Minimum 1 Gb pen drive required.

No time to type more.. leaving for the Opensolaris Summit and Javaone. I intend to update this blog regularly with pictures from the conferences, so keep a lookout. If you're attending the summit, do say hi :)

Belenix 0.7 out

Been a long time since the last post. And the big news is? Belenix 0.7 is out!

With loads of goodness :)

* Caiman installer

* ZFS root once installed

* Source code at sourceforge

* KDE 3.5.8

And lots more. Read the release notes.

Join in at #belenix on freenode, or the mailing lists (user, developer).

File your bugs here.

And get your copy via http or torrent.

Milax, a new OS distribution

Alexander Eremin has just released a new distribution called Milax. It is the Damn Small Linux of Opensolaris. Its a ~70 Mb download. This is great because opensolaris generally had a big footprint.

Go on to http://www.sunhelp.ru/ for more information. The site is in russian, so you might want to go there via Google translate.

Go check it out.

Where is the Magic?

Akhilesh just posted this to the opensolaris mailing list:

Where is the Magic?

Hi everybody,

As an opening remark, let me say that I have been dealing with systems for sometime and have been monitoring OpenSolaris since its inception.

Although there are many nice things, I have been both puzzled and "awed" by one particular thing I have observed - the problem resolution process.

I have observed again and again[1], that whenever somebody posts a "problem", it is invariably replied with one or more of the following-

1. Bug number, explanation and possible course of action
2. Not a bug, link to document/explanation and correct way to accomplish what the user wants.
3. Explanation of ways to further nail down the root cause of bug (crash dump/kmdb etc), leading to either a bug filing or a straight one line bug number!!

Now, OpenSolaris/Solaris/SunOS is a consolidation of pretty big chunks of code. There are numerous interactions within and outside the system. This is aside from the fact that Solaris is pretty old and still evolving by the day! There are bound to be rough edges and cruft lying around.

I am mystified as how it is possible that so *many* people are working on this, and almost everybody has a firm grasp of the whole system!!! It is as if the *complete* system is a glassbox and everybody can see it through and through and identify where and how the system is acting up.

Now if it were just the work of one person, I could understand, but it is as if the whole work is hand-sculpted by whole team and even then everybody knows the whole picture! I have never seen anything like this, and frankly find it hard to believe.

So, thanks folks, you rock! But - goddamit - how do you do it ???

Is is a bug database with magical search capabilities ? Is it some piece of magical "process" ? Or is it that Sun somehow found the receipe to problem of scaling the competence ?

The BeleniX 5 Day challenge

The Belenix team has just announced a 5 day challenge. It consists of small short term challenges that will win you prizes. The contests range from artwork to themeing to web development to application porting.

Come, participate! 

 

The contest is running parallely with  the FOSS.in conference from Dec 4-8th.

Blazing fast solaris install

So, you've installed OSes before. But did it install before you were through with your coffee?

Indiana preview is reported to install in 7 minutes from a USB. How's that for speed :)

/Me thinks this is a world record for a full fledged distro.

Indiana Developer Preview is here

Great news.. The Indiana Developer preview was released a few minutes ago.

All sorts of details here

Go on, get downloading, and spreading to the fullest extent. 

:)

[Update : Dennis Clarke has put up an excellent series of screenshots and instructions.]
 

Faster booting media coming to a store near you

Moinak has written an entry on the very cool file sorting technology that has gone into the Distro Constructor(DC) project.

What this means to Joe user is that he needs to follow simple steps and build a Live distro that will have bootup time that was until recently in the realm of BeleniX and Knoppix.

Belenix optimizes the way files are arranged on the LiveCD, so the OS requests for files during bootup do not require the CDROM pin moving around crazily (as is normally the case). It uses Dtrace to note down the order of file requests. The distribution constructor project has incorporated these features into it. So heres what you do:

* Build your own (slow) distro using DC. Burn this on a CD and boot from it. Bootup can take anywhere b/w 5 to 10 minutes normally.
* Select "Solaris (32 bit) I/O tracing" from Grub. This will start off the background wizardry to note down the order of access of files. This data is saved in the file 'traceout' on your hard disk.
* Reboot from hard disk. Run 'proc_tracedata' script on this file. It generates a iso.sort file, which is a listing of all the files in the order they were accessed.
* Now rerun the DC to remake your distro. It will use the iso.sort file when rebuilding your LiveCD image.
* Now boot up your distro at blazing speeds!

This is the first time a LiveCD generator has automated such optimizations (not to speak of the hsfs speedups) into it. I predict this will start off a slew of distributions based on OS in the coming year.

Do you want to learn more about the Distro Constructor project and attend a workshop where you can learn to create your own distro? Attend my talk at Foss.in in the first week of December 07!

Foss.in is the biggest FOSS conference in India, with speakers coming in from around the world. If you are a technology enthusiast, and can make it to Bangalore, you shouldn't miss it. See you there :)

BeleniX's popularity surge

Belenix was featured on isohunt.com, a torrent distribution site. This took it's popularity way ahead. Currently the DVD version (0.5.1) has over 10000 seeds. when was the last time you saw that many? Not even the latest blockbusters :)

http://www.isohunt.com/

http://www.isohunt.com/torrents/belenix

Session persistance on BeleniX LiveUSB

I've been working on BeleniX session persistence for some time, and have completed the overall initial framework.

The usbdump script to create the LiveUSB can be downloaded here.

Click read more for a semi-detailed explanation.
 

BeleniX FanSpeak!

A video is probably worth a million words. So here goes:

 

OpenSolairs and GPLv3

There has been a lot of talk about the recently released GPLv3. Few, like Linus, have been reluctant in supporting it, while few others call it revolutionary.

I lie in the 'dont-understand-the-issues-well-enough-to-comment' department. However, OpenSolaris is now at an interesting position. Jonathan Schwartz has made positive comments about GPLv3. However, there has been no concrete information regarding OpenSolaris going  GPLv3.

Here is my personal view on the subject. _If_ OpenSolaris does have plans to go GPLv3, now is the time. There are a lot of developers who are looking to move to GPLv3, either due to legal reasons or their philosophies on freedom. And they are on the lookout for a robust kernal to build upon. OpenSolaris would lose out on this large initial mileage if it waited too long. Just like Solaris lost a lot by waiting too long to go open.

The Indiana Wishlist!

There has been quite a discussion after a new binary distribution of OpenSolaris, Project Indiana, was announced.

The opinions are flying around, but there are a few in the noise that want to see this come up. Here is my wishlist of things I want in Indiana:

*The base: Belenix. It would be the best starting point for Indiana. Indiana _has_ to be a LiveCD, as a try-before-you-install environment is essential to spread awareness and use. Moinak's work on clofi and the fast boot by rearranging files on the CD are a _must_ as these allow for upto 1.8 Gb of stuff on a single CD and quick bootup respectively.

*Next is the installer. It should be GUI installer with an icon on the desktop of the LiveCD (ubuntu fashion). I know many folks simply want a console mode installer, but many others simply prefer a GUI. here again BeleniX has it's own installer, and a few BOSUGians have taken up the initiative to use PerlTK to modify the current installer to a GUI. With Gparted now available on OpenSolairs (and the latest release of BeleniX), it makes resizing of partitions, modifying the partition table and VTOC easy. Parted again was ported by folks in Bosug. I dont know what the status of the 'Caiman' project is, but if it anything close to release 1, this can be the way to go.

*Next is the desktop flavor. Indiana is headed towards being _the_ opensolaris distribution (or that is what I understand from the discussions). A good method to follow here would be the Ubuntu style separate installations for Gnome, KDE (and if possible Xfce). All three have been known to compile and work fine under OS. BeleniX by default contains KDE and Xfce, and the next DVD release will contain Gnome. Compiz should be added by default as it is stable enough to be part of the distro.

*Port Ubuntu's settings importer (from Windows). This should make the transition very easy.

*Get as much device driver support for monitors as possible. I run into problems much more regularly than care about when X doesnt come up. I understand that the device driver condition is improving at a slow rate and there's nothing much to do other than biding time, but atleast this one factor should be looked into. Getting folks to work on an OS is much better than not by losing out due X not recognizing the video card.

*I'm sure with Ian on board, everyone's expecting apt-get. Well we already have Blastwave and pkg-get for Solaris right now. But I dont like the /opt/csw/ method. Somehow pulling stuff that already in there does not make sense for a new distribution. A package management system need to be setup (and a GUI along with it would be great) that uses a repository to install to /usr. This perhaps could be hosted on the Blastwave servers along with their current array of packages. Folks from Bosug are working on one such system that will also allow rollbacks.

These are need-to-be-done-stuff. Now coming to what would be nice to add.

*Get xgl working, so non-Nvidia folks can have a little 3D fun!

*Change that text bootup. This really is a pet peeve of mine, I Dont want to know that rtls0 has been down and up and if c0d0s0 is logging. At the vey last escape from the 80x25 and put all of these stuff in a drop down console box, that interested users can pull down to see what's going on.

*Add Ubuntu like 1-click codec downloader for media formats not bundled.

*Sun Studio 12 IDE bundled in. Seriously, looks like one of the best C IDEs out right now. This should help in picking OpenSolaris up in educational institutions.

*USBDump on the CD, so you can carry the distro around in your USB :) (I'm working on using encryption here using Xlofi, more on this in a later post.)

*First release before 2008!

Looks like this is the first wishlist out for Indiana, so I'd like so to see most implemented. Will update later if I have stuff to add on.

BeleniX 0.6!

If you guys havnt heard yet, BeleniX 0.6 has been released!

There are a bunch of stuff that have been added including:

Compiz 0.5.0 3D Manager integrated into Xfce and KDE. Works only with Nvidia display cards (with the included Nvidia driver).

Usbdump integrated into the LiveCD. You can now boot from the CD pop in a USB stick and execute usbdump in a terminal to get BeleniX on USB.

3000 OpenSolaris manpages

Give it a try. download it here.

For complete release details go here.

 

Micellaneous Solaris stuff..

Lots of things have come up in the last few days that demand to be blogged about.

First off.. theres Compiz packages for JDS! Show your friends things Vista can't do! You need a minimum of Solaris Express build 60 and an Nvidia Card. More instructions here on Moinak's blog.

Here's a screenshot!

On the BeleniX front, expect the 0.6 release in a couple of weeks. New stuff I'm exited about:

• Compiz/Beryl possibly built in!..
• Ability to save your changes back to writable LiveMedia like USB. More ubiquitous computing
• Encryption support for USB.. all changes will be encrypted. Work on this is ongoing.
  
• Performance enhancements.
  

A few fellow students from MSRIT have ported GNU parted to Solaris, and this will help in porting various linux installers to Solaris (Woot!)

Win 5000$ playing a wonderful flash game! This is a promotional campaign for Sun Studio, you'll need to have that installed to finish the game.