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20091130 Monday November 30, 2009
VirtualBox 3.1 has been released
VirtualBox 3.1 has been released and is now available for download. You can get binaries for Windows, OS X (Intel Mac), Linux and Solaris hosts at http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Version 3.1 is a major update and contains the following new features
  • Live Migration of a VM session from one host to another (Teleportation)
  • VM states can now be restored from arbitrary snapshots and new snapshots can be taken from any snapshots (Branched Snapshots)
  • 2D video acceleration for Windows guests using the host video hardware for overlay stretching and color conversion
  • CD/DVD drives can be attached to arbitrary storage controllers
  • More than one CD/DVD drive per guest VM
  • The network attachment type can be changed while a VM is running
  • New experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts (OpenSolaris/Nevada build 124 and later)
  • Performance improvements for PAE and AMD64 guests when using non-nested paging (VT-x and AMD-V only)
  • Experimental support for EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface)
  • Support for paravirtualized network adapters (virtio-net)

There is also a long list of bugs fixed in this new release. Please see the Changelog for a complete list.


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Nov 30 2009, 10:05:11 AM CST Permalink Comments [3]

20091125 Wednesday November 25, 2009
VirtualBox 3.1 Beta 3 now available for download
The third beta release of VirtualBox 3.1 is now available for testing. You can download the binaries for all platforms at http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/3.1.0_BETA3/

In addition to the new features introduced with Beta 1 (live migration, branched snapshots, new OpenSolaris USB support, 2D video acceleration, network changes while VM is running), the following are noteworthy changes since Beta 2.

Please refer to the VirtualBox 3.1 Beta 3 Changelog for a complete list of changes and enhancements.

Important Note: Please do not use this VirtualBox Beta release on production machines. A VirtualBox Beta release should be considered a bleeding-edge release meant for early evaluation and testing purposes.

Report problems or issues at the VirtualBox Beta Forum.

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Nov 25 2009, 04:11:26 PM CST Permalink Comments [0]

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 is now available for Solaris (SPARC and x86)
Oracle Database 11g Release 2 for Solaris is now available for download at the Oracle Technology Network Development. This includes 64 bit binaries for both SPARC and x86. This is pretty exciting news since this is the first time that x86 binaries for Solaris have been available at the same time as SPARC. A big thanks to our friends at Oracle for making this happen.

Let the upgrades and installations begin.

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Nov 25 2009, 01:35:50 PM CST Permalink Comments [1]

20091123 Monday November 23, 2009
Great Lakes OpenSolaris Users Group - Nov 2009
I would like to thank Chip Bennett and all of the fine folks from Laurus Technologies for hosting the November meeting of the Great Lakes OpenSolaris Users Group (GLUG), especially on such a short notice. It was a pleasure coming back and I enjoyed meeting up some some old friends and making some new ones.

We had a rather nice discussion around recent enhancements to ZFS. As promised, I have posted my slides for your review. Please let me know if you have any trouble downloading them or if you find any confusing or erroneous bits.

I appreciate all of the folks that turned out as well as those that connected to the webcast. I hope to see all of you again at a future meeting.

Nov 23 2009, 02:07:50 PM CST Permalink Comments [2]

Taking ZFS deduplication for a test drive
Now that I have a working OpenSolaris build 128 system, I just had to take ZFS deduplication for a spin, to see if it was worth all of the hype.

Here is my test case: I have 2 directories of photos, totaling about 90MB each. And here's the trick - they are almost complete duplicates of each other. I downloaded all of the photos from the same camera on 2 different days. How many of you do that ? Yeah, me too.

Let's see what ZFS can figure out about all of this. If it is super smart we should end up with a total of 90MB of used space. That's what I'm hoping for.

The first step is to create the pool and turn on deduplication from the beginning. 
# zpool create -f scooby -O dedup=on c2t2d0s2
This will use sha256 for determining if 2 blocks are the same. Since sha256 has such a low collision probability (something like 1x10^-77), we will not turn on automatic verification. If we were using an algorithm like fletcher4 which has a higher collision rate we should also perform a complete block compare before allowing the block removal (dedup=fletcher4,verify)

Now copy the first 180MB (remember, this is 2 sets of 90MB which are nearly identical sets of photos). 
# zfs create scooby/doo
# cp -r /pix/Alaska* /scooby/doo
And the second set. 
# zfs create scooby/snack
# cp -r /pix/Alaska* /scooby/snack
And finally the third set. 
# zfs create scooby/dooby
# cp -r /pix/Alaska* /scooby/dooby
Let's make sure there are in fact three copies of the photos. 
# df -k | grep scooby
scooby               74230572      25 73706399     1%    /scooby
scooby/doo           74230572  174626 73706399     1%    /scooby/doo
scooby/snack         74230572  174626 73706399     1%    /scooby/snack
scooby/dooby         74230572  174625 73706399     1%    /scooby/dooby


OK, so far so good. But I can't quite tell if the deduplication is actually doing anything. With all that free space, it's sort of hard to see. Let's look at the pool properties. 
# zpool get all scooby
NAME    PROPERTY       VALUE       SOURCE
scooby  size           71.5G       -
scooby  capacity       0%          -
scooby  altroot        -           default
scooby  health         ONLINE      -
scooby  guid           5341682982744598523  default
scooby  version        22          default
scooby  bootfs         -           default
scooby  delegation     on          default
scooby  autoreplace    off         default
scooby  cachefile      -           default
scooby  failmode       wait        default
scooby  listsnapshots  off         default
scooby  autoexpand     off         default
scooby  dedupratio     5.98x       -
scooby  free           71.4G       -
scooby  allocated      86.8M       -
Now this is telling us something.

First notice the allocated space. Just shy of 90MB. But there's 522MB of data (174MB x 3). But only 87MB used out of the pool. That's a good start.

Now take a look at the dedupratio. Almost 6. And that's exactly what we would expect, if ZFS is as good as we are lead to believe. 3 sets of 2 duplicate directories is 6 total copies of the same set of photos. And ZFS caught every one of them.

So if you want to do this yourself, point your OpenSolaris package manager at the dev repository and wait for build 128 packages to show up. If you need instructions on using the OpenSolaris dev repository, point the browser of your choice at http://pkg.opensolaris.org/dev/en/index.shtml. And if you can't wait for the packages to show up, you can always .

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Nov 23 2009, 12:24:06 AM CST Permalink Comments [4]

20091122 Sunday November 22, 2009
VirtualBox 3.1 Beta 2 now available for download
The second beta release of VirtualBox 3.1 is now available for testing. You can download the binaries for all platforms at http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/3.1.0_BETA2/

In addition to the new features introduced with Beta 1 (live migration, branched snapshots, new OpenSolaris USB support, 2D video acceleration, network changes while VM is running), the following changes have gone into this release.

Please refer to the VirtualBox 3.1 Beta 2 Changelog for a complete list of changes and enhancements. Also please read the known issues before installing this beta release.

Important Note: Please do not use this VirtualBox Beta release on production machines. A VirtualBox Beta release should be considered a bleeding-edge release meant for early evaluation and testing purposes.

Report problems or issues at the VirtualBox Beta Forum.

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Nov 22 2009, 11:39:50 PM CST Permalink Comments [2]

20091117 Tuesday November 17, 2009
VirtualBox 3.0.12 is now available
VirtualBox 3.0.12 has been released for all platforms. 3.0.12 is a maintenance release.

Changes in VirtualBox 3.0.12 include For a complete list of the changes in this release, please take a look at the VirtualBox Changelog.

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Nov 17 2009, 09:26:25 AM CST Permalink Comments [0]

20091114 Saturday November 14, 2009
VirtualBox 3.1 Beta 1 now available for download
The first beta release of VirtualBox 3.1 is now available. You can download the binaries at http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/3.1.0_BETA1/

Version 3.1 will be a major update. The following major new features have been added:
A particularly nice new feature in the user interface is a red/green visual indicator on critical resource allocation controls.




These are relative to the capacity of the system and not what resources are currently free, but should prevent accidental overallocation of resources like CPU or memory.

Important: You should reinstall the guest additions after upgrading to the beta release.

If you experience problems after upgrading to the beta release (such as SMP Solaris getting upset with heavy network load) you can reinstall an older version of VirtualBox. Just remember to reinstall the guest additions after the downgrade.

If your VMs are in an Inaccessible state check the XML configuration files. In the details panel you should see something like 
Could not load the settings file 'D:
\blah\.VirtualBox\Machines\Chapterhouse (Solaris 10)\Chapterhouse (Solaris 10).xml'

Element '{http://innotek.de/VirtualBox-settings}CpuIdTree': This element is not expected.
Result Code:          VBOX_E_XML_ERROR  (0x80BB000A)
Component:            VirtualBox
Interface:            IVirtualBox {3fab53a-199b-4526-a91a-93ff62e456b8}
Using the editor of your choice, open the XML file in the error message and remove the <CpuIdTree\> tag. Save the file and hit the refresh button in the VirtualBox window and you should be able to restart your VM.

Please refer to the VirtualBox 3.1 Beta 1 Changelog for a complete list of changes and enhancements. Please do not use this VirtualBox Beta release on production machines. A VirtualBox Beta release should be considered a bleeding-edge release meant for early evaluation and testing purposes. Please read the known issues before installing this beta release.

Please use our 'VirtualBox Beta Feedback' forum at http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewforum.php?f=15 to report any problems with the Beta.

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Nov 14 2009, 01:11:06 PM CST Permalink Comments [0]

20091030 Friday October 30, 2009
VirtualBox 3.0.10 is now available
VirtualBox 3.0.10 has been released for all platforms. 3.0.10 is a maintenance release and contains quite a few performance and stability improvements. 

# psrinfo -v
Status of virtual processor 0 as of: 10/30/2009 14:33:18
  on-line since 10/30/2009 08:18:50.
  The i386 processor operates at 2613 MHz,
	and has an i387 compatible floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 1 as of: 10/30/2009 14:33:18
  on-line since 10/30/2009 08:18:52.
  The i386 processor operates at 2613 MHz,
	and has an i387 compatible floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 2 as of: 10/30/2009 14:33:18
  on-line since 10/30/2009 08:18:52.
  The i386 processor operates at 2613 MHz,
	and has an i387 compatible floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 3 as of: 10/30/2009 14:33:18
  on-line since 10/30/2009 08:18:52.
  The i386 processor operates at 2613 MHz,
	and has an i387 compatible floating point processor.


As you can see my 4 CPU Solaris guest is running just fine. I was encouraged after 3.0.8 but under heavy network loads the SMP guest would lock up. I've been playing youtube videos while doing live upgrades for the last couple of hours and everything seems to be running as expected.

Changes in VirtualBox 3.0.10 include If you are running on a Solaris or OpenSolaris host you should reboot your systems after reloading the kernel driver as soon as it is convenient. This is a temporary situation that is expected to be resolved soon.

For a complete list of the changes in this release, please take a look at the VirtualBox Changelog.

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Oct 30 2009, 02:45:50 PM CDT Permalink Comments [0]

20091021 Wednesday October 21, 2009
Pun for the day: Truculent

Oct 21 2009, 08:33:05 AM CDT Permalink Comments [0]

20091020 Tuesday October 20, 2009
Pun for the day: Biathlon

Oct 20 2009, 11:10:35 PM CDT Permalink Comments [0]

20091019 Monday October 19, 2009
Pun for the day: Iconoclast

Oct 19 2009, 11:17:12 AM CDT Permalink Comments [0]

20091017 Saturday October 17, 2009
Pun for the day: Latency

Oct 17 2009, 10:46:45 PM CDT Permalink Comments [0]

20091016 Friday October 16, 2009
Pun for the day: IO Channel

Oct 16 2009, 10:27:22 AM CDT Permalink Comments [0]

20091015 Thursday October 15, 2009
Pun for the day: Hypervisor

Oct 15 2009, 04:54:04 PM CDT Permalink Comments [0]