Tuesday April 22, 2008

On arriving back from my well earned holiday (yes I had a very relaxing time thank you) I see that not only is there a nice new Solaris release on our server but the server itself is no longer a power hungry SunFire box but an Eco friendly Niagra based T5220 and today is Earth Day. It's almost like we planned it!

: enoexec.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS enoexec 5.11 snv_87 sun4v sparc SUNW,SPARC-Enterprise-T5220
: enoexec.eu FSS 2 $; 

We have actually been here before with respect to the Huron server as we tried one out for a few weeks around the time of build 83. I left the blogging of it to a colleague as it was not 100% successful or was 100% successful depending on your point of view. The system would crash regularly and finally a bug (which unfortunately is not published as it contains the way to panic an un-patched system running nevada so is marked as a “security” issue. I think this is a bit harsh) was filed and rapidly fixed. So if you are using a system to shake out bugs, which is why I use a nevada Sun Ray server at work, then this was 100% successful.

The performance of the system is well good enough. That is to say the only clue I had that something was “up” was that the performance meter I run, I know I should not but I do, get over it, looks “inverted”. We are not making a dent on the threads.

Monday March 03, 2008

Always nice to “arrive” at work and find your server running a shiny new build:

: enoexec.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS enoexec 5.11 snv_84 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire
: enoexec.eu FSS 2 $; 

Even as I type this I noticed that there are still issues in the world of gnome with gnome-panel dumping core:

Mar  3 08:27:16 enoexec genunix: [ID 603404 kern.notice] NOTICE: core_log: gnome-panel[11701] core dumped: /var/cores/usr/bin/gnome-panel.global.14442
: enoexec.eu FSS 7 $; pstack core-enoexec-gnome-panel.11701
core 'core-enoexec-gnome-panel.11701' of 11701:	gnome-panel --sm-config-prefix /gnome-panel-GZaWDp/ --sm-client-id 118
 00000000 ???????? (847f98, 3, a87e20, 0, a48cd8, 0)
 bb7a2ac4 invoke_notifies (a7a0c0, 3, 8ce808, 0, 148a0, bb7b7300) + 68
 bb7a2b50 emit_events_in_idle (a40f18, bb7b7ac0, bb7b7300, 7c0, 14814, 400) + 68
 c3dc0010 g_main_dispatch (127f00, 0, 0, 0, c3e63eb4, 127f08) + 1e4
 c3dc16b8 g_main_context_dispatch (1, 1, c3e65ea4, 2, c3e65ea8, 127f00) + c8
 c3dc1bd8 g_main_context_iterate (1, 1, 1, 127f00, 1f, 1f) + 49c
 c3dc24dc g_main_loop_run (5a9390, 0, 0, f9fc8, 5a9398, 1) + 3e4
 c05a6b34 gtk_main (0, 0, 0, be5c, c07f1538, 5a9390) + d8
 00037e70 main     (7, 163c58, 80000, 803e0, 803f8, 8040c) + 190
 00033740 _start   (0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0) + 108
: enoexec.eu FSS 8 $; 

Time to find or file a bug...found it is 6666675. Given that number it would be rude not to check out bug 6666666, alas it turns out to be an “internal” bug and not surprisingly has no special significance. It should have been the uber bug of doom bwahahahahah.

Monday January 28, 2008

After a short delay (things are very busy at the moment) build 81 has hit the Sun Ray server:

: enoexec.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS enoexec 5.11 snv_81 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire
: enoexec.eu FSS 2 $; 

All seems well so far. Again StarOffice decided to take me through the, “Do you agree with the T&C's and have you Registered dialogue” which is irritating that it can't remember but not critical.

Monday December 10, 2007

Another fortnight another build hits our Sun Ray server:

: estale.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS estale 5.11 snv_79 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire
: estale.eu FSS 2 $; 

All seems well so far.

Wednesday October 31, 2007

It is coming to something that I was too busy to check to see if build 76 had been installed on our Sun Ray server yesterday. Lets face it it is not hard to type “ssh estale uname”. Anyway it is here now:

: estale.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS estale 5.11 snv_76 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire
: estale.eu FSS 2 $;

Had I done so I could have had 24 hours less of the deskbar applet being missing, as it was in build 75. Although I'm not sure I like the new one as it seems to have become more of a stand alone window, which displays at the top left hand side of my screen when I have the applet on the bottom right.

Wednesday October 17, 2007

Build 75 is now installed on enoexec one of our SPARC servers which means I can now use the latest and greatest build and not run thunderbird remotely. The reason I had to run a remote thunderbird when using x86 is due to thunderbird keeping it's extensions in your home directory but without taking into account the architecture of the extenstion. IE they all go in ~/.thunderbird/*.default/extensions. If you install an extension for SPARC that clearly won't work on x86 and visa versa. I filed bug 6613224 for this.

Anyway I am now back on a SPARC system.

: enoexec.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS enoexec 5.11 snv_75 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire
: enoexec.eu FSS 2 $;

The only problem so far is that pidgin is unable to join any rooms that have the auto-join property set. Curiously this bug was seen when pdigin was called gaim but went away when it was renamed. Again a bug has been filed: 6617918 (it is not in bugs.opensolaris.org at the time of writing but should turn up there soon)

Thursday October 04, 2007

I've not been in a Sun Office or on my Sun Ray at home for a few days due to travel. However I am now in Menlo Park for a day and so am back with the Sun Ray only to find the server has been upgraded to build 74:

: eagain.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS eagain 5.11 snv_74 i86pc i386 i86pc
: eagain.eu FSS 2 $; 

All seems to be well; as it was on my laptop.

Monday September 24, 2007

The Lab engineer who used to upgrade our Sun Rays moved onto pastures new and so there has been a slight glitch in the upgrades for a few weeks. Thankfully the pastures new are actually within Sun and in the same lab team but in a different country, well continent actually, however that allows him to continue doing the upgrades and now he is back on line I can say:

Good morning build 73:

: estale.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS estale 5.11 snv_73 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire
: estale.eu FSS 2 $; 

One thing I noticed on my home system was that I did not seem to be getting the latest developer tools installed and the same appears to be true here. Live upgrade is correctly upgrading Solaris but not upgrading the developer tools.

On my home system I ran:

/tank/fs/downloads/nv/73/os/DeveloperTools/install_devtools.sh

Now I have all the tools installed. Need to get the same done in in my “finish” script before the Boot Environment is live.

Monday August 20, 2007

Arriving back in the office, well initially in my home office, our Sun Ray server is now running build 71:

: enoexec.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS enoexec 5.11 snv_71 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire
: enoexec.eu FSS 2 $; 

All seems to be well. While I don't think it turned up in this release we now have the Off the Record plugin for pidgin and pidgin also works with Jabber/XMPP out of the box. Pidgin is still missing the gaim-remote/purple-remote (bug 6578100) which messes with my script for setting my status using the utaction on my Sun Ray so one step forward and one step back for pidgin.

Monday July 23, 2007

Build 68 has hit our Sun Ray server last week. Which was good news and bad news. The good news is that this gets us the new “pidgin” IM client. The bad news is that the build of pidgin does not contain the XMPP (aka jabber) plugins which renders it as much use as a chocolate Tea pot. The bug id is: 6577264. Not fixed in build 69.

Luckily it took seconds for some bright spark to have a version built from source. The config options are “CC=cc -disable-perl --disable-tcl –prefix=/blah”. Disabling perl is obviously goodness, but TCL is a pity but with it it just dumps core. Alas this version is not aware of the gnome-keyring.

Apart from that the build is good.

: estale.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a

SunOS estale 5.11 snv_68 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire

: estale.eu FSS 2 $; 
 

Update: For those who are close to GMP I have built both SPARC and x86 copies of pidgin for Nevada. They can be found here ~cg13442/pidgin/$(uname -p)/bin

Monday June 25, 2007

Build 67 of nevada to play with this morning.

: enoexec.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS enoexec 5.11 snv_67 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire
: enoexec.eu FSS 2 $; 

One slight issue is the gnome terminal keeps having bits of font left on it. Turns out to be bug 6566332¹. Apart from that all is well.

Tuesday June 12, 2007

Here is a change. The lab folks have added a third system to the group of Sun Ray servers we use and it is an AMD based system. So now the rolling upgrades will be every six weeks and I get to spend four weeks on SPARC and two weeks on AMD. Should flush out any problems with moving a home directory between architectures pretty quickly:

: eagain.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS eagain 5.11 snv_66 i86pc i386 i86pc
: eagain.eu FSS 2 $; 

Friday June 08, 2007

I've been a bit remiss with the Good Morning Build updates over the last few weeks. Not because the updates are not happening but because there are only so many hours in the day.

: estale.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS estale 5.11 snv_65 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire
: estale.eu FSS 2 $; 

Build 65 has been on the server for a while now, so long that build 66 is upon us. However I thought I would bother to post this as I have just noticed that the volume control on the desktop now works on Sun Ray. A small step but with every build the Solaris Desktop gets better and better.

Thursday April 12, 2007

This post is late due to having to catch up from my holiday.

On arriving back build 61 had hit the Sun Ray server:

: estale.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS estale 5.11 snv_61 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire
: estale.eu FSS 2 $; 

All is working fine.

tags: solaris opensolaris nevada good morning build

Monday March 12, 2007

Build 59 hit the work Sun Ray server today, which means it has caught up with my home server and laptops.

I have taken the momentous decision to run gnome-cleanup(1) to reset my session to factory defaults. To many things were just not working and I suspect that they are related to the cruft that had built up in the various gnome dot directories that you end up with. The immediate effect is that I can now add to the panel and items are added immediately rather than when the panel is restarted, which supports the cruft idea.

: estale.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS estale 5.11 snv_59 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire
: estale.eu FSS 2 $; 

tags: good morning build solaris opensolaris gnome

Wednesday February 21, 2007

This was not really good morning as I was introduced to the new system last night. It is not often that all the systems I use regularly are on the latest build but I am now.

: enoexec.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS enoexec 5.11 snv_58 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire Solaris
: enoexec.eu FSS 2 $; 

Tuesday February 06, 2007

New on a Sun Ray server near me, well would be if I was not at home but that is being picky. On the Sun Ray server I am using:

: estale.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS estale 5.11 snv_57 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire Solaris
: estale.eu FSS 2 $; 

Build 57. It did not have the svc:/system/hal:default running which in turn causes gnome-vfs-daemon to dump core.

The admins must have got a new module to solve Bug ID: 6519415 panic in apush_iocdata() from the development gate. Indeed they did:

: estale.eu FSS 4 $; what  /kernel/drv/sparcv9/sad 
/kernel/drv/sparcv9/sad:
        SunOS 5.11 onnv-gate:2007-02-04 October 2007
        SunOS Internal Development:  gk 2007-02-04 [onnv-gate]
: estale.eu FSS 5 $;

So far everything looks good. The updates to thunderbird are interesting.

Monday January 29, 2007

A nice gift from the keepers of my Sun Ray server on my return from Zurich. (Yes it was cool to use the Sun Ray server from the Zurich office even if the Swiss German keyboard really did my head. For those who don't know 'Z' and 'Y' are swapped, not to mention the "special" keys moving around. We really need the keyboard layout set by the user not the physical keyboard).

: enoexec.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS enoexec 5.11 snv_56 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire Solaris
: enoexec.eu FSS 2 $; 

Need to check what has changed.

Thursday December 14, 2006

Build 54 made it onto our Sun Ray server:

: enoexec.eu FSS 1 $; uname -a
SunOS enoexec 5.11 snv_54 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire Solaris
: enoexec.eu FSS 2 $;

This brings the default instance of StarOffice 8 to my work desktop which I have now added the weblogger package to. However the lack of tagging support limits the usefulness of this for me.

Tags: good morning build solaris opensolaris

Monday November 13, 2006

Build 52 hit the Sun Ray server:

: estale.eu IA 1 $; uname -a
SunOS estale 5.11 snv_52 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire
: estale.eu IA 2 $;

and all seems well.

However at home all was not well when I upgraded my home server. The laptops had been fine, except for the message about the now nonexistent pfil service failing. Disabling that service removed the irritating but harmless warning. On the server there were two issues:

1. The dhcp service was not working

2. The web server was not starting

The failed dhcp service resulted in a quick about face to build 51 as the users would not stand not having a computer. However after they had left the house and before I had real work and thanks to Casper for confirming that his dhcp server was working on build 52. It turned out to be a misconfiguration of the firewall. Exactly why this worked in build 51 is a mystery. Addling this line:

pass in quick on nge0 proto udp from any to 192.168.254.20 port = bootps keep state

to the /etc/ipf/ipf.conf file brought the dhcp server to light. This however was not before I discovered that the dhcpmgr would not start, giving this java error:

3 # /usr/sadm/admin/bin/dhcpmgr 
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Bad version number in .class file 
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method) 
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:620) 
        at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:124) 
        at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:260) 
        at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(URLClassLoader.java:56) 
        at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:195) 
        at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) 
        at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:188) 
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306) 
        at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:268) 
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:251) 
        at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(ClassLoader.java:319) 
4 # 

Which turns out to be due to the version of java that the /usr/java symbolic link points to being wrong. An upgrade bug it appears. This bug has not been filed:

CR 6492789 Created P2 java/install /usr/java link points to Java 1.5.0 instead of Java 1.6 after upgrade from snv_51 to snv_52.

The work around is simple:

# cd /usr
# rm java
# ln -s jdk/jdk1.6.0 java

The second problem of the web server not working was that apache2 had changed and so it needed the configuration files rejigging. I am now back running build 52 and it is happily serving planetcycling.org. However I am now using the more modular configuration files so if there are issues in the future updating will be simpler.

Tags: good morning build Home Server OpenSolaris