Here is a great offer from Canonical. Canonical is offering no cost support (up to 3 instances) for users evaluating Ubuntu running on serveral Sun servers including the Sun Fire CoolThreads servers (T1000 and T200) as part of the Sun's Try and Buy program. Go to http://www.ubuntu.com/support/webtocase/sun for more details.

Sun's having a sale over the next two weeks to mark it's 25th anniversary. Looks like there are some very good discounts. Hurry it ends May 7th. Sun's 25th Anniversary Sale

Here's my little guide (maybe not so little) to help with setting up TWiki on a Sun Fire T2000 running Solaris 10. I started with the Cool Stack but quickly found that I needed a few other pieces of software to get everything working properly. I also wanted LDAP support which wasn't enabled in Cool Stack. All of these software packages always have new releases, I provided version number just for reference. Please send me feedback, I'm sure some of this isn't as clear as it can be.

1. Setup Solaris 10 11/06 (or update 3, I'll cover this in a seperate entry) and install CoolTuner which will keep your Sun Fire T1000 or T2000 updated with the latest tunning parameters and patches.
2. Install the Sun Studio 11 compilers. Grab them from here. Definitely get the latest compilers, every version of Sun Studio has improvements. Make sure you also have the latest patches for the compilers too.
3. We also need a few additional pieces of software to support TWiki. The additional software pieces are:
   • rcs-5.7
   • patch-2.5.4
   • diffutils-2.8.1
   • grep-2.5.1a
   • make-3.81
   Download and untar each of the above packages and use the following commands to build. The compiler flags provide a very good level of optimization and we want the install to be placed in /usr/local. Make sure that the Sun Studio 11 compilers and /usr/local/bin are in your path first.

      CFLAGS="-xO4 -xtarget=generic" ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
      make
      make install
   

4. Install CSQamp, CSQperl packages from Cool Stack. Cool Stack installs into /usr/local.
5. I found that the CSQperl needed a number of extensions added to it. CSQperl is based on Perl 5.8.8. Here's are the key parameters need edwhen you run Configure. Use the defaults in most cases.

   Invoked as:  CFLAGS="-xO4 -xtarget=generic" ./Configure
   Use dynamic libraries
   Make libperl dynamic
   Use these flags:   -I/usr/local/include -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV
   Use this library path: /lib /usr/lib
   Use these optimization flags: -x04 -xtarget=generic
   

   Here are the perl extensions to add. I used cpan to grab and build the additional extensions, it much easier this way since it understands dependences on other extensions and will grab and build those too.

   CFLAGS="-xO4 -xtarget=generic" /usr/local/bin/cpan
   
   
     install Bundle::CPAN
        PathTools 3.24                       <==== those are the dependences
        Compress-Zlib-2.001
        Archive-Tar 1.30
        Net-Telnet 3.03
        TermReadKey 2.30
        TermReadLine-Perl 1.0302
        CPAN-WAIT 0.27
        CPAN 1.8802
        IO-Zlib 1.04
        IO-Compress-Zlib 2.001
        Compress-Raw-Zlib 2.001
   
     install libwww-perl 5.805
        URI 1.35
        HTML-Parser 3.55
   
     install Digest::SHA1 2.11
     install CGI::Session 4.20
   
     install NET::LDAP perl-ldap 0.33
        Convert-ASN1 0.20
        
     install Unicore::MapUTF8
        Unicore-MapUTF8 1.11
        Unicore-Map8 0.12
        Unicore-String 2.09
        Jcode 2.06
   

6. Next we need to build OpenLDAP, I built version 2.3.27 but there is going to be newer versions.

      export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/sfw/include"; export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/sfw/lib"; \
         export CFLAGS="-xO4 -xtarget=generic -D_AVL_H"
      ./configure --prefix=/usr/local \
         --sysconfdir=/etc/openldap \
         --with-openssl=/usr/sfw \
         --with-tls \
         --disable-slurpd \
         --disable-slapd
      make depend
      make 
      make install
   

7. Now Apache will need to be rebuild to include support for LDAP. The following is based on how CSQamp builds apache and I've added the additional options to build LDAP support with OpenLDAP.

      CFLAGS='-DSSL_EXPERIMENTAL -DSSL_ENGINE -xO4 -xtarget=generic' \
      CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include" \
      LDFLAGS="-R/usr/local/lib -R/usr/sfw/lib -L/usr/local/lib -L/usr/sfw/lib" \
      ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache2 \
      --enable-mods-shared=all \
      --enable-cache \
      --enable-mem-cache \
      --enable-ssl \
      --with-mpm=prefork \
      --enable-so \
      --enable-suexec \
      --enable-rule=SSL_EXPERIMENTAL \
      --with-ssl=/usr/sfw \
      --enable-ldap \
      --enable-auth_ldap \
      --with-ldap \
      --with-ldap-dir=/usr/local \
      --with-ldap-include=/usr/local/include \
      --with-ldap-lib=/usr/local/lib
      make   
      make install
   

8. The package libiconv, libxml, php and mysql that are included in Cool Stack are included in CSQamp, don't need to be re-compiled but if you want here are the commands:
   • libiconv 1.9.2

        CFLAGS="-xO4 -xtarget=generic" ./configure
     

   • libxml2 2.6.26

        CFLAGS="-xO4 -xtarget=generic" ./configure
     

   • mysql 32-bit which is included in CSQamp

        CXXFLAGS="-xO4 -mt"
        export CXXFLAGS
        CFLAGS="-xO4 -mt -fsimple=1 -ftrap=%none -xbuiltin=%all -xlibmil -xlibmopt \
           -xstrconst -xchip=generic" ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql_32bit \
           -localstatedir=/usr/local/mysql_32bit/data \
           --libexecdir=/usr/local/mysql_32bit/bin \
           --with-extra-charsets=complex --with-server-suffix=-standard \
           --with-archive-storage-engine --with-innodb --enable-shared --with-readline \
           --enable-thread-safe-client --enable-local-infile --with-named-z-libs=no \
           --with-big-tables --without-server
     

   • mysql 64-bit which is included in CSQmysql

        CXXFLAGS="-xO4 -noex -mt -fsimple=1 -ftrap=%none -xbuiltin=%all -xlibmil -xlibmo pt \
           -xarch=v9"
        export CXXFLAGS
        CFLAGS="-xO4 -mt -fsimple=1 -ftrap=%none -xbuiltin=%all -xlibmil -xlibmopt \
           -xstrconst -xarch=v9" ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql \
           --libexecdir=/usr/local/mysql/bin --with-extra-charsets=complex \
           --with-server-suffix=-standard --with-archive-storage-engine --with-innodb \
           --enable-shared --with-readline --enable-thread-safe-client --enable-local-infile \
           --with-named-z-libs=no --with-big-tables --without-server
     

   • php_fastcgi 5.1.4 - PHP with fastcgi enabled for Apache

        CFLAGS='-xO4 -xtarget=generic ' \
        ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/php5_fastcgi \
        --enable-memory-limit --disable-all \
        --with-libxml-dir=shared,/usr/local --enable-fastcgi --enable-spl --with-pcre-regex \
        --enable-session --enable-shmop --enable-pear --enable-sysvshm --enable-sysvmsg \
        --with-dom --enable-dom --enable-simplexml --enable-sysvsem --enable-sockets \
        --enable-spl --with-pear --enable-xml --enable-libxml --disable-ipv6 \
        --with-iconv-dir=/usr/local --with-mysql=shared,/usr/local/mysql_32bit \
        --with-mysqli=shared,/usr/local/mysql_32bit/bin/mysql_config \
        --with-openssl=shared,/usr/sfw
     

   • php 5.1.4 w/o fastcgi for standalone install

        CFLAGS='-KPIC -xO4 -xtarget=generic ' \
        ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/php5 \
        --with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs --enable-memory-limit --disable-all \
        --with-libxml-dir=shared,/usr/local --with-dom --enable-dom --enable-spl \
        --enable-simplexml --with-pcre-regex --enable-session \
        --enable-shmop --enable-pear --enable-sysvshm --enable-sysvmsg \
        --enable-sysvsem --enable-sockets --enable-spl --with-pear \
        --enable-xml --enable-libxml --disable-ipv6 \
        --with-iconv-dir=/usr/local --with-mysql=shared,/usr/local/mysql_32bit \
        --with-mysqli=shared,/usr/local/mysql_32bit/bin/mysql_config \
        --with-openssl=shared,/usr/sfw
     

   • APC 3.0.11

        /usr/local/php/bin/phpize
        CFLAGS="-xO4 -xtarget=generic" \
        /bin/php-config --enable-apc-mmap --enable-apc-sem
     
        The following line should be used for the standalone php in CSQphp package
        CFLAGS="-xO4 -xtarget=generic" \
        ./configure --enable-apc --with-php-config=/usr/local/php5_fastcgi/bin/php-config \
        --enable-apc-mmap --enable-apc-sem
     

   • mod_perl 2.0.2

        CFLAGS="-xO4 -xtarget=generic" \
        perl Makefile.PL MP_APXS=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs --with-mysql
     

   • jakarta-tomcat-connectors-1.2.15

        CFLAGS="-xO4 -xtarget=generic" \
        ./configure --with-apxs=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs \
        --with-java-home=/usr/java --prefix=/usr/local/jk12
     

9. Apache adds There are lots of parameters that can be placed into the httpd.conf file and I will not go through them all since it really depends on your specific setup. Here are a few essential ones.

      Add LoadModules for mod_perl and mod_ldap
         LoadModule perl_module modules/mod_perl.so
         LoadModule ldap_module modules/mod_ldap.so
         LoadModule auth_ldap_module modules/mod_auth_ldap.so
   
      Add parameters for mod_ldap
         LDAPSharedCacheSize 200000
         LDAPCacheEntries 1024
         LDAPCacheTTL 600
         LDAPOpCacheEntries 1024
         LDAPOpCacheTTL 600
   
      Add authentication for the twiki/bin directory
         Directory  "{path to twiki install}/twiki/bin/">
         AllowOverride All
         Allow From All
         Options  ExecCGI
         SetHandler cgi-script
                
         AuthType                 Basic
         AuthName                 "LDAP Login"
         AuthLDAPURL ldap://{server}:389/ou=people,dc=sun,dc=com?uid
         < / Directory>
   

10. TWiki can be installed into the docroot root and here are a few things to add.

       edit all files in /bin to use /usr/local/bin/perl
       add lib/LocalSite.cfg
       add bin/LocalLib.cfg
       add bin/.htaccess
       add twiki/tools/mod_perl_starutp.pl from http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/ModPerlUnix
       when runnin configure for TWiki make sure to everything is clean, no error or warnings.
    
    Three essential plugins are:
       LdapContrb
       LdapNgPlugin
       NewUserPlugin
    
    Some other additional TWiki plugins I've found useful and the perl extensions that will be needed.
       ActionTrackerPlugin
          Time::ParseDate 
             Time-modules-2006.0814
       CalendarPlugin
          Date::Calc
             Date-Calc-5.4
             Bit::Vector
                Bit-Vector-6.4
             Carp::Clan
                Carp-Clan-5.8
          HTML::CalendarMonthSimple
              HTML-CalendarMonthSimple-1.25
       EditInTablePlugin
       ImageGalleryPlugin
       LinkOptionsPlugin
       RedirectPlugin
    

I'm just back from a two week vacation and catching up on things. Happy New Year!! 2007 should be an exciting year, there are many innovations and products to look forward to. Some that have my interest are:

• OpenSPARC - The community is forming and growing. I expected to see more innovation occurring and people using OpenSPARC T1 in ways we haven't anticipated. Academic interesting is very strong and we should see courses at various Universities using OpenSPARC T1 in their teaching materials.
• Multi-Core CPUS - Multi-Core systems are really coming into the mainstream with AMD and Intel focused on both dual-core and quad-core processors. Sun will be announcing Niagara 2 based systems this year. Very exiting and these products will continue pushing the CMT (chip multi threading) architecture to higher levels of performance and integration. Sun APL systems will be introduced with multi-core/multi-threaded CPUs. IBM will introduce Power6.
• Java - With Java now licensed under GPLv2, what innovation we will see there?
• Virtualization - Driving the push for virtualization is cost reduction through server consolidation, dynamic provisioning, and disaster recovery. Multi-core CPUs bring a lot of processing power and consolidation is one way to effectively use it.
• Gaming - There will be a new set of games that will really start to take advantage of multi-core cpus and with dual HD screens and high quality audio, games will be more immersive with more realistic physic modeling. Thats just for PC based games. On the console side, with PlayStation3, Nitendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360 released, there will be a three way battle to see which console will have the best suite of games.

Should be a great year and to start us out, Sun has just announced new enhanced Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 systems. The major enhancements being faster CPUs (1.4 Ghz) and 64GB memory configuration. Look here.

EETimes and ZDNet published articles, AMD gains, Intel slumps in latest supercomputer rankings and AMD gains, Intel fights back on supercomputer list. Which talks about the processors that are use in the Top500 Supercomputers.

AMD chips were used in 113 supercomputers, or 22 percent of those on the latest list, up from just 11 percent (or 81) a year ago ago. Intel CPUs took their biggest decline ever, slumping from a high of use in 333 systems or a year ago to 261 or 52 percent of systems on the current list. Power appeared in 93 systems, or 18.6 percent of the computers, up from 73 systems or 14.6 percent one year ago. Intel's Itanium chip family slipped from 37 to 35.

Sun Microsystems has 10 systems on the list all which use AMD's Opteron. The three Sparc systems are Fujistu models using Sun's Sparc64 processor. Hopefully in the future we'll see SPARC climb back onto the list. There are some exciting SPARC processors under development.

I forgot about this video that was made for the launch of the Sun Fire T2000.
Just saw it again on YouTube and it's funny.

Today is the day that Java Source is available under the GPL v2 license. A great day for developers worldwide. Freedom to innovate with Java and Java related technologies. Much more to read here.

See what Richard Stallman and others have to say. Amazing reactions. Download the code: OpenJDK, Mobile & Embedded, and the GlassFish community.

[ T: Java ]

Came across this very cool interactive search site. Ms. Dewey is a new, interactive, Flash based search engine. To assist you in your search, the website is hosted by smoking hot model/actress/vocalist, Janina Gavankar. See what she and the site are capable of by typing into the search field, or just leave it blank and watch. It's fun just watchng what she does.

Give Ms. Dewey a try. She has a lot of attitude. Ms. Dewey is written by the firm, EVB.

Here's the Digg entry that has some suggestions for search terms.

I think this is a very cool idea. This video conveys the message very well. One of the initial configurations can hold up to 250 Sun Fire T1000, thats a lot of computing power. 250 times 8 cores = 2000 cores or 8000 threads. More Details.....

Intel's big gag at IDF made during Pat Gelsinger's presentation was demonstrating an Itanium-based Hitachi blade server system running Sun Microsystems' Solaris OS, calling it the "highest performing SPARC machine in the industry." This demo was done with the help of Transitive, a virtualization vendor whose Quick-Transit technology allows applications that have been compiled for one operating system and processor to run on servers that use a different processor and operating system.

Charles King has penned an article, Intel's Itanium -- time to reconsider?, which highlights several points which I agree with.

• Itanium sales are still anemic when compared against IBM POWER and Sun UltraSPARC-based servers
• ...despite positive news and good vibes, Montecito's arrival obscured a singular issue: Itanium's failure to deliver on promises originally proposed by Intel and its primary IA-64 partner HP.
• Intel continues to press Itanium's potential as a replacement/migration solution for competing UNIX platforms, HP is the only vendor that is likely to gain significantly from that position.
• Transitive's Solaris-to-Itanium migration demo at IDF was technically interesting, we do not believe the company's solutions will drive significant revenues toward Itanium vendors or customers away from Sun and IBM's UNIX solutions

We'll see what the future holds.........but I doubt that there will be many (if any) customers running Solaris/SPARC apps on Itanium.

Sun has announced the appointees to the OpenSPARC Community Advisory Board (CAB). The board will be comprised of five charter members, two from Sun and three outside the company. The members are:

• Nathan Brookwood, Analyst, Insight64
• Professor Jose Renau, University of California, Santa Cruz
• Robert Ober, Fellow, CTO office, LSI Logic<
• David Weaver, UltraSPARC Architect, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
• Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
  

This is a very exciting milestone in the growth of the OpenSPARC community. This board has a diverse membership to hopefully capture the breath of the community. The board will solicit input from the OpenSPARC community which it will use to help shape the evolution of the initiative. The community's initial charter is available.

[ T: OpenSPARC ]

This morning I saw this article, Itanium Consortium Looks to Ease SPARC/Solaris Migration. 'The Itanium Solutions Alliance, will take advantage of Transitive's QuickTransit technology, which enables applications written for Sun Microsystems' RISC-based platform to run on the Itanium architecture without having to make source code or binary changes.'

Sounds a bit strange to me, several questions run thru my mind:

• What is the market for migrating applications off of Solaris/SPARC onto Linux/Itanium?
  • Transitive Emulator Ports Sparc/Solaris Apps to Linux on Xeon, Itanium
    I guess one big customer is all it takes or some special funding:
    'Transitive, a startup that has created a sophisticated emulator for running software for one computer architecture on other architectures, got backing from Intel, the tongues started wagging that Intel had given Transitive money to create a version of its emulator to support the porting of Solaris/Sparc applications to Intel Xeon and Itanium processors, possibly running the Linux operating system. And, indeed, this has come to pass.'
  • Not very many Itanium sells, Itanium: A cautionary tale
• What's the performance and reliability of Transitive's software?
  
  • I don't understand all the technical details of the solution, but you have to wonder about the performance of an emulation solution. If something does go wrong, which ISV will provide support for their software in this type of setup?
  • Here are a couple of datapoints that show UltraSPARC IV+ outperforms Itanium2, SPECjbb2005 and SAP.
• How many vendors are building Itanium based systems?
  • Not many, the only tier-1 vendor is HP, Itanium: A cautionary tale
  • I guess Intel needs to help build boxes (since not many others are), Intel to sell new Itanium servers
• What's Intel's roadmap into the future for Itanium?
  • Delays, delays, delays, ... Intel pushes back Itanium chips, revamps Xeon
  • Finally Itanium 2 shows up, Turning a corner with the new Itanium

And there are so many more questions. I guess the, Itanium Solutions Alliance, would want you to believe they are the right ISA. I hope our Solaris/SPARC customers know better.

Here's a funny marketing stunt, this time by AMD. Intel is holding their Fall Developer Forum this week starting Tuesday, September 26. So AMD had this printed up and sent out to journalists, a special edition of a popular tutorial series, "Multicore Processing for Dummies". The 32-page booklet, published by Wiley, is supposely also accompanied by a note that states:

"We aren't attending this year's IDF, but were hoping you could pass something on to Intel for us. Included is a little something that we think Intel and its customers should find especially useful."

And you can get your copy here if you are one of the first 2000: http://enterpriseevent.amd.com/amd_06e6M

Read the OpenSPARC Community Threads September 2006 for an update on what is happening in the OpenSPARC community.

[ T: OpenSPARC ]

Here's another innovation from Sun, the Sun Fire X4500 server. It's capable of providing 24TB of storage in a 4 rack-unit server.

Imagine you had the Sun Fire X4500 server. How would you use the world's first hybrid data server to innovate? What would you streamline? What equipment could you finally recycle? Now's your chance to share your plans. Watch Jonathan below. As he says, if we like your video the best, you will win a Thumper of your own!



Can you believe Jonathan on a video at youtube.com? Now that's cool! More videos....
Find out how to enter the contest.