Normally we download Sun JDK installation binaries and install them. Then we configure the PATH environment variable to point to our JDK installation. But some times there will be conflicts between the native gcj and Sun JDK. So it is always better to install Sun JDK through debian repositories.
But unfortunately, the Debian repositories have Sun JDK in non-free repositories and do not always have the latest JDK.
So this is how we can install the latest JDK natively on Debian.Steps to be followed:
1. We have to download the JDK or JRE binaries (a .bin file) appropriate for our architecture.
2. Then we have to create a .deb package from the Sun JDK binaries we have downloaded
*Requirements:
a.Install java-package which will help us to convert the Sun JDK .bin file to a .deb file installable on Debian.
b. Install fakeroot.
3. Then do as non-root user,
fakeroot make-jpkg <Sun JDK binary filename>
If there is an error like 'Plugins not found' or similar errors, it means that the version of the Sun JDK you are trying to install may not be supported by 'java-package'. Fortunately, there is a work-around for this:
Edit usr/share/java-package/sun-j2sdk.sh like this:
Add the following to that file:
"<Your Sun JDK/JRE bin file name") # SUPPORTED
j2se_version=1.6.0+update<version>${revision}
j2se_expected_min_size=130
found=true
;;
at the end of the list of similar directives for various versions of JDK/JRE and save the file.
Now repeat step 3 and it will not give the 'Plugins not found error' and a .deb package will be created with some warnings which you can ignore safely.
4. Then install the .deb file as a root user by the command:
dpkg -i <generated .deb file name>
5. After the JDK is installed, we have to configure the installed Sun JDK as the default JDK. So we use the following commands:
update-alternatives --config java
This command will show a list of Java installations available (including gcj) and prompt for a choice.
Choose the choice which corresponds to your Sun JDK installation. In my case it was something like this:
/usr/lib/j2sdk1.6-sun/bin/java
Now your Sun JDK installation will be the default JDK. :-)
.
<commands>
guruprasad@opensolaris-2008.05$ BUILD =`uname -v | sed -e "s/snv //" -e "s/[a-z]//"`
guruprasad@opensolaris-2008.05$ pfexec pkg refresh
guruprasad@opensolaris-2008.05$ pfexec install entire@0.5.11-0.${BUILD}
guruprasad@opensolaris-2008.05$ pfexec install SUNWipkg@0.5.11-0.${BUILD}
guruprasad@opensolaris-2008.05$ pfexec pkg install SUNWinstall-libs
guruprasad@opensolaris-2008.05$ pfexec pkg image-update
</commands>
This is how we can upgrade from OpenSolaris 2008.05 to OpenSolaris 2008.11 - so says the official OpenSolaris site. Since the release of 2008.11, I have been wanting to install it on my notebook and start using it, but I didn't have much time to do it. At last, today I decided to do the upgrade and not a fresh install because I would have to install all the software packages again.
All the above commands worked fine and pkg image-update showed that
it had to download some 1300 odd MB for the upgrade and the upgrade
started. After a couple of hours, when the upgrade was almost over at
about 99%, the upgrade failed as the disk was full. 
. So I, tried to
free some space and proceed with the upgrade. But then I realized that
even after freeing some space, I will have more or less no space left.
As if to endorse my thought, the OS promptly froze and hung. So I
decided to overwrite the existing installation with the brand new
2008.11 release.After burning the 2008.11 iso onto a CD, I booted into
the Live Session and started the installation which was so simple. When
the installation was happening, I wanted to try out some things.
My Intel PRO Wireless 3945 ABG adapter worked out of the box as in 2008.05 and it in fact got connected to the available wireless network in a flash without any problems unlike in the previous version where I had some issues with nwamd. I was happy about this and the Gnome Panel applet for the interfaces was nice.And the next surprise was Firefox and there was the latest Firefox 3.0.4 which is a great thing compared to 2008.05 which had 2.0.0.12 if I remember right. And ofcourse as usual drivers for my Nvidia GeForce 8600 M GS card was installed and Compiz-fusion worked out of the box.
I then ran the Device Driver utility and the Audio driver and the ACPI driver which were missing in the previous release were there and working fine and this meant that I had zero driver issues which is really really great.
Also in the previous release the Package Manager was so weak and feeble that it got grayed out every few seconds and it was impossible to use it at all. But this time the package manager works great.
So next, I wanted to install softwares and promptly installed amp-dev, sunstudio,HPC tools and etc. When I wanted to install the divine VLC player, my thoughts immediately turned to LifeWithSolaris repository. But when I added the repository and tried to install softwares I got errors. So I visited that site and found out the IPS repository has temporarily been disabled due to some copyright and licensing issues. I felt like a balloon pricked by a needle and was utterly disappointed. I then added the Blastwave Repository and refreshed the package list and had a lot of my favorite packages showing up in the package list. But unfortunately, when I tried to install any package from Blastwave, all I repeatedly got was HTTP 405 error, probably due to a problem with repository. I really felt dejected and what lifted my spirit was the presence of my favorite Emacs Editor(a lot lot more than an Editor too!), which was missing in the official IPS repository of 2008.05, in the official IPS repository and immediately I installed it.
In the war of editors, my loyalty is definitely to Emacs, which is
one of the finest piece of software ever written. So to be able to
install Emacs and use it in OpenSolaris was really really satisfying. I
hate having to use GEdit! Then I tried to build VLC from source and
gave up some distance into it. When a BeOS and Syllable have their
pre-built VLC binaries, it is a pity that we still have to build VLC from source on OpenSolaris. LifeWithSolaris was a respite but it didn't last too long.
And one more thing that took the sheen off, was the highly limited nature of the repository and the inability to easily save, reuse and redistribute the packages we download and install. GNU/Linux distros are light years better in this aspect. This is the reason which makes me favor a Ubuntu or a Debian as my primary OS and not OpenSolaris. With further development and a larger community participation over a period of time, this situation may change and we may have great, universal repositories. This must compulsorily happen or else OpenSolaris can never come out of Solaris shadow and grow,spread. It will end up into Solaris stream soon. So I sincerely hope and pray for great progress in OpenSolaris so that it escapes the mentioned ignominy. Issues with multimedia and codecs and a limited repository is the biggest obstacle to OpenSolaris in entering the Desktop environment and growing further. Any normal user will not use a OpenSolaris for DTrace or ZFS when he cannot listen to songs and watch movies in OpenSolaris.
I sincerely hope that people in-charge of OpenSolaris hear this and act accordingly to make OpenSolaris a lot lot better.
Thats it for now, Ciao.
The Sun Club sessions that had been planned had to be put into hibernation for about two months as there were exams during that period.So the first thing I did after the college opened for a new semester was to plan for a session and organize it. I wanted to have a session introducing people to OSUM, Sun Academic Initiative (SAI), Certifications and of course, Code for Freedom contest.
So on 3rd December, we had a two-hour session at our college auditorium with a 250-odd audience. I talked about OSUM, SAI and the Code for Freedom contest. My friends - Anugraha, Jayalakshmi, Venkatachalam and Karthik talked on NetBeans IDE, Sun Studio and OpenSolaris in connection with the Code for Freedom contest.
We distributed the CDs and DVDs of NetBeans and OpenSolaris to the audience so that they can try them out and use it. A demo of the OSUM site and its featureset was shown and the benefits students wil get out of being a part of OSUM was emphasised. With my college being a slow starter in the OSUM member count, things can only get better from hereon.
The photos taken during the session are available at -http://picasaweb.google.co.in/atomhouse/SunMeetAtKS# and http://picasaweb.google.com/lgp171188
We have planned to conduct more demos, hands-on sessions and contests in the near future. I am very happy to be a part of this Free Open Source Software movement and I am trying my best to help it.
Its almost 3 months into my term as the Sun Campus Ambassador of my college. Though i have great plans, i could not put much into implementation due to a lot of issues I had to face. After I returned to my college after Induction training at Bangalore, about 10 working days were lost as we had an unexpected holiday during the last week of August. This caused a cramped and tight schedule for the remaining time and everyone was very busy. With the last working day scheduled at the end of third week of September, I virtually had about a month's time to do some useful activities. I was unable to arrange sessions as the college closed after the last working day. In the available time, I couldn't schedule much of events as I couldn't catch even a few of the busy people in my college.
Still I was able to do some useful things. I had an informal meet with the Sun club members and had a long discussion on what kind of activities we can have in the year. I also conducted a small-scale intro session with not much people on September 3,2008 - the day of Ganesh Chathurthi. During that session, I talked about the CA program, SAI, proposed activities of the Sun club and how students could benefit. I also introduced various Sun technologies. Jayalakshmi, my friend and classmate, gave a short talk on "Free Open Source Software" and Anugraha handled a NetBeans intro/demo session. Then myself and G.R. Karthik introduced the audience to OpenSolaris.
To keep the audience involved and cheered up, we screened the legendary "Big Buck Bunny" movie and had them in splits. We also had a demo of Compiz fusion on OpenSolaris and had a few dropping jaws
In another session, I planned for a small install-fest of Free Open Source Software OSes - OpenSolaris 2008.05, Ubuntu Hardy Heron, Fedora 9 and Debian etch. We had a reasonable turnout and I happily demoed the installation on bare metal and also on Virtual Box. I enrolled a lot of people on the Sun club mailing list during this meet. The audience were clearly impressed and wanted to have more such sessions.
My biggest achievement till now is conducting the Software Freedom Day celebrations for the fifth consecutive year at my college. More about it on another post on this blog http://blogs.sun.com/guruprasad/entry/software_freedom_day_tce_for.
With the Code for Freedom contest for this year announced, I am all geared uo to participate in it and do a good contribution. Of course, my role as a campus ambassador would be to introduce a lot of people to this great contest and motivate, help them participate.
So, as soon as my college reopens on November 17, 2008 (My birthday ) for the next semester, I intend to go full throttle with my activities and do a great job as a CA. I have planned to hold full-day sessions that will be enlightening to the audience and give OSUM a big kick to get it up and running. I want people to know about SAI and make use of it to get certified. There are great dreams and I want to make them a reality. Looking ahead for the great time ahead!
My Picasa Web album is at http://picasaweb.google.com/lgp171188
All these days, I was believing that the perfect Gmail was the be-all and end all of email. But Gmail gave me a rude shock proving me wrong, with its own irritating bug set. I am subscribed to a lot of mailing lists and I send posts to them often. For the past few months I was finding that my messages to the list weren't getting delivered to me after I send them. I double-checked my mailing list settings and found that they were perfectly okay. Sometimes, my mails got delivered late I thought.
After some researching and help from a few expert friends, I found out that once I send a mail to a mailing list, Gmail keeps a copy of the sent mail. When the mailing list bounces my post back to me, Gmail considers it to be a duplicate of the existing email and simply discards it. Later when someone else replies to the thread, my sent mail gets tagged on to the conversation and gets displayed in the unread mail. But my mail sent to me from the list gets discarded.
It is so irritating when Gmail decides to discard MY EMAIL without my knowledge and I don't like it a bit when Gmail decides what to keep in my inbox.
I am not the only one who experienced this bug there are many crying out, but Gmail doesn't seem to listen. If such irritating issues continue, I wouldn't mind dumping my Gmail account for an account from a better email service provider.
This is my special Sun blog, but I have a blog which has been in existence before this one. So I also blog at http://themidnightsun.wordpress.com
I will continue to blog in parallel on both blogs and try as much as I can to keep them in sync. So thanks to Sun Microsystems for helping me increase my web presence.
I was having issues connecting to online repositories of Ubuntu and OpenSolaris as I was connect to a network which was behind a proxy server. Thanks to Avinash Joshi http://blogs.sun.com/avinashjoshi/entry/using_apt_get_behind_a I was able to setup apt on Ubuntu to contact and install packages from the Ubuntu repository from behind the proxy. I was trying to find a similar solution to OpenSolaris too when Ashwin Bhatt, the highly helpful and active Tech-lead, helped me with the idea that a simple export of a 'http_proxy' variable with the proxy server and port values i it would do the trick. It indeed worked for me and I could install all the essential things on my OpenSolaris installation. So I downloaded and installed VLC player from Life with Solaris IPS repository.
I had installed audio drivers on OpenSolaris (courtesy Ashwin Bhatt). So when I installed VLC player, AMP stack and stuff, there was no need for me anymore to use M$ Windoze anymore as I have cool Ubuntu Hardy Heron and OpenSolaris 2008.05!
I had brought 'Jaane to ya jaane na' (a long time due), on my usb stick from my friend. And it became my first movie on OpenSolaris.
Movies are basically for 3 hours of total entertainment even though there might be gaping holes in the logic, and JTYJN was one such movie. It is a good enough debut for Imran Khan who manages to look handsome and the gorgeous Genelia D'Souza continuing her mannerisms from 'Bommarilu' and 'Santhosh Subramaniam'. I was really happy watching the movie on OpenSolaris and my friends, most of whom where thinking OpenSolaris was for geeks and it must be so complex and user-unfriendly were left dumbfounded.
Why 'Rats and Meow' in the title? The nicknames with which Imran Khan and Genelia call each other in the movies are Miaow (Genelia) and Rats(Imran Khan)! For more details watch the movie itself.
P.S. Imran and Genelia seem to have a nice chemistry and this post is not much about the movie JTYJN
OpenSolaris can do anything any other OS can do and can do much more....
I had planned to conduct a stall on OpenSolaris for FStival 08 with a junior and a peer. Though I had OpenSolaris 2008.05 installed on my HPdv9704 notebook, I had hardly used OpenSolaris at all maybe except for surfing. The night before FStival I had dive deep into it unless I wanted to embarass myself the next day.
I also had prepare some charts for my stall and on free software. So I had called a few juniors to my room to draw charts with me and we started drawing. Once we started drawing, we were probably so immersed in it that we lost track of time and it was beyond midnight when we completed the work. Even that spark of realisation was triggered by my peer who called me to say that she wanted to excuse herself from doing the stall as she hadn't done any sort of preparation.
I realized that it was too late to prepare it was even more late to pull out. So I had to push her to start preparing with some sort of confidence and helped her with her problems.
It was almost 1 AM when I booted into OpenSolaris with my junior by my side and we started going throught the OpenSolaris Documentation so as to get an idea about various features of OpenSolaris. Though I was kind of familiar with ZFS, Zones, DTrace and etc., I had never worked on them before.
So we started learning about the concepts of ZFS and tried doing the examples given in the example. We made some silly mistakes and hence couldn't get proper results. Luckily for us Angad Singh, the highly helpful Techlead was online and he helped us with creating a filesystem on the rpool. He also helped us with the disk labeling scheme followed in OpenSolaris.
We then progressed through a lot of operations in ZFS and started trying out ZFS snapshots. I had read in theory that ZFS snapshots don't consume any memory, but once the files involved in the snapshot are changed the snapshot will start occupying space as it still has to refer the old state of files. So the old files will be stored and cause the snapshot to take up some space.
When we changed a file after taking a snapshot and the snapshot occupied some space, we couldn't help shouting out in joy! ZFS is really amazing and awesome. So myself and the passionate junior continued on with some more experimenting.
Then we tried out a few things in the zones and then proceeded to have some idea about DTrace which my peer was asked to prepare. OpenSolaris continued to amaze us all through the night and we were tempted to go on and on learning, trying out new things and experimenting. But we had to stop at 3 AM as we needed some sleep unless we wanted to sleep in our stall.
So that night was an amazingly unforgettable and path-breaking one in my life. OpenSolaris rocks!
Ever since SFI started celebrating Software Freedom day every year in 2004, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, has been celebrating it as FStival (Free Software festival). This is the fifth straight year that FStival has been conducted in our college, which is a Free Software hub in southern Tamil Nadu.
As a part of FStival, we organize demo stalls on various Free Software tools and people from various walks of life from in and around Madurai visit and get benefited. This year we had demo stalls on:
Free Software philosophy
Emacs
Vi
LaTeX
OpenOffice
MySQL
OpenSolaris
PostgreSQL
LAMP web stack
LAPP web stack
Drupal and Mambo
GIMP
Blender
GTK Glade
Live Distros
GCC
Debuggers
Subversion and Trac
Compiz-fusion
Multimedia and Games
Ubuntu installation
Bluefish editor
Distro burning
TCENet portal
*nix commands
Linux day to day
Internet tools
I conducted a stall on OpenSolaris and handled a couple of installation sessions of Ubuntu Linux. My friends S.Anugraha, G.R. Karthik and Venkatachalam helped me a lot. A million thanks to them.
We had Mr. Kamesh Jayachandran from CollabNet who works on Subversion. He is the first Indian full committer to the subversion code base. He played a great role in the development of the 'Merge tracking' feature included in the latest Subversion 1.5. We also had the esteemed presence of Mr. Joe Steeve, an alumnus of the college and a passionate free software enthusiast. He is the founder of Free Software clubs in the college. Both these distinguished guests enlightened a packed auditorium on Free software and Subversion. Mr. Kamesh Jayachandran inspired us by telling us about his growth in the Free Software industry.
There were about 400 visitors from various walks of life including students from various academic institutions in and around Madurai. They were very much impressed by what they saw and learnt a lot so that they can create an awareness about Free software in their places.
The surprise guest who visited FStival 08 was Dr. Sivathanu Pillai, Chief Controller of DRDO, who was very much impressed with FStival 08 and had words of praise and encouragement for us.
We also played throughout the day, a video of Richard M Stallman, the man who started it all, talking about Software Freedom. That enigmatic and inspirational video would have surely converted many into Free Software users.
FStival 08 was a grand success and left the visitors, participants and organizers craving for more of it and looking forward to the next FStival.
Here are a few snaps from FStival 08. The complete set is available at http://fstival.tce.edu/fast_gallery/2008/
This blog copyright 2009 by Guruprasad L
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