As mentioned in this post, I am currently doing my masters thesis. I just started to implement a few components and as you've probably experienced in your own projects, it is very easy to drift off into other projects when you're not 100% motivated. This drift led me to the conclusion that I suddenly absolutely needed an SVN (Subversion) server for my code ;-)
(I will be doing a lot of network communication, so this "drift" is actually fairly justified unlike most drifts)

There are two ways to do it: Ask the university to set one up for you or DIY. Being a geek -> the DIY. So I spent the entire day yesterday installing Solaris and setting up the SVN server to be used to share code between the desktop and my MacBook through my WLAN. And it works perfect!

So why is this blog-worthy? Well, as the members of my OSUG know, I have basically no experience with Solaris! But I still managed to get this server up and running without any real problems. This really amazed me: No *nix experience at all and I was still able to get the SVN server up and running and access it through my network. I guess my point is that even though your experience with Solaris is very limited, the resources online (and the bundle that comes with Solaris!) makes it much easier to set up such things than you'd expect.

Bottom line: Just go for it! I thought I'd be in way over my head (I probably was a few times too, but I didn't notice it) but if I can do it, so can you :-)

Below is part of the e-mail I sent out to the current members of the SDU OSUG, which announces the second SDU OSUG meeting.

... I have scheduled a meeting for our OSUG for May 14th at 16:00 in the seminarrum (again), so put that in the calendar! I don't know how long it will last, but my guess is that it will be around an hour.

The agenda is yet to be decided - at this point it is hard to find out, as I have no idea of how many people have gotten OpenSolaris up and running. But we will focus on trying to find out what projects we should get involved in. As mentioned in newsletter #1, if you can't install it on its own partition, try a VM solution - the most important thing is that you have OpenSolaris installed, so we can explore it!

I urge you all to keep spreading the word to people about the OSUG, as I will not be advertising this meeting publicly. If you know anybody who are interested, bring them along! They don't even have to attend the university. The more people we are, the more we can develop etc. ;-) ...

My suggestion for an SDU OSUG project was to build an API from Java to DTrace, but Googling aroung a bit has revealed that Sun has beaten me to that idea, as it is already available in the Solaris we have installed :-)

I still believe that a combination of Java and DTrace is a good path to choose for our OSUG, but as mentioned, this is up for discussion at the next meeting. Maybe a combination of reflection, DTrace and some GUI could be used to profile programs and suggest optimization tips? Please mail me (or comment on this blog) if you come up with any good ideas!

See you on the 14th!


/L

Hopefully, most of you members of the SDU OSUG have been able to install OpenSolaris. So, I thought this would be a good time to to tell you about this very interesting article about Java development on Solaris.

The choice of the best Java development platform is complicated by the fact that developers of Java programming tools, like other Java developers, typically do their best to design tools that run equally well on any platform. Other than the raw horsepower of a platform's underlying hardware, then, are all Java development environments created equal? Not by a long shot.

Read the complete article here.

                                            

So, we had our first SDU OSUG meeting!

Overall it was a good experience, but we did face some installation problems. Hopefully most of them will be resolved before the next meeting, so everybody has had a chance to work with OpenSolaris before we decide on where to go with our OSUG. Until then, here are some pictures from the first SDU OSUG meeting!

The laptops are being fired up:

Installation and give-aways:

I got thirsty :)

Working hard...


Once again, it was great to see so many people show up! Also, I really believe we will be a strong group - everybody seemed like they wanted to explore Solaris' features and see where we can go with it!


/L

                                            


I wanted to follow up on my entry about our first SDU OSUG meeting. This weekend, I put up 18 huge (24"x36" or 61x91cm!) posters on campus, so they should be very visible!

So, here's the agenda for the meeting:

• 18:00 Welcome!

I present myself and this agenda. Also, I will order some pizzas as soon as I find out how many people show up.

• 18:15 Our OSUG, our opportunities and Temple of the Sun

I will tell you a bit about some of the features in OpenSolaris, the Sun Academic Initiative, Temple of the Sun and my visions for our OSUG.

• 19:00 OpenSolaris installation (for those of you who brought your laptop) + pizza!

As I've mentioned on the campus posters: If you have a laptop, bring it along! I'll bring the OpenSolaris DVDs, so you can try it out (dual boot, virtualization or live cd). As we're installing OpenSolaris, we can get to know each other and talk about what we want to do with this OSUG.

• 20:30? Finished

I don't know when we'll be done with all the installations and have set up some goals for our OSUG. You may leave early if you have to :)

The goal for this first meeting is for me to get an idea about where we want to go with this OSUG. Should we work together on some kind of project, e.g. making the post-installation setup easier on OpenSolaris? Should we see if we can get external speakers and host an event? Should each of the members do a presentation on future SDU OSUG meetings? All of the above? :)

I will once again stress that this will be informal. The way I envision our OSUG is as a community, where everybody knows each other. I've put together a few lines which I see as fundamental for our SDU OSUG:

• To explore the future technologies that are already available in OpenSolaris
• To be better prepared when graduating
• To build relationships among technically interested students
• To collaborate on projects and put SDU on the map!

I will once again ask you to spread the word about our OSUG. The more people we have in our OSUG, the more we can help each other, the more projects we can work on, the more we can put SDU on the world map!

As always, if you have any questions or want to be put on the SDU OSUG mailing list, please don't hesitate to contact me at Lars.Henriksen@Sun.com. See you Thursday! (don't forget to send me an e-mail if you know you're coming)


/L

I am very happy to announce the

First SDU OpenSolaris User Group meeting!
April 26th
18:00-?
Seminarrum @ MIP

This first meeting will be an install-party/meet everybody, so spread the word! The purpose of this SDU OSUG is for technically interested/skilled students, Danish and international, to meet and experiment with the worlds most advanced operating system!

It will not be lectures. It will be a group of students with common interests and hopefully a common goal at some point (a collaborative project perhaps). It will at first be a group of people exploring the features within OpenSolaris. And it will be an opportunity for you to meet people with the same interests as you!
I will also stress that it will be a user group. This means that I am in charge of organizing the meetings etc. but its main focus is what you, the users, want to do. Should we have bi-weekly meetings or monthly meetings, should we look more into ZFS or Zones for the next meeting, should we start up a shared project to give something back to the OpenSolaris community or see how Real-Time Java runs on OpenSolaris... These are things we decide together as a community!

As this will be an installfest, bring your laptop along! If you have an available partition, that would be great - if not, maybe we can install it in a virtual machine. I am bringing both a laptop to install it in a virtual machine as well as a regular machine which will be dual booting with Windows.

The posters hasn't arrived yet, which is why you aren't seeing it on campus yet. I expect it to arrive in the beginning of next week, but until then, you can have a look at it here.

If you aren't sure where the "seminarrum" is, I put an arrow on the campus map:

I am really excited about this and I hope a lot of you show up! If possible, send me an e-mail to let me know that you'll be there - if you forget to do that, show up anyway :)

If in doubt, come and join us and see if it is something for you! There will be a few pizza slices and drinks, some Sun stuff, NetBeans cd's, OpenSolaris DVDs and (hopefully) a lot of students who are interested in joining a community for people interested in exploring future technologies!


/L