Connecting the dots with Solaris and middleware In the middle

This entry addresses publishing and using a reduced installation profile metapackage and the Automated Installer (AI) as a means of simplifying the installation of heavily reduced forms of OpenSolaris.
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Since build 126 of OpenSolaris was recently released, it was time to update my Automated Install (AI) server and to verify that the reduced installation profile I had tested using build 125 was still working properly.  Overall, the process was straightforward and trouble free.

Updating the reduced OpenSolaris installation took very little time because only 78 MB was needed to update the 200 or so packages installed on my AI server.  This is a key benefit of using a reduced installation of an OS: you can dramatically reduce update overhead by downloading and applying updates for only those packages that matter to your particular application.  It's also a testament to the pkg(5) system in that it is able to bring down only updated files rather than being forced to always download complete packages.

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Just over 7 minutes to install a text-oriented, headless server OpenSolaris system from scratch?

This is the next installment in my effort to establish an efficient development and test environment for experimental OpenSolaris base installation profiles. In this entry I address how to hook a heavily reduced form of the OpenSolaris development package repository into an Automated Installer environment to produce text-oriented, headless server installs of OpenSolaris.

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In this post I explain how I've used the pkg(5) system's content retrieval client, pkgrecv(1), to establish a reduced form of the OpenSolaris development package repository on a local system for the purpose of optimizing my Automated Installer (AI)-based installations.

In my recent post on Initial Experiments with Base Install Profiles, I described how I am using the OpenSolaris Automated Installer and VirtualBox to experiment with heavily reduced or minimized installations of OpenSolaris.  Use of a local copy of a repository will dramatically increase the speed of installing these heavily reduced installations.

Use of a local repository also enables me to begin experimenting with publishing and using an experimental base installation profile metapackage.  Use of such a metapackage will greatly simplify the AI manifest by representing all of the base install packages in a single metapackage.  Once a developer includes the base metapackage reference in his AI manifest, all he needs to do is add references to other packages to produce his custom installation profile based on the experimental base profile.[Read More]

This post is a follow-on to the entry describing how to set up an OpenSolaris Automated Installer (AI) environment using the JeOS prototype and VirtualBox.  In this entry I describe how to use a custom AI manifest representing an experimental base installation profile to install a greatly reduced or minimized form of OpenSolaris in a VirtualBox virtual machine - just ~90 or so packages and an installed footprint of ~570 MB. The resulting installations are text-oriented, headless server installations containing only enough features to enable developers to add more packages and customize the environment to suit their specific needs.

A slightly modified form of the AI manifest can be used to realize similarly reduced installations in other system virtualization and bare metal environments.

Experimenting with base installation profiles is part of the OpenSolaris JeOS project's effort to help define a formal base installation profile for OpenSolaris.

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This entry addresses how to use the OpenSolaris JeOS prototype and VirtualBox as the basis for deploying an Automated Installer (AI) environment.  A follow-on entry addresses the use of a custom AI manifest to install a greatly reduced form of OpenSolaris using this environment.

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Given the popularity of system or server virtualization products and technologies including VMware, Xen, Sun xVM VirtualBox, etc. in addition to Sun's upcoming xVM Server product, partners, prospects and customers often ask whether Sun supports the deployment of our middleware on these environments.  Historically, we've provided inconsistent answers to this question.   Fortunately, Sun recently released an official support statement to help address this issue.

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Updated March 9, 2009

The Update Center 2 Toolkit project is demonstrating how the Image Packaging System, also known as the pkg(5) System, can deliver the following features for multi-platform layered applications:

• Multi-OS platform packaging of packages and updates
  
• Pre-installed installation images
• Ongoing installation image management
  
• Network repository-based delivery of add-ons and updates 
• Desktop notification of updates and new add-ons
  

This article describes the results of the first of several experiments intended to demonstrate how projects' build environments can be enhanced to deliver pkg(5)-based distributions. In this article we address the first stage of an experiment based on the popular OpenDS project.[Read More]

Installing OpenSolaris 2008.05 as a guest OS using VMware Workstation 6 on an Ubuntu host.  This is an update to my earlier post addressing installation of the Developer Preview releases.

See the updated instructions.

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The Update Center (UC) 2.0 Toolkit open source project that I am a part of is reusing OpenSolaris' Image Packaging System (IPS) for distribution of software and updates on a variety of OS platforms.  In addition to reusing the underlying IPS CLI and server side repository infrastructure, the Update Center Toolkit team has been keen to reuse the IPS-oriented package management GUI tools being developed by OpenSolaris.

OpenSolaris is using PyGTK, the Python binding to GTK+, and the Glade GUI design tool to help them rapidly develop the new package management GUI tools for OpenSolaris. Since IPS itself is written mostly in Python, using a Python-based toolkit for the GUI applications was a natural decision.

Based on Danek Duvall's suggestion (yeah, blame Danek!), we took a look at the wxPython GUI toolkit.

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These instructions have been updated based on using the latest release, OpenSolaris 2008.05

Once a pre-installed VMware image of OpenSolaris is made available for general download, some of the following instructions will become obsolete.  Ideally, all you should need to do is download a VMware image and boot it within VMware Workstation, VMware Player or one of the VMware server products. 

In the meantime the following instructions address booting up the OpenSolaris 2008.05 live CD and installing the OS into a virtual machine (VM).  In this example we'll use VMware Workstation 6.0.2 build-59824 running on Ubuntu 7.10 with bridged networking.

A colleague of mine has also followed these instructions using VMware Workstation 6 on Windows XP.

 

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After installing our new QNAP TS-109 NAS server, one of our next steps was to ensure that my wife's Mac G4 PowerBook would automatically mount the shares of interest whenever she logs into the laptop.  My personal blog article "Mac OS Client Access to NAS Server" explains what we did to get the most out of our new NAS server from one of our Mac clients.

 

As part of implementing our new home data storage and backup solution, we recently installed a QNAP TS-109 NAS server.  My personal blog article "TS-109 NAS Server Initial Experience" describes the initial steps in using this pretty neat and simple device.

 

A highly varied climate is just one of the many benefits (?) of living in the Midwest of the United States.   Accordingly, our new home has a relatively complex HVAC system.  In addition to a geothermal ground source heat pump (GSHP), the system includes an Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) to constantly introduce conditioned outside air and whole-house humidification and dehumidification. 

Since this is our first year experiencing the four seasons in the home, we consider ourselves in the "sea trials" or "shakedown cruise" portion of familiarizing ourselves with the performance of the HVAC system.

To help us understand whether the various parts of the system are working as expected, I've set up a series of 1-Wire based temperature and humidity sensors to monitor the performance of the system.  My personal blog article "The Skinny: Home Systems Monitoring Components" explains the tools we used to set up the initial monitoring system.

 

I recently researched options for managing our electronic documents and media files at home.  Given several pretty basic requirements, the extensive amount of research I had to do to arrive at a reasonable solution was quite surprising.  How do non-technical people adequately and efficiently manage data at home?  I assume most don't.  My personal blog article "Home Network Data Storage and Backup" sets forth our requirements, looks at several options and describes the approach we've begun implementing in stages.