Monday July 14, 2008 Matt Ingenthron's Stream of Consciousness
Monday July 14, 2008 The main reason this failure is cool is because it's not my box, I was just borrowing it. In the process, I was able to see how the Solaris FMA stuff works on Intel systems:
# fmadm faulty
--------------- ------------------------------------ -------------- ---------
TIME EVENT-ID MSG-ID SEVERITY
--------------- ------------------------------------ -------------- ---------
Jun 20 12:07:33 134d04c5-1961-ec12-bfb9-dd97668f42ca INTEL-8001-43 Critical
Fault class : fault.cpu.intel.nb.ie
Affects : hc:///motherboard=0
degraded but still in service
FRU : "MB" (hc:///component=motherboard)
Description : Northbridge has detected an internal error Refer to
http://sun.com/msg/INTEL-8001-43 for more information.
Response : System panic or reset by BIOS
Impact : System may be unexpectedly reset
Action : Replace motherboard
It'll remember this across reboots, report with a human readable message, etc.
( Jul 14 2008, 04:45:01 PM PDT ) Permalink
Tuesday July 01, 2008 Tonight (July 1, 2008) I will be speaking at the LA JUG on the Open Source project Faban. Faban is a benchmark harness/framework for developing and executing performance benchmarks against a variety of targets.
If you're interested in joining, please have a look at the LA JUG website.
( Jul 01 2008, 08:18:16 AM PDT ) Permalink
Friday June 13, 2008 Another attempt with LA Metro I have a concert to go to tonight in the Echo Park area. To get there by 6:45 (1.5 hours from now), I'll need to leave an hour ago, take two buses and two trains. Oh yeah, and walk 3/4 of a mile. ( Jun 13 2008, 05:17:45 PM PDT ) Permalink
Thursday May 29, 2008 As I type this, I've blown away my old Solaris partition on my laptop and I have OpenSolaris 2008.05 laying it's bits down. I'd hoped to finish this blog by the time it was done, but it seems to be going too fast (it's at 68%).
I'd wanted to do this some time back, but between the MySQL conference, CommunityOne, the hands-on-labs at JavaOne (for which we received a 4.3 out of 5 review!) and working with customers, there's been little time to get things planned out to install the system. I wanted a good backup or two as well, not so much that I need one since I keep all important data replicated to my NFS home directory at Sun, but just in case.
My old installs have been good to me, but I've not lived day-to-day with OpenSolaris yet. I've installed it on a few systems (like this one) and in VirtualBox a number of times. Still, running on the metal should give me the ability to update easily, minimize the install (even I don't use all of the packages!), move to ZFS root, etc.
(the install just finished)
I'll also be able to more easily work with things in our Web Stack Experimental Repository.
Well, it's all rebooted, so now I'm off to bring back some selected files from the backups.
( May 29 2008, 09:17:49 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]
Sunday May 18, 2008 Why people don't take the Metro in LA
According to the LA Metro Website, with a combination of busses and trains, there is no way to get to Hollywood/Vine in 4 hours from El Segundo.
Somehow I think this is probably wrong, but making sense of it with this map is pretty much impossible.
( May 18 2008, 01:35:14 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]
Wednesday April 02, 2008 DTrace visualization of MySQL: excellent tool for optimization
Neel has just posted an example of using DTrace with MySQL to examine what is going on in the system at runtime. Check out the SVG! This is very, very cool and can certainly show where we'll be able to take MySQL and other components we use in the Web Stack project.
And think, we're just hitting our stride. For users, DTrace for Apache HTTP Server has just been added to Web Stack, PHP is already there and Ruby is just around the corner. Very cool!
( Apr 02 2008, 06:50:16 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]
Tuesday February 05, 2008 OpenSolaris Web Stack: Setting Services on Apache
Solaris Express Developer Edition 01/08 (a.k.a. SXDE 01/08) has been released! One of the features of the new release is the integration of much of the work from the Web Stack project
So you're probably wondering, what is different or better about the Web Stack (including, but not limited to Apache, MySQL and PHP) integrated into OpenSolaris. Well, the code is the same stuff available at the various project sites. This, of course, is by design. Though it is Open Source of one license or another, there's no real value in deviating from what the upstream communities have released.
Still, there are some interesting places OpenSolaris can add value. OpenSolaris has things like DTrace, SMF, lots of security features, etc.
Jyri has already written about how easy it is to run PHP on OpenSolaris, including SXDE 01/08. Assume for a moment though that what you want is a 64-bit Apache with mod_proxy. Well, how do you set that up?
The team has done a great job of integrating the web stack components. One example is using svccfg to make changes to how a service is set up to run. So, let's look at modifying the service configuration of Apache. First, we start it:
# svcs http:apache22 STATE STIME FMRI disabled 19:35:01 svc:/network/http:apache22 # svcadm enable http:apache22
The process is up and running, but is it 32 or 64 bit? Hmmm. Let's find out. First we need to know what the process is. We could grep for http or something like that, but there's a better way to see which processes are associated with a service:
# svcs -p http:apache22
STATE STIME FMRI
online 19:54:30 svc:/network/http:apache22
19:54:30 1154 httpd
19:54:31 1155 httpd
Okay, now we see the processes. How do I find out if it's 32 or 64 bit? pargs(1) can tell tell us what the binary is, then we can look at the file:
# pargs -x 1154 1154: /usr/apache2/2.2/bin/httpd -k start AT_SUN_PLATFORM 0x08047fda i86pc AT_SUN_EXECNAME 0x08047fe0 /usr/apache2/2.2/bin/httpd AT_PHDR 0x08050034 AT_PHENT 0x00000020 AT_PHNUM 0x00000007 AT_ENTRY 0x0806cc10 AT_SUN_LDDATA 0xfeffa000 AT_BASE 0xfefc0000 AT_FLAGS 0x00000000 AT_PAGESZ 0x00001000 AT_SUN_AUXFLAGS 0x00000002 AT_SUN_HWCAP 0x0043dc6f SSSE3 | AHF | CX16 | MON | SSE3 | SSE2 | SSE | FXSR | MMX | CMOV | SEP | CX8 | TSC | FPU # file /usr/apache2/2.2/bin/httpd /usr/apache2/2.2/bin/httpd: ELF 32-bit LSB executable 80386 Version 1 [FPU], dynamically linked, stripped
Okay, it's just 32-bit. Since it's so nicely integrated, perhaps there is a service property to switch it. Let's see what service properties we have to mess with:
# svcprop http:apache22 httpd/enable_64bit boolean false httpd/server_type astring prefork httpd/stability astring Evolving httpd/startup_options astring "" httpd/value_authorization astring solaris.smf.value.http/apache22 network/entities fmri svc:/milestone/network:default network/grouping astring require_all network/restart_on astring error network/type astring service filesystem-local/entities fmri svc:/system/filesystem/local:default filesystem-local/grouping astring require_all filesystem-local/restart_on astring none filesystem-local/type astring service autofs/entities fmri svc:/system/filesystem/autofs:default autofs/grouping astring optional_all autofs/restart_on astring error autofs/type astring service startd/ignore_error astring core,signal general/action_authorization astring solaris.smf.manage.http/apache22 general/enabled boolean false general/value_authorization astring solaris.smf.value.http/apache22 general/entity_stability astring Evolving start/exec astring /lib/svc/method/http-apache22\ start start/timeout_seconds count 60 start/type astring method stop/exec astring /lib/svc/method/http-apache22\ stop stop/timeout_seconds count 60 stop/type astring method refresh/exec astring /lib/svc/method/http-apache22\ refresh refresh/timeout_seconds count 60 refresh/type astring method tm_common_name/C ustring Apache\ 2.2\ HTTP\ server tm_man_httpd/manpath astring /usr/apache2/2.2/man tm_man_httpd/section astring 8 tm_man_httpd/title astring httpd tm_doc_apache_org/name astring apache.org tm_doc_apache_org/uri astring http://httpd.apache.org restarter/logfile astring /var/svc/log/network-http:apache22.log restarter/contract count 95 restarter/start_pid count 1139 restarter/start_method_timestamp time 1202270070.318463000 restarter/start_method_waitstatus integer 0 restarter/auxiliary_state astring none restarter/next_state astring none restarter/state astring online restarter/state_timestamp time 1202270070.320630000
There's a lot of stuff because of the various dependencies and other variables that SMF needs for some of the other magic. That one labeled "httpd/enable_64bit" looks like the one we need though. Let's change it using svccfg:
# svccfg -s http:apache22 svc:/network/http:apache22> listprop httpd/* httpd/server_type astring prefork httpd/stability astring Evolving httpd/startup_options astring httpd/value_authorization astring solaris.smf.value.http/apache22 httpd/enable_64bit boolean false svc:/network/http:apache22> setprop httpd/enable_64bit=true svc:/network/http:apache22> listprop httpd/* httpd/server_type astring prefork httpd/stability astring Evolving httpd/startup_options astring httpd/value_authorization astring solaris.smf.value.http/apache22 httpd/enable_64bit boolean true svc:/network/http:apache22> exit
Now, when we change these service properties, we need to apply the changes by refreshing the service and then restarting it. Then we can see if we got the desired effect:
# svcadm refresh http:apache22
# svcadm restart http:apache22
# svcs -p http:apache22
STATE STIME FMRI
online 20:44:40 svc:/network/http:apache22
20:44:40 1683 httpd
20:44:41 1684 httpd
20:44:41 1685 httpd
20:44:41 1686 httpd
20:44:41 1687 httpd
20:44:41 1688 httpd
20:44:41 1689 httpd
# pargs -x 1683
1683: /usr/apache2/2.2/bin/amd64/httpd -D 64bit -k start
AT_SUN_PLATFORM 0xfffffd7fffdfffcf i86pc
AT_SUN_EXECNAME 0xfffffd7fffdfffd5 /usr/apache2/2.2/bin/amd64/httpd
AT_PHDR 0x0000000000400040
AT_PHENT 0x0000000000000038
AT_PHNUM 0x0000000000000008
AT_ENTRY 0x000000000042d450
AT_SUN_LDDATA 0xfffffd7fff3fa000
AT_BASE 0xfffffd7fff394000
AT_FLAGS 0x0000000000000000
AT_PAGESZ 0x0000000000001000
AT_SUN_AUXFLAGS 0x0000000000000002
AT_SUN_HWCAP 0x000000000041dc77 SSSE3 | CX16 | MON | SSE3 | SSE2 | SSE | FXSR
| MMX | CMOV | AMD_SYSC | CX8 | TSC | FPU
# file /usr/apache2/2.2/bin/amd64/httpd
/usr/apache2/2.2/bin/amd64/httpd: ELF 64-bit LSB executable AMD64 Version 1 [SSE FXSR CMOV FPU], dynamically linked, stripped
Looks good. Apache, as you may know, has both prefork and worker models. I happened to spot in there that there is a property for that. Since all of the modules I'm using are thread safe, I think I'll turn it to worker...
# svccfg -s http:apache22
svc:/network/http:apache22> listprop httpd/*
httpd/server_type astring prefork
httpd/stability astring Evolving
httpd/startup_options astring
httpd/value_authorization astring solaris.smf.value.http/apache22
httpd/enable_64bit boolean true
svc:/network/http:apache22> setprop httpd/server_type=worker
svc:/network/http:apache22> exit
# svcadm refresh http:apache22
# svcadm restart http
svcadm: Pattern 'http' matches multiple instances:
svc:/network/http:squid
svc:/network/http:apache22
# svcadm restart http:apache22
Very nice, now I can go edit my httpd.conf and enable proxying!
I went from 32 to 64 bit, and changed MPMs all without having to go rebuild Apache, edit rc files, etc. Plus, the current configuration is always easy to find with svcprop.
Once other projects, like Visual Panels, come along we should then see a nice GUI way of understanding and editing our services. The other nice advantage is if I have a large number of systems I want to configure the service on in a similar way, SMF makes it simple to replicate that service configuration to other systems. Alternatively, I could just jumpstart them and apply a service config.
You may be asking, but what about that stuff in httpd.conf? Well, remember our goal here in the Web Stack project is to integrate nicely with those upstream projects. Admins know how to edit their httpd.conf files, and it wouldn't add much value to start making that many modifications to the Apache HTTP Server. The philosophy is integrate with the features in OpenSolaris, but stay true to the community that produced the code.
Download and play with SXDE 01/08 or one of the Project Indiana builds after it synchs up with the latest code, or join us over in the OpenSolaris Web Stack project.
( Feb 05 2008, 11:42:39 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [3]
Thursday January 10, 2008 Opening .docx files with OpenOffice on Solaris
For the first time I've encountered one of the Microsoft Office 2007 (sometimes called Office Open XML, though open-ness is in dispute in various places) files. I suspect I and many others will probably soon encounter these for the first time since a bevy of new Vista PCs with MS Office demo software installed were sold over Christmas.
The answer was not easily found. The semi-official answer is on the OpenOffice wiki. Since I use StarOffice on Solaris and don't encounter these things often, I decided to use the online document conversion. Zamzar, the top result from the google search attached to the link in the wiki there did a fine job. I'm certain I could get the Novell converter to run on Solaris BrandZ but it would be a major hassle and looking at the web pages, it may not even be necessarily portable between different Linux releases.
Ideally there'd be a simple converter that I wouldn't need to deal with advertisements for. Perhaps one of those other OO.o projects with some of the not-yet-ready-for-primetime converters could set up a small site? 
Oh yeah, where did the file come from? It was my girlfriend's cousin's daughter's from school. Disappointing since OpenOffice is free and properly Open...
( Jan 10 2008, 10:55:53 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [2]
Thursday November 08, 2007 I've spent a few days in Toronto with a customer working with Faban. Effectively, we took a generic benchmark I'd adapted from some work Akara in our pae group had done and helped them to use the Open Source Faban to test/validate what they're doing with databases on our systems with Solaris.
I'll post the sample later-- it should be pretty usable for anyone who wants to run through a set of operations against a database and see how they do. In the sample, I had implemented backends for PostgreSQL and MySQL so one could see how the operations fared on each of the different databases.
One of the little cultural differences I came upon here was that they have their own "Double Double". Here, that means double sugar and double cream in your coffee at Tim Hortons. It seems to be a variation on a Starbucks... kind of. In downtown Toronto, the Starbucks and Tim Horton's were all in close proximity, so I have no doubt they see each other as competitors. To me, culturally, it's closer to Dunkin' Donuts in Boston.
For those who don't know, Southern California's "Double Double" is a double meat, double cheese cheeseburger at In-n-Out Burger.
My friend here at Sun, Kim LiChong, tells me that part of the draw, or at least the branding, is that Tim Horton was a Hockey player for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
There were a couple of other cultural differences that I encountered-- the one other big one being that they actually changed the voiceover on the Mazda commercial to have a different pronunciation! Up here, like in Australia, it's "Maaaasda" as in the 'a' sound in apple, not "Mahsda". I saw the commercial several times-- I wasn't sure after the first time, but I was certain of it by the third time.
( Nov 08 2007, 08:17:56 PM PST ) Permalink Comments [1]
Saturday November 03, 2007 Lots of good news for Solaris web stack runtimes
The big news on the web stacks for Solaris front is we've released Cool Stack 1.2!*
Both binaries and source are over here. Basant and Shanti did a great job getting things generally updated and a few key enhancements (like some SMF and DTrace integration). Also, all but one of the binaries are compiled with Studio 12 and are giving us great out of the box performance on x86, x64 and UltraSPARC systems like the new CoolThreads T2 systems. That should work well if, say you wanted to consolidate a bunch of old AMP boxes to a nice efficient 64-thread system.
Give 'em a download and a try. If you're a Cool Stack 1.1 user, there are some guidelines on how to migrate on the site.
Over on the Web Stack project on OpenSolaris.org, Jyri, Aravind, Rahul, Ritu, cvr, Ludo, Prashant, Luojia, and Sriram from Sun, with some great community input have been working through the tough work to integrate many of these same common web stack components into the OpenSolaris SFW consolidation. That way, they'll be there out of the box in distributions like Sun's Solaris Express Developer/Community Editions. Components are rolling in.... Squid is in, Apache and a number of modules are in and updated, PHP is updated, Ruby is very close, MySQL and memcached are coming. Right around build 79 of Nevada, there should be a pretty complete stack in there!
The other thing that has been coming together is the developer experience. As some of you may know, NetBeans is getting PHP and Ruby capabilities, so it's only natural that Solaris Express Developer Edition has a nice out of box experience for end users. It's not quite integrated yet so there's nothing to play with, but you can get a good idea of where it's going if you grab a daily build of netbeans and the most recent Solaris Express Community Edition. There's a bit of wiring for now that won't be there when things come together shortly, but it's not too bad.
As always, if you have any questions or want to register a vote (or contribute!) your favorite extension or module, join us over here. Thanks also to all those who have sent me feedback directly or through the lists/forums.
* For those that may have followed things, this is the same as the thing we were going to call 1.1.1. I suggested to the team that we call it 1.2 after I noticed the big changes in packaging. It just didn't seem right for a micro release to be delivering such changes. Basant and Shanti had already had similar thoughts, so we changed it.
( Nov 03 2007, 12:03:48 AM PDT ) Permalink
Friday October 12, 2007 Updated Cool Stack 1.1.1 deliverables in Web Stack wiki
When I first posted the Cool Stack 1.1.1 deliverables on the Web Stack wiki, I knew it wasn't quite complete. Thanks to some info and updates from Basant Kukreja (link not supplied, as he is a non-blogging heathen, as John Clingan would say), who has dutifully been working on the Cool Stack 1.1.1 updates, I've been able to update it.
We'd love any feedback. We've gotten some on the Cool Stack forums already. Please have a look over here and post any feedback to either the Web Stack mailing list or the Cool Stack forum.
( Oct 12 2007, 11:44:49 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [3]
Thursday October 11, 2007 Well, I got into and out of Las Vegas without doing any gambling. I did, in fact, attempt to leave some coins behind. However, I guess coins have no value to one-armed-bandits any more, so I left with my pocket change.
I did a little bit of talking, sharing what knowledge I have in one session, and did a lot of listening and learning. Some things like DTrace in Solaris, JavaFX and JRuby support in NetBeans have added functionality since they were first introduced. It was good to hear about these updates, and there is just so much going on at Sun it's hard to keep up with it all!
Of course, one highlight was the launch of the UltraSPARC CoolThreads T2 processor based systems. I've only been able to play with one of the systems so far, and even then not for very long, but I was impressed. The benchmarks show it, it's CMT again proving it's the right approach.
Scott Mattoon and I shot a brief video for CEC, which Scott posted on his blog here. ( Oct 11 2007, 10:57:31 PM PDT ) Permalink
Friday August 17, 2007 Another problem with raster graphics
Now, don't misinterpret the title-- I have no issue with raster graphics themselves when used correctly. The issue I have is many people unknowingly use them incorrectly and leave it up to the poor interpolation in browsers/mail clients to try to do the right thing. They're trying to do a bunch of things at once, so you end up with corporate logos that look all jagged.
There was a time back in 2001 or so when I was looking forward to SVG and others delivering the vector goodness that we should have had back in the mid 90s (NeWS anyone?). Sadly, it doesn't seem to have come to pass-- with the exception of plugins like Java with JavaFX Script and Flash.
Maybe it's a fault of mine, but this makes me think of whomever is using rasters in this way as an amateur. It immediately lowers their credibility in my eyes. I probably shouldn't think this way, but I guess because I spent some time massaging pixels and Bézier curves, that sort of thing bothers me....
Kind of like shoddy software on cell phones bothers me.... but that's a rant for another day....
Thursday August 02, 2007 A Complete Open Source Stack: Hardware to Web 2.0
I'm a bit delayed in posting the slides, but not so long ago I gave a talk at both the UUASC and the local IEEE chapter CompSoc meeting.
The talk had originally been assembled for SCALE5x. Despite the "L" in the name, SCALE is an Open Source conference, so demonstrating Sun's involvement in Open Source by showing various technological bits (OpenSPARC, OpenSolaris zones/DTrace, PostgreSQL, OpenJDK, NetBeans and Glassfish, all working together).
Both were well received. I think a lot of it was new to the IEEE folks, but many of the UUASC people had seen some of the bits and pieces in full presentations over the years.
Presentation is here.
( Aug 02 2007, 08:13:29 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]
Monday July 30, 2007 Transformers missed the "transform"
There are plenty of legendary (among geeks) Hollywood slipups with technical terms. This last weekend I encountered one more.
In Transformers, there is a scene where the blonde-model-playing-white-hat-hacker tries to impress upon the Secretary of Defense how sophisticated the inbound hack was. To underscore her point, she says it's not just simple "Fourier transfers" they're dealing with. The proper term of course is Fourier transform.
Ironic, given the name of the film.
Transformers Hollywood Fourier transform
( Jul 30 2007, 10:02:28 AM PDT ) Permalink
