I've been working on my home server again (remember.. the Ultra40 I won at CEC last year) . I've been lazy for the past few months, and been stuck at Nevada Build 63 for a while. While I've been live-upgrading my laptop with every Nevada release, I kept on finding really good excuses to NOT upgrade my home server.

The main issue is that it actually does real work. It's my home DHCP, SMTP, Samba, Web, Jumpstart, (and JET development) and print server. The household tends to notice when it's down. (especially since all the home directories are mounted off it, which means that everything stops when its down. We get real tears in our house when people can't do their homework!)

The fact that I use Live Upgrade means that downtime is usually just a reboot. Chris Gerhard, who has a similar home set up upgraded before me and found a samba problem, which caused me to delay upgrading until I knew it had been fixed, then we had a minor problem with gnome-terminal character corruption, finally, gaim was replaced by pidgin, and in doing so, support for one of the IM protocols was kind of accidentally broken.

I don't have a problem being on the bleeding edge on my laptop, cos I can work around most of the issues, especially since I do most of my work on my home server.

Anyway, the long and short of it was that I was just about to do some other work on my Ultra40, namely try and get apache with php working (among other things), and decided it would be prudent to upgrade to Nevada Build 69 before I did anything.... just to be sure.

Happy to report that it all went swimmingly (as usual), and downtime was in fact reduced to a single reboot, which them indoors didn't even notice.

One interesting point. On rebooting and starting gnome, it automatically detected my USB plugged in HP printer, and gave me a pretty little "Add Printer Queue" window which allowed me to add my printer. Unfortunately it didn't detect that I had already added it manually many months previously. I suppose one can expect that to happen as new features begin to overlap manual workarounds. I'm pretty sure that printing should just work straight out of the box on a fresh Build 69 install without any manual intervention.. but I'm not going to bother to try. 

I then proceeded to get my AMP working... topic for my next article.

tags: Solaris SUN X86 LiveUpgrade AMP

Bruce Porter just sent me a link to something called TiddlyWiki.

It's author JeremyRuston, describes it as: a reusable non-linear personal web notebook.

In short its a wiki on an html page. You don't need ay server-side logic, just a web browser.

And the way it works is pretty cool too! 

I got asked in a comment in my previous article to describe EXACTLY how I got printing working.

I've got an HP5150 USB printer. I plugged it into a convenient USB port on my Solaris server, and then used the printmgr gui to set it up. I selected Use PPD, and in the  Printer-->New Attached Printer form, filled in the following:

Printer Name: unix
Printer Port: /dev/printers/0
Printer Make: HP
Printer Model: HP DeskJet 5150
Printer Driver: Foomatic/hpijs (recommended)

This allowed standard Unix printing to work. (In short, it pretends to be a standard postscript printer, and you can send pretty much anything to it)

Solaris - Solaris

I also turned on the ipp-listener service using svcadm. On a remote Solaris client (my laptop, also running Solaris Nevada b56), I used printmgr again, and did Printer-->Add Access to Printer. This uses the ipp service by default if available. lpstat -v shows:

# lpstat -v
system for unix: zaphod (as ipp://zaphod/printers/unix)

The printer name is "unix" and my server is called "zaphod". With that, I could print from my laptop to my printer attached to my home server.

Samba Printing

The Samba printing was a little more troublesome. In short, all the Windows machines, and any machine for that matter trying to print natively        to my "unix" queue had difficulties because it was expecting either Postscript or plain text. I could have set all my printers up as generic Postscript printers, but decided I'd rather print natively. To do this I could have probably played with the filters so that it passed through everything, but that seemed too much like hard work. Instead a set up a different queue (to the same printer) which would act as a "raw" queue.

#!/bin/sh
lpadmin -p hp5150 -v /dev/printers/0 -T unknown -I any
accept hp5150
enable hp5150
lpadmin -p hp5150 -o nobanner

I think my smb.conf was already pretty much properly configured for printing, but I'll repeat the relevent bits just in case:

# If you want to automatically load your printer list rather
# than setting them up individually then you'll need this
   load printers = yes

# NOTE: If you have a BSD-style print system there is no need to 
# specifically define each individual printer
[printers]
   comment = All Printers
   path = /var/spool/samba
   browseable = no
# Set public = yes to allow user 'guest account' to print
   guest ok = no
   writable = no
   printable = yes

To set up the printer on the local side, I had to manually install the HP5150 drivers, and then add the printer using the Add Printer wizard in Windows. The key to getting this to work properly, is to set it up as a "Local Printer", then select a Local Port, and specify the Local port as (in my case)  as: \\zaphod\hp5150

Summary

I actually configured all of this when both my home server and my laptop were running Nevada B54, so it is possible that it is no longer necessary to set up 2 queues, but I've LiveUpgraded and the settings were retained, so I've had no need to change. A lot of things seem to have changed in the Solaris printing model in Solaris Nevada, but I've found it is now a lot easier than it ever was. (And it is the expectation that it is going to be really difficult that makes you do more than you need to). If you trust that it just works, and use the printmgr tool, I think it is difficult to go wrong.

tags: Solaris SUN X86 samba printing 

I've successfully LiveUpgraded my home server twice so far. (I've been slightly lazy and decided to do alternate builds, so I've gone from Nevada b52 to b54 to b56. Apart from the minor zfs issues which require me to:

1. Create an exclude file for the lucreate so that it doesn't try to copy my zfs partitions.
2. Manually empty mountpoints where some of my zfs filesystems mount.

it all works really well.

I'd shied away from creating zones because LiveUpgrade didn't support zones in the earlier builds, but I've now been assured that it works fine now.

Zones + ZFS. WOW

It just works. When you create a zone, if it detects that your zonepath is on a zfs filesystem, it'll automatically create a new zfs dataset for you for the zones you are creating. You don't need to do anything special, it just does the "Right Thing(tm)".

Furthermore, if you decide to clone a zone, and it's on a zfs filesystem, it simply creates a snapshot of the cloned zone for you.  You don't need to do anything special, it just does the "Right Thing(tm)".

This means that once you've created your first zone, all your additional zones can be created and booted in a matter of seconds. Talk about rapid provisioning!

The icing on the cake: BrandZ

I've simply followed the instructions here and I've now got CentOS running in a zone, running on top of Solaris. Got Skype working!!

I love it when a plan comes together. We've now got some really clever integration of some individual cool Solaris technologies. The combined benefit is compelling.

Just waiting for ZFS boot to become available (well, more available than it is), and my home server aspirations will be complete. 

tags: Solaris SUN X86 ZFS BrandZ 

I've been checking my spamassassin scores, and wasn't particularly happy with it's ability to rate SPAM. Given it's reputation I was pretty sure that it was due to a configuration error on my part.

I had a sneeky suspicion that not all the "tests" I was running were actually happening. I ran spamd in debug mode, and started seeing a bunch of interesting errors. In short, I was missing Net::DNS, so anything that required any sort of DNS lookup was failing.

Simply did the perl -MCPAN -e 'install Net::DNS' thing and that got DNS lookups working. 

Then started to debug the other errors in the log. Apparently the bayes plugin was having problems talking to my bayes files because I didn't have DB_File. Tried the CPAN trick again, which failed because it couldn't find db.h. Turns out I didn't have Berkeley DB installed. Short trip to sunfreeware.com later: 

•  db-4.2.52.NC-sol10-intel-local

It installs in /usr/localBerkeleyDB.4.2 . Given that CPAN was looking in /usr/local/BerkeleyDB, I created the link, and hey presto perl -MCPAN -e 'install DB_File' worked fine.

At that point I ran sa-learn against my Junk folder to generate some content, and checked the permissions of the bayes files. (Note: bayes_path in the local.cf for spamassassin needs to contain the prefix of the bayes files.  e.g.:

use_bayes 1
bayes_path /export/home/spamd/bayes/bayes
bayes_file_mode 0666

# ls /export/home/spamd/bayes/
bayes_journal  bayes_seen     bayes_toks     bayes.mutex

Now that its all sorted, I'm getting much higher SPAM scores, and it seems much more accurate. 

Some would say I should have just used Blastwave, but this was more fun, and a good learning experience. 

tags: Solaris SUN X86 spamassassin

So, I've got Exim working really nicely... I think.

I've got a "dynamic" IP address from my BTConnect business broadband connection. This means that I have trouble connecting directly to SMTP servers from my server because their reverse lookup of my name doesn't match... i.e. it resolves to a dynamic BT address, and some SMTP servers are rightfully suspicious of that and punt me away.

So I've configured Exim to relay to mail.btconnect.com. This works because I've registered my 2 domain names with them, and their mail relay will accept stuff coming from those domains.

However, I also forward e-mail for my sister, and have a couple of little mailing lists configured, and these get bounced because I retain the name of the original sender on my outgoing forwards.

Hmmm. This should be solvable by authenticating myself on BT's mail server.

Trawl of the BT Broadband site tells me that:

1: BT Connect, (the business one) doesn't allow SMTP authentication:

 # telnet mail.btconnect.com 25
Trying 194.73.73.217...
Connected to mail.btconnect.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 C2bthomr06.btconnect.com ESMTP Mirapoint 3.7.4b-GA; Tue, 21 Nov 2006 17:50:20 GMT
ehlo <mydomain>
250-C2bthomr06.btconnect.com Hello host<nnn>.btcentralplus.com [xx.yy.zz.aa], pleased to meet you
250-8BITMIME
250-SIZE 52428800
250-DSN
250-ETRN
250 HELP

2: BTInternet, (the consumer one) does:

# telnet mail.btinternet.com 25
Trying 217.146.188.192...
Connected to pop-smtp1-f.bt.mail.vip.ird.yahoo.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 smtp808.mail.ird.yahoo.com ESMTP
ehlo <mydomain>
250-smtp808.mail.ird.yahoo.com
250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN XYMCOOKIE
250-PIPELINING
250 8BITMIME

Phone call to the BTConnect helpline. They understood my problem. Were slightly sympathetic, but confirmed that the only way to send none BT domain e-mail via their BTConnect server was by pre-registering EVERY domain with them. Clearly impractical. (Heck, I don't know who's going to send my sister an e-mail)

Phone call to the BTInternet helpline. I used to have an account. It was suspended due to lack of use. Got it re-instated. But they said I had to dial up at least once every 6 months to keep it going. I don't have a dialer at home, I'm bound to forget, and I'm not crazy about plain text authentication. But I reconfigured Exim to use mail.btinternet.com as my smart relay, and started authenticating. Thankfully, my sister's e-mail stopped bouncing at that point.

I wasn't particularly happy with the solution. I had a couple of long term fixes in mind:

1. Convert to Static IP from BT, which means I could register my name in the rev-arpa tables. Costs money. (Though they should really do it for free, my "dynamic" IP address has not changed in about 3 months.)
2. Sign up for BTInternet's premium e-mail solution @ 1.50 a month, which means I could continue to use the mail.btinternet.com mailserver. Costs money, and not happy with plaintext auth.
3. Something Else.

I ended up doing something else.  I had a rant about this to one of my friends who happens to be my secondary MX (for when I break my machine), and he chuckled and reminded me that when he set the MX up, including my account on his server he also enabled encrypted SMTP authentication for me. All I needed to to is point at his server in the first place. (Which I am now doing)

The only other thing I want to do is set Exim up so that outgoing mail from my domain sent to mail.btconnect.com, otherwise to use my friend's mailserver. I know it's possible, I just need to write the rules. Here they are:

# Use this one for mail originating from my domain so I don't overload smart_route2
smart_route1:
  driver = manualroute
  domains = !+local_domains
  senders = *@<mydomain>
  transport = remote_smtp
  route_list = * mail.btconnect.com

# Use this one for mail NOT originating from my domain. (i.e. mailing list/alias expansion)
smart_route2:
  driver = manualroute
  domains = !+local_domains
  transport = remote_smtp
  route_list = * <my friend's smtp server>

(obviously <mydomain> is my actual domain)
Exim is COOL.

tags: Solaris SUN X86 SMTP Exim

I've been using "VNC Viewer Free Edition 4.1.1 for X" so that I can remote control other machines in the house, but if the machine I try to connect to is down/unavailable/switched off etc, the vncviewer command kind of hangs and I can't do anything on my desktop (except wiggle my mouse) until it times out after a few minutes. Needless to say, this was annoying me. Wrote a simple script called vncsafe:

#!/bin/sh
ping $1 >/dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? = 0 ]; then
        vncviewer $1 &
else
        zenity --error --text="$1 is not responding."
fi

Works a treat

tags: Solaris SUN X86 VNC

I was chatting to Chris about my spamassassin setup, and he was saying that he's configured his with .forward files for all his users (family), and explained the reason for doing so.

Basically, he wanted to set a low SPAM threshold, and have all the SPAM delivered to himself so he could check it. Given that I have 4 daughters under the age of 12, I thought that would be a GOOD THING(tm) as well.

I also wanted to configure it so that I could vary the level of SPAM detection based on the user.

I created a .forward file in each user's account that looks like this:

# Exim filter

if
        $header_X-Spam-Score: does not begin -
then
        if $header_X-Spam-Score: is above 10
        then
                deliver <to me>
        endif
endif

I had to change the exim configuration to write the X-Spam-Score calculated by spamassassin in the acl_check_data filter to $spam_score_int because the user filter stuff in exim doesn't like decimals.

Finally, I wrote a filter in Thunderbird which puts all mail that's in my inbox that's NOT addressed to me in a folder called SPAM. That means I can check for false positives, forward the e-mails to my offspring if required, and add a rule to the whitelist to allow in the future.

The .forward file allows me to specify varying limits of SPAM checking to different people. e.g. the 7 year old twins have a setting of 5 (i.e. .5), while my wife has a setting of 1.

Need to let this run for a while so I can tweak between too much or too little as required. 

tags: Solaris SUN X86 spamassassin

I've diverted slightly from Chris Gerhard's home server implementation by deciding to NOT use the blastwave packages, and instead either use the sunfreeware stuff, or compile it myself.

I've got a few reasons for doing it this way:

1. Many of these packages have compile time options which allow me to include/exclude things. I kind of like the ability to be able to do that, rather than having to stick with the "defaults" compiled by someone else.
2. Using blastwave (which is really great) means that you need to install a bunch of "dependent" libraries. It just kind of irks me that a lot of the libraries/applications dependencies that I install are already sitting in /usr/sfw. I then start getting really confused, and run into complications about LD_LIBRARY_PATHs and making sure things are seeing the right library etc. I think it's difficult to use blastwave without sort of subscribing to it wholesale. It's a bit like buying a "kit car" fully assembled.
   
3. The sunfreeware stuff tries to make use of existing Solaris libraries as much as possible, so should reduce the number of additional packages I had to download.

Additional Software Installed on my home server:

From Blastwave:

• xineui (and whatever it needed to get that working.. about 81MB)
  

From Sunfreeware:

• imap-2004g-sol10-x86-local    (had manually update /etc/inetd.conf and run inetconv, then update /etc/services. Also need to generate a certificate as this is the SSL version, so wouldn't let me do plain text authentication.)
  
• openssl-0.9.8d-sol10-x86-local
• libiconv-1.9.2-sol10-x86-local
  

From CPAN:

• spamassissin

    (# perl -MCPAN -e 'install Mail::SpamAssassin' , download the dependents listed as well.)

From Source:

• Exim 4.63
• Clamav-0.88.6

Building Exim

Building Exim was pretty straightforward. Grab the tar.bz2, unzip, untar, copy src/EDITME to Local/Makefile. Edit the Makefile. It is well commented and lets you turn on/off options, specify where you want the spool, bin directory and config files to go. I created zfs filesystems for /usr/exim and /var/spool/exim. Also elected to make sure I had all the content scanning and TLS/SSL options turned ON. I've got Sun Studio 11 installed, and it used this complier when I ran the make. Then ran make install to stick everything in the right place.

Before actually running exim, I had to make sure that clamav and spamassassin were all up and running, so I got those to the point where the clamd and spamd daemons were running, then simply editted the /usr/exim/configure file to set things up.

Building Clamav

Clamav is cool because it has the "configure" script. So I ran it, it found everything it wanted, and then I ran make and it just compiled. Followed by "make install" to put it all in /usr/local (which is also a zfs filesystem).

Plugging it all in

I kind of cheated and hacked the /lib/svc/method/smtp-sendmail file. I did this because there are dependencies on sendmail which I need to maintain. I cheated a little bit more by having this same file star clamd, freshclam and spamd. It gives me less granularity of control, but the reality is that I usually manage all of these as a group anyway.

The other tiny problem I had was that spamd didn't honour the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable because bits of it are setuid. (Its a Solaris security thing). Anyway, this meant that I had to use crle to  make sure that all the apps had /usr/sfw/lib and /usr/local/lib in their paths.

In my next blog

I'll cover in some more detail the settings I used for exim, and the fun I had with outgoing SMTP e-mail.

tags: Solaris SUN X86

Almost there...

My "services" configurations are almost done now. I'm currently learning about the interactions among: Live Upgrade (which is REALLY cool), SVM mirrored root disks, GRUB menus, and ZFS. (oh, it'll be so much easier when zfs boot is available, but until then.....). The problem kind of starts with the fact that the boot failsafe doesn't recognise /dev/md devices, which means I need to break my mirrors if I need to fix a booting problem.... unless I've got Live Upgrade working which means I'll ALWAYS have a bootable environment.

The man page of lucreate suggests that I use lucreate to do my mirroring.

So, I've currently got the following:

2 boot disks partitioned as follows:

• slice0=7GB
• slice1=2GB
• slice3=7GB
• slice4=free
• slice7=32MB 

Solaris nv Build 52 installed on c1d0s0, with an intent to mirror onto c2d0s0. My ABE for lu is going to be slice3 mirrored.

The lucreate man page says I simply need to type:

# lucreate -c slice0 -m /:/dev/md/dsk/d30:ufs,mirror \
-m /:/dev/dsk/c1d0s3,d31:attach \
-m /:/dev/dsk/c2d0s3,d32:attach -n slice3

which doesn't work due to a couple of "issues" with the interaction between LU and SVM. They are almost all fixed now, and the syntax of the command required is slightly different. I adopted the quick and easy workaround... simply create the metadevices manually first.

# metadb -a -f -c 3 c1d0s7 c2d0s7
# metainit d31 1 1 /dev/dsk/c1d0s3
# metainit d32 1 1 /dev/dsk/c2d0s3
# metainit d30 -m d31
# metattach d30 d32
# lucreate -c slice0 -m /:/dev/md/dsk/d30:ufs -n slice3

This fails after about 30 mins. My filesystem is full. No room to write the GRUB config stuff. Hmm, my slice0 is only 54% full. Slice3 is 100%. It's gone and copied all my data that's mounted via zfs. Referring to the Manual again and I learn how lucreate decides what to put into the BE or not. It looks in vfstab. Zfs filesystems aren't listed there, so it figures that my /opt/SUNWspro (which is a zfs filesystem) is on the / partition, and dutifully copies it. Hmm. Need to exclude all my zfs filesystems. (There are a couple of bugs logged against this as well, as one would think that lu would be clever enough to do this by itself... and it does kind of.)

# zfs list | awk '{print $5}' | grep -v \- > /luexcludefile (edit it so that I only list top level directories)

Try the lucreate command again with the -f /luexcludefile . This fails because of package dependencies. (i.e. I'm excluding filesystems that are in the sadm/package files.). Need to use the -I flag. I need to clean up the configuration before I start again, ludelete doesn't work properly because the process failed. Manually delete by editting /etc/lutab file, and simply getting rid of the partially created BE. (ludelete is preferred, only do this if you think you know what you are doing) My final, successful lucreate command was:

# lucreate -I -l /data/downloads/luerror -m /:/dev/md/dsk/d30:ufs -n slice3 -f /data/downloads/luexclude

So, I luactive that and reboot. df -k shows I've forgotten to mirror the swap disk. oops.

# mkfile 1024m /var/tmp/swapfile
# swap -a /var/tmp/swapfile
# swap -d /dev/dsk/c1t0s1
# metainit d21 1 1 /dev/dsk/c1t0s1
# metainit d22 1 1 /dev/dsk/c2t0s1
# metainit d20 -m d21
# metattach d20 d22
# swap -a /dev/md/dsk/d20
# swap -d /var/tmp/swapfile
# rm /var/tmp/swapfile
# (vi /etc/vfstab and change swap location to the md device.)

I'm now running off my mirrored BE: slice3. I ludelete the single sliced slice0, and repeat the process I've just done, rebuilding the slice0 BU as a mirrored slice.

I feel a lot safer now. I've got 2 mirrored bootable partitions on my system. I'd need to to a LOT of stuff wrong for me to get into an unbootable position (again).

Did I mention that the motivation for getting this all to work was that I managed to break my boot environment? (Don't ask, I'm too embarrassed to say how). And that the only way for me to recover was to re-jumpstart the system from my laptop? The whole system ended up being down for about 3 hours, as it took that long to get all the services reconfigured and ready to go again.

 tags: Solaris SUN X86 

Solaris x64 Home Server AND Desktop

For those of you who have been following Chris Gerhard's blog about his adventure in creating a home server running Solaris, none of this is going to be particularly new to you, because I'm shamelessly going to copy as much as he's done to work for me as well.

We both work in the same campus in the UK, and we've both been running our home networks using Sun's Cobalt Qubes for the past few years (not intentionally, I found that out AFTER I met him... actually our first conversation was probably via the Qube when he rescued me after I turned my Qube into a brick (pun intended)), with relatively good success. However, it's become a little old in the tooth (the Qube), and frankly, not Web 2.0 compatible. (or it's not worth the effort to make it so).

I was initially waiting for him to get it all sorted, and then duplicate everything he'd done (hardware and all).

However, I managed to win an Ultra40 with a 24inch LCD monitor at CEC2006 for the best blog coverage of the event, and have decided to use that as my "new" home server. (It came with 1GB RAM and an 80GB HDD , so I've beefed it up to 4GB, and added another 80GB drive and a pair of 320GB drives which wil be dedicated solely to zfs, which is good because then it can turn on the disk write cache. I've also created 2 partitions on the mirrored root disk for live upgrade purposes, and handed over the rest of the disk for zfs. I'm going to use that bit for disk based backups of the important stuff on the 320GB disk.)

Given that it would be a crime to attach the 24 inch LCD to a windows box, I've decided to also make it my primary workstation at home, therefore I'm also going to be playing with JDS4 and making it all work great as a desktop as well.

Progress so far:

• Solaris Nevada Build 51 installed

• JDS4 beta (which will be in build 53 anyway, couldn't wait as it has a heap of really groovy features such as Rhythmbox music player and CD burner and a host of friendly user applications.

• Set up samba so wife and kids can get file and print access. (they were suitably unimpressed and didn't even notice that they were no longer running on a Qube with a 40GB drive and a broken mirror due to a failed disk. I guess that's a good thing)
  

• Connected my HP5150 Deskjet via USB. Worked a charm, created a device called /dev/printer/0 and then used printmgr to configure it. (printmgr IS cool, but still slightly cryptic)
  

• Discovered that the printmgr stuff worked fine for local printing, but couldn't handle the already processed stuff that windows sends it, so had to create an additional "raw" printer queue for printing from there. Couldn't figure out how to do it via printmgr, so did it the real man's way with lpadmin, and accept and enable. Word of warning. "enable <printername>" doesn't work in the bash shell. (I'm sure I could fix it by messing with the filter, but this is easier. I hardly ever print from home when anyone else is printing anyway.)
  

• Got xine working for playing movies (simply grabbed it from blastwave). (Changed nautilus default preferences by editing some files in /usr/share/application)

My BIGGEST problem is that given I won the Ultra40 in the US, it was sent to me with a US UNIX keyboard. Which is kind of OK, given that I spent my formative years in the Caribbean which surprisingly also had US keyboards. However, I'm struggling having to context switch between the 2. (yes, they are different)

Things to do:

• nameservices: dns and dhcp: I'd like to do static dhcp for some of the machines in the household, and I'd like internal nameservice resolution to work. Hence need to own dns and dhcp and don't leave it to my braindead ADSL router.

• smtp/imap: need spam filtering and viruschecking. Chris has used exim/spamassasin/clamv, and it looks really good, but LOTS of configuration options. Might have to steal his config wholesale and tweak it.

• Start doing my snapshotting and backuping onto alternate disk for resilience. (I don't NEED to do that yet as all my data is still sitting on original machines)

All in all, the Ultra40 is a stonking machine. Solaris with the latest JDS is easily a great desktop machine and it's all been relatively smooth so far.

tags: Solaris SUN X86

Five words:

Pimp my ride for GEEKS

Intrigued?

Read about it here: Blackbox

You could be the most depressed and hungover person in the world, but sit and listen to a talk by Jonathan Schwarz and you'll be rejuvenated, and able to face the world with a spring in your step, and a twinkle in your eye. Unless of course you happen to be one of Sun's competitors. (Read his blog)

Couple of things worth repeating: Sun is HUGELY committed to Solaris on ALL platforms. i.e. Solaris x86/x64, the prodigal port, is home to stay. Sun is also massively committed to continuing STKs traditional Mainframe connect business. In other words, if you are an ex-STK customer, don't worry. We are not disinvesting in anything. (and we need the money)

Jonathan also espoused a much more tactfull approach to our competitors. Yes, we should still tease and bear-bait them ('cos that's what makes it fun), but also understand that in many different areas they are our partners as well. Play nice.

You know, Sun is really betting on the fact that "We get it, and they don't", unfortunately sometimes "they" are customers, and analysts. More are beginning to get it though. Bottom line is that we (me and Jonathan ) are convinced that we are going in the right direction, and the longer you take to get it, the more you're gonna have to catch up.

The big news is that Jonathan has promised to cut his ponytail off when Sun stock hits £15.00. The scissors, as it were, is in your hands!

tags: cec2006

Had a really good article sitting in my head, just needing to be typed up.

Jim and Dan did the last session of Tuesday. Jim finally explained what an Eigenvector was, and Dan explained what was being put in place to formalise Technical structure so that the geeks can actually start to begin to plan their careers.

To be honest, both put me in such a good mood that I celebrated too much at the CEC2006 party, and the article I was going to write kind of disappeared.

It might come back to me when I've recovered more completely, but until then, you're gonna have to just put up with this.

I'm sitting outside the general session waiting for it to start. This is the closing address of the conference, and Jonathan is going to be talking to us. Prepare to be enthused.

tags: cec2006

He was GREAT!

But I can't say anymore.

One of the funny comments on the interactive messaging thing we were doing was a comment from someone along the lines of: Andy's processor never stalls, he never stops talking, even to take a breath. Andy replied that he once went to a speech therapist to help him become more understandable. He thought it was all about his accent. Basically, after 2 days she just said: t-a-l-k s-l-o-w-e-r....

tags: cec2006