The Open Road

OpenSSO Store Now Open

This just in - you can now buy cool OpenSSO stuff at http://www.cafepress.com/opensso.

I want a dog t-shirt. Even if I don't have a dog.

Posted at 04:11PM Nov 27, 2007 by dgolds in Open Source  |  Comments[1]

Adventures with Missing Memory

I recently installed Ubuntu Linux 7.10 on my Ultra 40 at home. When I ran any command that reported memory (free, top, system monitor, etc.) it reported that 2.5 GB was available on my system. The problem with this is that my system has 3 GB.

I did a lot of searches on "missing memory," "underreported memory," etc. and never came up with anything. But after running the dmesg command today on an unrelated matter, I noticed this message:

Use a PAE enabled kernel

After a few searches, I determined that Ubuntu had chosen the wrong kernel for my machine. I needed the bigsmp flavor. Previous Linux variants had installed this by default but not Ubuntu 7.10. It was not easy to figure out how to get that kernel, either. A search in Synaptic for bigsmp yielded nothing. So back to Google, where I was able to find the advice to install the linux-image-server package. So I did, restarted my system, and the bigsmp kernel came up in my grub boot list.

So I booted it.

Now some more fun - gnome wouldn't come up in high resolution. Seems this kernel is incompatible with the nvidia video driver I had installed. gnome put me in 800x600 mode. So I went to the Restricted Drivers panel to disable my nvidia drivers.

More fun. I got a message telling me that this panel wouldn't start up without the linux-restricted-modules-2.6-22.14-server

So I go to Synaptic and look for the package. It's not there! Back to Google, more searching around, appears the package doesn't exist but I can get it if I recompile things on my system. I don't feel like it, so no more nvidia drivers and no more nice compiz for this release.

Sigh.

So one more power down, then reboot into the generic kernel, where it nicely lets me disable my generic driver. Then a final reboot into the bigsmp (aka server) kernel, where I now have access to the full 3 GB on my system.

Posted at 07:58AM Nov 19, 2007 by dgolds in Open Source  |  Comments[2]

Access Manager Makes It Into Gartner's Leaders Quadrant

Today was a big day for a lot of us who have worked with the Sun Java System Access Manager product, which is the progenitor of the OpenSSO product.

Gartner Group promoted Access Manager from the challenger quadrant to the leaders product.

There's a nice article about it here.

It's been a great experience to watch this product grow and mature into what it is today. And, there are some really great things coming on the horizon, all open source.

Congratulations to Jamie Nelson and his fine team. I have worked with these folks for several years now, and they're one of the best engineering teams I've had an opportunity to interact with during my career in software engineering, consulting, training, and instructional design. Just a really nice group of very talented people. Way to go, guys!

Posted at 07:35PM Nov 12, 2007 by dgolds in Open Source  |  Comments[1]