for some time a lucky few inside sun have been playing with AMD64 (athalon) acer ferrari 3400 laptops . we've been enjoying quick-turnaround on added hardware-specific features like the battery monitor, power management and more thanks to a casper and his frkit (ferrari-kit) utility. now you can play with it too thanks to opensolaris and the CDDL.

there are lots of reasons you might want to change the default Solaris 10 login screen. here's the quick and easy instructions for doing it.

the file which contains everything you want to know is called 'styleModern'. making changes to this will create the effect you want without mangling too much of the standard config.

first, create direct /etc/dt/config/C, and copy in styleModern:
# mkdir /etc/dt/config/C
# cp /usr/dt/config/C/styleModern /etc/dt/config/C/styleModern

next, create a local images directory to hold your modified images, and copy across some of the basic items (which you won't customize)
# mkdir /etc/dt/config/images
# cp /usr/dt/config/images/A* /usr/dt/config/images/S* /etc/dt/config/images


now create your custom dtlogin backdrops as gzipped xpm files. you need one file for each of the likely screen sizes, and each file must be named in the format name-size.pm.gz. for example, mybackdrop-1400.pm.gz for 1400x1050 (laptop) screen, or mybackdrop-800.pm.gz for an 800x600 screen. save these files in /etc/dt/config/images .

# ls /etc/dt/config/images
Adobe.im1.Z mybackdrop-800.pm.gz Solaris.im8g.Z
Adobe.im8 Solaris.im1.Z
mybackdrop-1400.pm.gz Solaris.im8

now edit your /etc/dt/config/C/styleModern file, and make a couple of changes. change the line defining PIXMAPDIR from
#define PIXMAPDIR /usr/dt/config/images
to
#define PIXMAPDIR /etc/dt/config/images


and change the line defining STYLE_PIXMAP from
#define STYLE_PIXMAP PIXMAPDIR/styleModern-backdrop
to
#define STYLE_PIXMAP PIXMAPDIR/mybackdrop

(or whatever you set 'name' to in your files above.

save, logout, and enjoy the new backdrop!

to revert to the default, simply delete the /etc/dt/config/C/styleModern file

staroffice 8 should be out soon (the beta program closed at the end of april). for those who want to install and make it the default office suite for all users on a solaris 10 system, here are some quick and dirty instructions.

• install staroffice 8 as root. choose /opt/staroffice8 for the installation directory
• as root, go to /usr/share/application-registry directory
• copy existing config files into backup files:
  # cp gnome-vfs.applications gnome-vfs.applications.bak
# cp staroffice.applications staroffice.applications.bak
# cp staroffice8.applications staroffice8.applications.bak

  (staroffice8.applications is actually a symlink to /usr/share/gnome/applications-registry/staroffice8.applications - you may want to make a backup of that instead, ie /usr/share/gnome/applications-registry/staroffice8.applications.bak)
• edit staroffice8.applications - change the first line from 'staroffice8' to 'staroffice':
  staroffice
command=staroffice8 <---- note: should remain staroffice8
name=StarOffice 8
.../rest of file/...

  
• edit staroffice.applications - change the first line from 'staroffice' to 'staroffice7':
  staroffice7
command=staroffice
name=StarOffice 7
.../rest of file/...

  
• edit gnome-vfs.applications
  • find the entry for 'staroffice'
  • replace that entry with the text from staroffice8.applications


• default application should now be staroffice 8

last night's inaugral SOSUG meeting seemed to go quite well, with about 20 people enjoying presentations from brendan gregg and alan hargreaves on dtrace and SDT probes respectively. brendan's was probably the slowest intro to dtrace i've ever heard ;) - jon haslam and bryan cantrill are hyped on on something (excitement?) whenever i hear them talk and seem to want to fit a 4-hour presentation into 20 minutes 8). (they're all great, though, and fun to watch to see if - for example - jon will actually explode on stage). brendan on the other hand actually seemed to talk like a normal person, although he couldn't help getting excited either as he demonstrated just a few micron's of this tool's abilities.

the next SOSUG meeting will probably be in a month's time. if you're going to be in sydney around that time - check out the sosug google group to see what the details would be. there was a nice-sounding idea about holding it at the james squire brew house, which apparantly has meeting rooms with wireless hotspots.

mmmmmm. beer.