Quest for the holy grail (of blogging!)

So I've been on this quest for a decent blog editor. Note I said decent, not perfect, not awesome, not great, just decent.

For a while now I've been a fan of ScribeFire but I've encountered problems, some of which I have been able to find my way around but the one that really irks me is the one where my posts don't appear on the blog. The post appears in the list of posts in ScribeFire and as far as ScribeFire is concerned, the post is on the blog *except* for the fact that it doesn't appear on the webpage.

So I've moved over to MarsEdit to see what my experience is like. First things first, it posts just fine, which already wins kudos in my book.

Setup was no easier and no more difficult than ScribeFire, but this being the first day, the full experience is still awaiting discovery. More about MarsEdit as we travel the blogging journey in the future.

If you're interested in MarsEdit, you can find a copy at:-

http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/

Comments?

Posted at 03:31PM Nov 30, 2008 by samktan in IT  |  Comments[0]

The new Silicon Valley Parlour game? Really?

Have you seen this?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/29/whats_going_to_happen_to_sun/

Comments?

Posted at 03:25PM Nov 30, 2008 by samktan in SUNW  |  Comments[1]

OpenOffice 3.0 a threat to Microsoft Office! Read all about it!

Check out this article. :-)

http://www.smh.com.au/news/digital-life/articles/openoffice-30-a-fresh-blow-for-microsft/2008/11/24/1227491461526.html

Comments?

Posted at 09:57AM Nov 27, 2008 by samktan in IT  |  Comments[0]

Moving to http://fangzilla.blogspot.com/ - NOT !!!

Yes, I'm back. :-) Of course, this might be good or bad news depending on your perspective.

First some good news of my own. I've been able to narrow down the source of my problems and it's not Scribefire nor Firefox nor OS X nor anything on my side. The crowd goes wild!

Now the bad news. It turns out that our blogs server is as stable as a bowl of rotting jello. The XML RPC server agent (I'm assuming it's an agent.) throws spurious errors as return messages and it causes Scribefire to return all kinds of nasty error messages that freaked me out. The solution is to ignore the error messages, and keep hitting that "Publish" button until it finally gets through.

Not the most intuitive nor the most conclusive of analyses, but it suffices my needs for the time being. Now back to catching up on my blogging!

Comments?

Posted at 07:48PM Nov 24, 2008 by samktan in SUNW  |  Comments[0]

Installing OpenSolaris 2008.11 for the Enterprise (Part 2)

So I'm sitting in the back of a training room waiting for my turn to present, so I'm taking the opportunity to update my blog. :-)

To continue from the last blog, I want to configure my server with two active network ports named geppetto and pinocchio with the following configuration:-

e1000g0 - xx.xx.xx.51/24 - geppetto
e1000g1 - xx.xx.xx.52/24 - pinocchio

Default router for this network is xx.xx.xx.200/24.

Network Automagic (NWAM) doesn't currently support two NICs, so I had to go back to the old school files-based configurations. So first, the hosts file needs to be populated with the correct values, like so:-

# vi /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost loghost
xx.xx.xx.51 geppetto
xx.xx.xx.52 pinocchio

Then off to populate the local files:-

echo geppetto > /etc/hostname.e1000g0
echo pinocchio > /etc/hostname.e1000g1
echo xx.xx.xx.200 > /etc/defaultrouter
echo geppetto > /etc/nodename
touch /etc/notrouter


Just in case you missed it, that last line is there to tell Solaris not to route between the two interfaces. Not strictly necessary but helps save some hair pulling if you need to debug a network problem later.

So, now the next step is to turn off NWAM and turn on the old-style files-based network configuration. Make sure you do this next step from the console (i.e. directly on the keyboard connected to the server, off the serial port, or off the RKVMS on the ILOM).

# svcadm disable network:nwam
# svcadm enable network:default

So now, NWAM is turned off, and your static IP files-based configuration should be active, assuming you got all the correct values entered.

Voila! My server is now running with two active network ports. Next article, installing 3rd party software packages.

Posted at 08:25AM Nov 24, 2008 by samktan in Solaris  |  Comments[0]

Sun and Intel Training

So some of you might already know of this website but we've recently updated it to include our latest servers and will continue to update it as new products are announced. Check it out.

http://www.sunandinteltraining.com/

Comments?

Posted at 08:38PM Nov 23, 2008 by samktan in SUNW  |  Comments[0]

Why Sun won't be acquired?

Here's yet another article espousing an opinion on Sun.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10105585-92.html

Comments?

Posted at 07:00AM Nov 22, 2008 by samktan in SUNW  |  Comments[0]

Installing OpenSolaris 2008.11 for the Enterprise (Part 1)

So I've just got the latest version of OpenSolaris 2008.11 build 101a RC2b (it's a long story!) and I immediately got to work installing it.

Three installs later, I think I've finally got it working in the best compromise possible. Keep in mind, I'm not saying that OpenSolaris is flawed, but there are a couple of caveats that wasn't necessary with Solaris 10.

Scenario

OK, so here's the configuration of my server:-

• Sun Fire X4600
• 4 x 73 GB hard disks
• 4 x network ports (2 ports cabled)

And here's what I wanted:-

• ZFS Boot with all 4 hard disks in one pool
• No additional users nor packages in the global zone
• 3 zones each with its own user list and installed packages
• All zones to use 2nd network port

After the first install, I discovered a couple of annoyances that I managed to get around but I'd hoped I wouldn't have to.

Firstly, NWAM (Network Automagic) only supports one wired interface and one wireless interface. That is to say, I had two out of the four on-board NIC ports connected to the switch, NWAM plumbed all four ports but only activated one. The other three had no IP addresses assigned.

Secondly, I can't add additional hard disks to the root pool (yet!) so I had to create another pool to store all my data.

Thirdly, because I wanted to keep a "clean" global zone, I wanted to install all my software packages in local zones, but local zones in OpenSolaris 2008.11 does not have the pkgadd command. Why do I need pkgadd instead of pkg? Because not all packages are available yet via pkg and I wanted to use blastwave which requires the pkgadd command. Sigh! (Note to self: make a list of packages that aren't available via pkg and port them in my copious spare time.)

Anyway I made some compromises to my desired configuration, reinstalled and reconfigured things, and I've finally got a machine with both ports running and the software packages running (somewhat) like how I wanted them.

Details to be provided in the next blog.

Comments? (c) samktan@sun.com

Posted at 12:18AM Nov 18, 2008 by samktan in Solaris  |  Comments[0]