Thursday Jul 03, 2008
Hacking around with luupgrade on a Nevada SXCE (OpenSolaris) server when /opt is a ZFS filesystem but the root file system is UFS. In this example the file system (mounted at /opt) is called optpool:
YMMV...
comments, corrections, improvements welcome...
Disable services that use /opt and any others that make sense.
Backup /opt (e.g. with rsync)
Unmount (zfs unmount) the optpool filesystem
Run luupgrade
Change the mountpoint property (zfs set) of optpool to a temporary mountpoint. And make sure it mounted there, or zfs mount it manually.
Go to that mountpoint and rename directories that need to be moved out of the way, e.g. perhaps SUNWmlib.
Mount the new BE (lumount)
Note that luupgrade, being a bit confused, probably created a new /opt and installed some stuff there. Copy that stuff over to where you temporarily mounted optpool. E.g:
cd /.alt.new_be/opt && /bin/tar -cpf - SUNWmlib | (cd /tmpmountpoint && /bin/tar -xpvf -) # YMMV
Repeat as necessary, some possibilities (i.e. these showed up in /opt in a b64a->b88 luupgrade for example): SUNWtvnc SUNWvgl SUNWjavadb TurboVNC VirtualGL
Now do luactivate and reboot (init 6)
Move (mv) the bogus /opt directory out of the way.
Change the mountpoint property (zfs set) of optpool back to /opt, and make sure it mounted.
init 6 again
Review the state of SMF services, svcs -x, etc. of course.
Friday Jun 06, 2008
If you subscribe to this blog, you might want to unsubscribe.
I'm not sure what to do about this space. I've quit paying much attention to it and I don't miss it. I don't read blogs much any more either. I've replaced that part of my informaion consumption with listening to netcasts (aka podcasts) on-the-go -- i.e. on my mp3 player/phone (I recently bought a Nokia 5300 in case you're curious).
Also, I guess, there are aspects of blogging that leave me feeling cynical about it. Sometimes really cynical. It sure seems look-at-me'ish and quest-for-hits'ish and monologue'ish. Doesn't it? In other words, not very social.
(By the way, at times, I've been just as guilty of that here as anybody. In fact, one could argue that I'm doing it with this post. Though like anything, it's a matter of degrees really.)
So I thought about this space, and narrowed it down to 3 choices: delete it, leave it as-is (an archive of old posts), or mirror my other (i.e. non-blogging) posts here, such as Twitter. I'm not sure which one I'll eventually settle on, but I'm going to try the latter first and see if that feels right. My theory is that because blogs.sun.com is high on google's radar, people who might like to participate in the public conversations that I participate in will have a better chance of finding them.
Friday Jun 06, 2008
Fri Jun 06 2008
@stevel re: vimperator ... Nice! Can't believe I hadn't heard of it -- otoh, it only started a year ago. Anyway, thanks for the pointer.
Tue Jun 03 2008
@erwann The part of my life that I increasingly, but reluctantly, spend in a browser may have just taken the biggest leap forward ever.
Tue Jun 03 2008
@erwann http://goosh.org/ Holy shit! Does that actually work as advertised? (I just typed help)
Tue Jun 03 2008
Letting the Chicago OpenSolaris mailing-list know about this: http://tinyurl.com/6kugry
Mon Jun 02 2008
@stevel yeah yeah, someday I'll switch. I s'pose I should put-up & write a send/recv wrapper that mimics the CLI and actions of rsync -a ..
Mon Jun 02 2008
Here, zfs beats rsync: http://tinyurl.com/64tkqf, and for servers I admin someday I'll switch, but rsync's KISS advantage still wins for now
Mon Jun 02 2008
Click on the May 31st performance.
Mon Jun 02 2008
Video of my wife's barbershop quartet @ Kennedy Center: http://tinyurl.com/5dy89x. Fast-forward to 33:15 though (past the girls choir)
Mon Jun 02 2008
http://tinyurl.com/5tcbwb - Chicago user group guy reporting strange 'su - postgres' problem on (presumably) Solaris 10.
Sat May 31 2008
They won 1st at the international women's barbeshop (aka sweet adelines international) contest this year.
Sat May 31 2008
Live webcast of my wife's a capella quartet at the Kennedy Center in DC: ...
Thu May 29 2008
Working with lucreate et al. to prep an opensolaris.org backend box for an upgrade.
Thu May 22 2008
@davest Beer is the base, plus lemon or lime, and usually on the rocks.. then it varies. Here's Wikipedia's take: http://tinyurl.com/66a2lb
Thu May 22 2008
@davest If you're staying the W, across the street & left a block or so is pub where I discovered micheladas -- "hand-crafted". I'm hooked.
Thu May 22 2008
Alternatively, as I mentioned earlier, one's following number should reflect reality, not a silly wink-and-a-nod favor exchange.
Thu May 22 2008
... It is REALLY refreshing how Pirillo and others blow up that silliness by just auto-following everyone. ...
Thu May 22 2008
Instead, what we have a lot of is this annoying, mostly self-aggrandizing "my followers:following ratio is bigger than yours" ...
Thu May 22 2008
... that is, if the number of people you TRULY like to follow (eg via devices/IM) is say 40, shouldn't your follow number be near that? ..
Thu May 22 2008
... Personally, I like that. Here's why: Given the follow/following "measure" tends to evoke the bad kind of self-centeredness in people...
Thu May 22 2008
Twitter noobie here wondering about follow etiquette: Q: Why do some tech celebs, like Chris Pirillo, just auto-follow everyone? ...
Tuesday Feb 05, 2008
An accurate + comprehensive + carefully researched + NPOV history of OpenSolaris on the desktop by an independent publication is totally nonexistent (not even close) as far as I know.
Now read this:
Solaris On the Desktop
What a pleasure! Nicely done DistroWatch.
Friday Oct 12, 2007
Dear Joan -- you're amazing, you're wonderful, and now you're a World Champion Quartet Tenor!
Congratulations Joan and the incredible Four Bettys quartet -- 2007 International (yes, that's worldwide) Quartet Champions!
Pictures:
Wednesday Oct 10, 2007
So, happily, all the major concerns from early on about the Indiana program have resolved very nicely.
Well... almost... there's still one remaining...
I don't like calling it Indiana, could we please change it to Houghton? 
No, not because that's my home town. Houghton is the home of Michigan Tech, and Michigan Tech is where Bill Moore went to undergrad school, and Bill Moore is one of the lead engineers of ZFS. So calling it Houghton wouldn't be much of a stretch.
Or would it?
Wednesday Oct 10, 2007
One more follow-on to Monday's post:
Q. Is there any cause for concern about Indiana vis-a-vis BeleniX (as, e.g. expressed here). That is, given that BeleniX has been around now for a couple years, and their high-level goals are almost identical?
A. Absolutely not, in fact the two couldn't be tighter. See:
http://www.genunix.org/distributions/belenix_site/?q=node/54
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.solaris.opensolaris.indiana/832
Tuesday Oct 09, 2007
Following up yesterday's post, allow me to reprise another core issue that people were wondering a lot about in the early days.
Q. Will Indiana distro releases include projects (new features) that are only highly likely to be approved architecturally?
A. Yes, they should and will. For background, see here:
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/install-discuss/2007-September/005431.html
and here:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.os.solaris.opensolaris.indiana/166/focus=789
I'm delighted by this of course, but that's not to say this isn't an extremely complex proposition. For example, note the stark contrast in this regard between Indiana (the new distro project) and Solaris Express (the incumbent). For the latter (where conservativeness rules), architectural review/approval and integration are absolute requirements for inclusion in distro releases.
Monday Oct 08, 2007
The following was actually intended as a comment here:
What is Project Indiana? Explained
But I couldn't get the submit button to accept my comment for some reason, so here it is...
Ben, I agree with John Levon here. Allow me to use gmake (as you mentioned) as an example to illustrate:
My understanding is that Indiana does not provide a way to put gmake (for example) anywhere other than where its been reviewed/approved to be. What I think you're referring to is the ability to customize how add-on software is added on. But gmake isn't an add-on. It's In, with a capital `I'. Gmake on OpenSolaris lives in /usr/bin, and that's just as true for the forthcoming (Indiana-spawned) new distro as it is today for (its predecessor and mentor) Solaris Express.
Of course a separate project could roll its own separate version of Indiana that eschews one or more ARC decisions, e.g. taking gmake out of /usr/bin and putting it somewhere else, but that's no different than what can be done today. I believe Belenix currently has it in /usr/foss/bin for example.
Monday Oct 08, 2007
An exciting event will be happening later this month: Indiana's new OpenSolaris distro is due for its first preview (milestone) release. Also, the OpenSolaris/Indiana Developer Summit is happening this weekend.
With this in mind, allow me to post a reprise or two of some of the core issues that were on a lot of our minds a while back as this new initiative struggled to find its footing.
Probably the most core of the core issues is this: Is the Indiana project a true collaborative effort? There are many shades to that question, but overall, I believe it is. I base this on the the following two things. (Note, the second rests on the first.)
Monday Jul 23, 2007
With DTrace-like and ZFS-like impact, I believe this forthcoming packaging/installation project will frickin' shake the UNIX/Linux earth.
It's going to single-handedly define Indiana.
I've been talking about the importance of packaging systems on this blog for years. See here or here for a sampling... or click on one of those fat links in my tag cloud. Long story short: Package management is foundational to distro popularity and growth. For Linux (or *BSD) laptop/desktop users, the biggest differentiator of their preferred distro is the feature that gives them network-based package management. Period. Nothing else comes close.
The thing about Indiana (in my opinion, which is hardly a secret any more) is that on the heels of things like Nexenta, BeleniX, and Solaris Express (OpenSolaris) Developer Edition, the novelty of the Indiana ideas, especially for the first month or so, weren't exactly something to write home about. But now Indiana literally equates to the new installation/packaging project... at least to my way of thinking.
Something earth-shattering is indeed going to happen.
The new OpenSolaris installation/packaging system...
For The Win!:-)
Monday Jul 16, 2007
Prompted partly by anticipation (and delight) of the distro constructor project being discussed on indiana-discuss recently, I bought an "economy model" laptop over the weekend. The point was to find a barebones (cheap), 32bit laptop to serve a an install/packaging/etc sandbox, and since I researched quite a few models, I thought I'd post a write-up of some of the component specs I uncovered (in this price-class) and related thoughts.
My bargain-hunting method was the weekly-ad, loss-leader, in-store-purchase routine. The retail price (MSR) range turned out to be roughly $550-$700 USD. The price range after discount and mail-in rebate (though some were available w/out rebate) was roughly $400 - $450.
So without further ado, and with corrections and other improvements highly encouraged...
Key:
PDC = Pentium Dual Core
AMD = AMD Sempron 3500+
PCM = Pentium Celeron M
GMA = Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
VIA = VIA Chrome9 HC IGP
ATI = ATI Radeon
Y/N = Does the optical drive write DVDs
Models:
Compaq Presario, C502US: PCM, GMA, N?
Acer Aspire 3680: PCM, GMA, N?
Compaq Presario T2080: PDC, GMA, Y
Everex StepNote VA2000T: PDC, VIA, Y?
* Toshiba Sat. A135-S2326: PDC, ATI, Y?
Acer Aspire 3100: AMD, ATI, ?
I wound up getting the Compaq Presario T2080 at Best Buy.
The asterisk on the Toshiba means it is purported to have Atheros wireless. Most, or all of the rest have Broadcom. (I think that means the NDIS driver is required?). To narrow things down, first I decided to stick with GMA graphics based on something I read in laptop-discuss. Unfortunately that ruled out getting Atheros wireless. That left the 2 Presarios and the Aspire 3680, and I figured the Dual Core Pentium would be better than the Celeron M.
The Sunday ads I perused for this were Best Buy, Walmart, Circuit City, Office Depot, Staples, and CompUSA. Here are the stores that I know currently carry each brand. This is way incomplete though... IOW, no doubt each brand is carried at more than the stores listed here...
Aspire: Walmart, Staples ...
Presario: CompUSA, Best Buy ...
StepNote: Walmart, Circuit City ...
Satellite: Office Depot ...
Some more caveats off the top of my head...
- Advertised specs are often wrong.
- Cheap laptops are big and clunky.
- Installed RAM was either .5 or 1GB, but I didn't keep track of which.
- I think the HDD was 80 GB in all of them, but I'm not sure.
- Some of these might be available for on-line purchase only.
- I think one or two of them has a 14.x-inch screen.
- Loss-leader shoppers are frowned upon by electronics stores, be prepared to be treated that way.
Model names/codes can get really tricky (e.g. "Toshiba Satellite A135-S2326") and are probably not valid outside the U.S. So it might be helpful if anybody has knowledge of equivalent model names in other countries.
So now I have my nifty new cheapo... er... economy lappy but I haven't had time to do much with it yet! What I did get a chance to do though was download and fire up OpenSolaris (Nevada b67) via the BeleniX
0.6.1 LiveCD (also, I stuck with Xfce and the Realtek ethernet NIC for now) and everything, including LAN/WAN/DHCP discovery worked great!
Friday Jul 13, 2007
Hey, it's Friday night, what better time to take a few shots at the media!
As you may know, Sun sponsored an OpenSolaris/Indiana Townhall yesterday, and...
InfoWorld wrote:
"Having already offered up Solaris to open source via the OpenSolaris project, Sun will expand its proselytizing of the platform by releasing binaries."
Well... actually... that happened on day one of OpenSolaris. In other words, it was 2 years ago(!) that we started releasing binaries of OpenSolaris with the (hugely popular) Solaris Express program -- a freely downloadable, OpenSolaris based distro (binary of course
). Here's the homepage:
http://developers.sun.com/sxde
InfoWorld also wrote:
"Developers will get the latest Solaris innovations without having to build the Solaris code."
Ditto. Via the Solaris Express program, developers have long been able to "get the latest Solaris innovations without having to build the Solaris code".
Software Journal wrote:
"Sun Microsystems has said that they are planning to release binaries for its OpenSolaris Unix platform in Spring next year."
Ditto... (etc... you get the picture...)
However, big kudos to Michael Singer of InformationWeek. If you read just one article about the Townhall event, I highly recommend his:
Sun To Split Solaris Distribution Model
The only nit here was saying that Marc Hamilton said the following (or maybe Marc misspoke and actually said it, but whatever):
"While Solaris Express has been considered a successful distribution model, Hamilton noted its disadvantage is that it is only available to Sun's customers."
It is, of course totally free. Here's the download page:
http://developers.sun.com/sxde/download.jsp
Monday Jul 09, 2007
Regarding my Whither
Belenix post, I got some helpful input in this regard. In short (paraphrasing) it goes like this: Prevailing development processes and policies (such as those of OpenSolaris in general plus those of a Project's sponsoring Community Group) might preclude a Project from
adopting an existing technology as-is.
Good point. Any
project on opensolaris.org that aspires to be an official OpenSolaris
thing probably should carefully scrutinize certain non-trivial issues,
such as provenance of components; what was/wasn't satisfactorily
reviewed; etc. (Not the least being contributor agreement (SCA) policy.
Consider the following limit case for example: Should a contributor
agreement be required for all contributions in all opensolaris.org
projects, code and otherwise?)
So in light of these kinds of
issues, I see why Indiana might consider it unwise to
adopt BeleniX... or any of the existing distros for that matter.
Sunday Jul 08, 2007
Thinking more about my query in
this post, and Rich and Ché's replies, and the level of participation
by Solaris engineering on indiana-discuss,...
One of
the main things (the main thing?) that makes
Indiana important is that it's effectively forcing/accelerating the
Solaris Express product from being partly closed to being totally
open. The aspect of SX that currently is not very open is
decision-making; in particular, decision-making around what SX is made
up of.
With that said, it really feels to me like the SX
and Indiana projects/distros will and should merge in every way. In
other words, not co-exist. Make no mistake, I have no special knowledge
to that effect, it just seems like a logical progression from here,
doesn't it?
Another thing worth pointing out is that product
management (a marketing function) provided the main impetus for
this evolution to happen. (IOW, contrary to popular belief, marketing can play a really key role in open-source communities.)
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YMMV, but if you're not going to upgrade anyt...
@mads: I used lumake in this case, which doesn't h...