Kool Aid Served Daily

I was able to recover my ZFS filesystem when I reinstalled Solaris. If I had known I was going to nuke the root partition, I would have done something like zpool export zoo to make sure it could be imported to a new machine. Since I didn't I had to recover it via zpool import -f zoo.

If we were to take a look at the home directories right then, we see:

# ls -al /export/zfs
total 26
drwxr-xr-x   7 root     sys            7 Jan 14 14:25 .
drwxr-xr-x   4 root     sys          512 Jan 14 23:55 ..
drwxr-xr-x   2 2025     100            2 Jan 14 14:25 monster
drwxr-xr-x   2 1094     100            2 Jan 14 14:10 nfsv2
drwxr-xr-x   2 1813     100            2 Jan 14 14:10 nfsv3
drwxr-xr-x   2 3530     100            2 Jan 14 14:11 nfsv4
drwxr-xr-x   2 1066     staff          3 Jan 14 14:24 tdh

So, we see names for root, sys, and staff. We don't see names for uid 1066, gid 100, etc. The reason why is that ownership is stored by a numeric value in the inode and not a string name. And we do not have a mapping for these uids to names. We can fix that easily:

# grep tdh /etc/passwd
# grep users /etc/group
# echo "users::100:" >> /etc/group
# useradd -m -u 1066 -g 10 -c "Tom Haynes" -s /bin/tcsh -d /export/zfs/tdh tdh
# useradd -m -u 1094 -g 100 -c "Mr. NFSv2" -d /export/zfs/nfsv2 nfsv2
# grep users /etc/group
users::100:
# grep tdh /etc/passwd
tdh:x:1066:10:Tom Haynes:/export/zfs/tdh:/bin/tcsh
# ls -al /export/zfs
total 26
drwxr-xr-x   7 root     sys            7 Jan 14 14:25 .
drwxr-xr-x   4 root     sys          512 Jan 14 23:55 ..
drwxr-xr-x   2 2025     users          2 Jan 14 14:25 monster
drwxr-xr-x   2 nfsv2    users          2 Jan 14 14:10 nfsv2
drwxr-xr-x   2 1813     users          2 Jan 14 14:10 nfsv3
drwxr-xr-x   2 3530     users          2 Jan 14 14:11 nfsv4
drwxr-xr-x   2 tdh      staff          3 Jan 14 14:24 tdh

We can see that right away the new accounts are reflected in the directory output and that even if there is no corresponding user, we can see a group.

So if you are looking at the output of ls -la and the user or group is a number, then it means that number does not have a corresponding entry in the name service. On a NFSv2/v3 mounted filesystem, it might mean that while the server can see the entry, the client can not. Or it could mean that the server supports more users than the client. With NFSv4, you would see the string nobody, which effectively prevents you from seeing the UID.

And it is dead quiet. I went ahead and removed the Silicon Image controller to see if it would help the network connectivity. I.e., Solaris had network connectivity when the card was not there. I kept the Soundblaster in though. The network came right up. Funny that.

I put the last case fan back in and slide everything back in place. I'm about to turn off this desktop to swap places between the two. That will also let me hear how quiet it really is going to be now.

And before too long, adept will be dualbooting into WinXP and Solaris. I'll want to keep the WinXP there for a bit to grab anything I didn't either back up or transfer. By the way, I copied my Steam games onto USB HD and then onto kanigix. I found my steam account password and the games started right up. It isn't on my start menu (under all programs), but a quick shortcut onto my desktop and all is fine. I can't wait to try the Lost Coast demo again. I want to see the stuff I couldn't see on my old machine.

Getting rebates at NewEgg was dead easy. You take your Item # and search the NewEgg Rebate Center. Be sure to get the rebate forms close to when you order, although I've read NewEgg's customer service can help you if the forms are gone.

My plan with adept is to get all of my home network services up and running on it. Once I have them configured, I'll nuke the Red Hat Fedora Core 4 partition on mrx and have a x86 test box to play with. I'm intrigued by the stuff that Doug Scott is doing to How small can you make OpenSolaris.

I finally installed Empire At War and called The Monster in to watch. The units ran, the details were crisp, and he got jealous about the tracks my vehicles left in the ground. After the game, a comment was made to the effect that we could switch computers.

But then he mentioned that speed-wise we were a match, it was just the graphics that his was lacking. Now I could order another XFX card. But I'd probably install the current one in his machine first to make sure it worked. The PCI Express card I tried last year wasn't seen by the motherboard. I'm not sure if it was the motherboard being fully compliant or the graphics card.

His machine did have problems with one of the missions in Knights of the Old Republic. We finally lucked out with a driver update.

Heatwise, the CPU cooler is still cool to the touch, and both the graphic's cooler and the drives are warmer. I'd consider a quiet graphics cooler considering how much heat the CPU cooler fan takes care of.

I'm ready to finish the box up and put it next to my desk. I'm also ready to test a dual-headed DVI combo for a desktop. One of the reasons I want to get the Shuttle off of my desk (it could have gone already) is to have a clean surface and a bank of LCD displays. I don't mind the Sun Ray 1G on my desk, it has a small footprint and looks crisp.

My final tasks are to get the networking going under Solaris and to also process the rebates out of NewEgg.com.

This is the view from my office, which since I am a telecommuter, happens to also be from my home:

Click on it to see the full glory. It is hard to capture that the branches and twigs are coated with ice.

Okay, I've spent the day moving HD ribbons and trying to get both WinXP and Solaris to either first install into and/or then boot on my ATA/133 drive when it is plugged into the PCI controller.

WinXP will not install into it. I needed to install on it whilst it was attached to the loop on my motherboard. Then after I got a driver for the Silicon Image SiI 0860, I was able to boot to it when I moved to the card.

Edit: I've fixed the reference to Silicon Image courtesy of Luke in the comments. Note, I've got a lot of friends who used to work for SGI.

Solaris will not install into it. I installed via the loop on the motherboard. My goal was to then move the drive and hack the /etc/vfstab after booting from the DVD. No such luck, the mini-root must not have support for the card. I can get to grub and select either WinXP or Solaris, but it will not then find the drive.

From earlier, the WinXP partition was hosed (pilot error is my guess) and I blew away the Solaris partition while trying to reinstall the WinXP. I'm used to Linux and Solaris partition editors which don't make changes until you tell it to commit. Anyway, I hadn't caught the boot order in BIOS that time and it wanted to install a boot sector on one of the SATA drives.

My current status is that I can dual boot like crazy. The Solaris networking is not working. The nge0 driver was not doing DHCP (either yesterday or today). I was able to do a sys-unconfig(1M) yesterday and the system started working. Today that is not helping. I'm not sure if it is the cards in the PCI slots or not.

Networking is okay from withing WinXP. I'll look into this later. Right now I need to install some games so my son can see me playing on a system which does not clunk along.

I think the best thing to do for installations is to get the USB DVD working for Solaris. Then I can get rid of the internal DVD drive.