I've decided to split my Serialized Science Fiction over to Behind the Scenes - The Serialization of Science Fiction. Just something I wanted to do...

I've been sponsoring Shawn Walker with what started as a relatively simple and bite sized fix for CR 6397024. The usage output of /usr/lib/fs/nfs/umount was incorrect:

# /usr/lib/fs/nfs/umount
Usage: nfs umount [-o opts] {server:path | dir}

The only flag allowed is -f, so this is the desired output:

# /usr/lib/fs/nfs/umount
Usage: nfs umount [-f] {server:path | dir} 

All this takes is a small change to what is basically a printf() string. We've been going back and forth on it for some time. Shawn decided to add a new lint library and he didn't do it correctly. And I decided that was cool to do. I never discussed with him that he should pull it, he made a choice to improve lint time checking and it could help catch an issue later on. And we want to encourage OpenSolaris developers to own decisions.

The problem was that Shawn didn't understand how the build space interacted with the install space. And the new lint library was not being installed. I knew what was going on, I just didn't know how to describe it succinctly to him. (I was also under pressure to get the Mirror Mounts project out on time - try it, you will love it.) We went back and forth a couple of times, until he finally prodded me to say it such that he understood it. Don't laugh, explaining a system without documentation and not fully understanding it yourself is hard to do - I intuitively understood parts that he didn't and visa versa.

Anyway, he came back later with new changes which compiled and installed correctly. So, I sent out a code review. And promptly stumbled across this resource on OpenSolaris Developer's Reference Guide. I know it would have helped Shawn. I know it would have helped me in both the In Kernel Sharetab and Mirror Mount projects.

In The Cake is a Lie, I gushed over being able to buy Steam games online. And once again, I decided to try to register my Half Life game with Steam. And once again I was disappointed.

I'm a software developer and I understand the need for licensing. I own two copies of every game my son and I play together. (I actually own 3 of Impossible Creatures because he misplaced one and I wasn't going to use some tool to load a CD image to fool his computer.) I have as many copies of WinXP as I have machines running it.

But, ID, Relic, Lucas Arts, even Microsoft, all work with the principle that if you have the physical media and the UPC, you own the game. I've almost never kept my receipt past 30 days for these games. I've gone and bought $9 new copies of Impossible Creatures from CompUSA years after the game was popular and I've had no problem with the licensing keys.

The way that Steam and Valve's support differs from this model is that they assume you are a thief - you are guilty until proven innocent. If I want to activate my Half Life game with Steam, mainly because I think it would be neat more than anything else, I've got to send them $10. It doesn't matter that I've owned the game for over 5 years. The assumption is that either I bought the game on eBay or I'm trying to steal the keys.

Even if I had my original receipt, the fact that it is over 90 days old would probably force me to pay the $10 fee anyway. I don't know, I wasn't smart enough to try and forge a receipt.

It might be the case that I registered the games with Sierra Online. It might be the case that I registered the game with Steam and I lost that account for some reason. It just doesn't matter. I'm assumed to be the one who is trying to pull a fast one. They will not tell you who has the keys registered. You can't see if it was an old account name you used to have.

The reality is that someone could have used a license key generator to steal my key. Or someone could have gotten the keys when they were in the retail store. Or duplicate keys may have been issued to retail boxes. But Valve and Steam are not willing to listen to you, work with you, or do anything other than insist that you pay $10 to get your keys.

It isn't the $10 which is sticking in my throat. It is the fact that if I give them that money, I have in fact admitted to being a thief. And at that point, they will have stolen something from me that I can never get back.

I'd been busy replaying Half Life 2 and reading about Portal on UserFriendly and The Whiteboard. So, I caved and bought it. I wish I had known that before I got Half Life 2, Episode 2. Because I would have just got the Orange Box for $9 more.

Anyway, both games were great. I know some reviewers complain about the length, but I appreciate getting the content now and not 5 years from now. I also value the replay as being high. I've gone through Half Life 2 about 4 different times and enjoyed it each time.

For someone who develops cutting edge system software, I'm actually a late adopter of technology. I fought GUI mail clients forever (or perhaps it was just Microsoft Exchange I was fighting) - I stayed with elm and mutt long past their shelf lives. (And I still prefer mail spools which can be grepped.) But now I use Thunderbird on every system I own.

I finally broke down and bought VMWare Server. And it was a snap to configure and install Ubuntu (I need a Linux NFSv4 test machine) and Solaris Nevada 77. With the first one, I installed Ubuntu off of a DVD. With the Solaris install, I did it off of an ISO.

And I got to thinking, why do I need to dual boot at all? I've got WinXP and Nevada 77 dual booting, and why waste that additional space for Solaris. And, I already love how ZFS lets me preserve my data across Solaris re-installations. My plan is to nuke the raw Nevada partition and run my home directories straight off of the ZFS pools I have created.

The four disks are totally committed to ZFS. And I'm able to add them one at a time to the VMWare Workstation virtual machine. Until I get to the last one that is!

I just checked, it doesn't seem to be something specific with the 4th drive. I added the 4th drive okay as the 3rd drive in the system, but when I tried to add the 3rd drive as the 4th one in the system, I got the very mysterious "Fatal Application Error: reason unknown (type unknown)".

A quick search on google.com didn't reveal the issue. Perhaps I'll have to rephrase my query. Anyway, more to come as it develops.

I've got a NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT card in my system (branded as XFX GeForce 7950GT). It is fanless and supports Dual DVI. I finally got around to adding a Dell 2005 FPW as my second monitor. And that lasted about 15 minutes.

Installation was a breeze on WinXP. But Half Life 2 Episode 2 would not play. This box is my primary home system and has to be able to be an OpenSolaris development machine as needed and also a gaming rig.

Also, when under moderate load, the Dell 2007 FPW (primary monitor), would shake in the background. Not impressive in the least.

Don't get me wrong - I love this graphics card when playing games. It matches nicely with the Dell 2007 FPW. And it is real quiet, which was a major draw for me. I'm just not going to run dual monitors on it.

We put up a Nevada 75 based copy of our next generation NFS server at OpenSolaris pNFS downloads. The main project page is OpenSolaris Project: NFS version 4.1 pNFS.

The basic premise is that you have a metadata server (MDS) and several data servers (DS). A pNFS client would contact the MDS and be told which DS to use. And as the 'p' in pNFS stands for parallel, the client would then stripe file access to the set of DSes.

The instructions for running the prototype are located at pNFS How To. A couple of us have just gone through those instructions blind, i.e., on our own, just like anyone else following them at home. We will be updating them, but in the mean time, here are some notes:

• The MDS has to be configured before the DS(es).
• As the mdsadm command is not persistent, after you reconfigure each DS on the MDS, you will need to dservadm enable the DS(es).
  • It is probably best to do all of the mdsadm commands first on the MDS.
• The ZFS pools created for this can not be reused after an upgrade to non-pNFS bits.
• The ZFS pools might not be reusable after an upgrade to a newer version of the pNFS prototype.
• You do not need a pool on the MDS.
  • The following sharemgr needs to reference a valid path:

    sharemgr add-share -s <path> <group>

  • You could just do a mkdir /export/pnfs on the MDS and share that.