Saturday June 18, 2005
UK's first OpenSolaris User Group (OSUG) meeting - AGENDA
UK's first OpenSolaris User Group (OSUG) meeting, 20th June 2005, 18:00+
We are getting closer and closer, so I thought I wanted to highlight this again and also let you know about the agenda for the meeting ! Firstly we will hold the meeting in Sun Microsystems CBC (Customer Breifing Center) at 45 King William Street starting at 18:00 and probably last for 2-3h .... Secondly, the agenda we have is
18:00-18:15 - WELCOME & INTRO
18:15-18:45 - OPENSOLARIS FROM THE INSIDE
18:45-19:15 - WHY OPENSOLARIS
MRC Rosalind Franklin Centre for Genomics Research
Solaris from a external pov, pilot program
19:15-20:00 - SOURCE TOUR, fasten your seatbelts
Gary Pennington, Dowstone.com
So, if you are looking for Solaris features .... this is maybe not the meeting (although if you want that let me know), but if you want to come along and meet other similar people a.k.a.
based in the UK, this is definitely it. See YOU there .....tag:opensolaris and solaris
( Jun 18 2005, 07:51:08 AM GMT+00:00 ) Permalink
Tuesday June 14, 2005
Finally ... now we are OPEN for business !!!
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It's been a looooong wait, because I started hearing
this being discussed quite a few years back ... we sat in a internal
meeting in Menlo
Park, SFO and XXXX talked
about plans for open sourcing Solaris. The problem
was that there were many opponents at that time .... and as with
everything ... there are always pros and cons ! Anyways now we are here
... hopefully you will start to use it, see the
benefits, feedback,
engage
and maybe even do some coding
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BUT ... during all the meetings,
talks
etc I have done through the years ... people or maybe more likely customers do
tend to not care to much about this matter  I mean
... they would love
to see the code, get
better understanding, investigate a problem/bug, improve an application
etc etc there are many reasons BUT one which is very seldom there, from
an end users p.o.v, is to
actually write something new or additional to Solaris ... I repeat,
most customers just want to read and understand the code, not add or
change it !!! An example is what Peter says in his blog
about what distro and reasons for being engaged in the OpenSolaris pilot programAnd a situation like this, as I happened to be in myself a few months back when my colleague Jon and I spoke about how smf(5) will change our lives (thank god!) .... he pointed out that smf(5) is actually affecting the share command - huh? Yes when you run share to export a filesystem you will automagically1 enable svc:/network/nfs/server plus some other supportive services ... The thinking is that if you want to share(1M) something you obviously want to ... share(1M) it ... so if the nfs server et. al. is not enabled it obviously has to be before the sharing is taking place, pretty logical isn't it. Agreeing that this can be a issue from a security p.o.v ... but then again we are humans ... so we should know what we are doing shouldn't we as a conclusion .... I guess the RFE to report/log will be for the capability of unshare and unshareall to disable the nfs server et. al. when the last shared filesystem is unshared But the question
is who will do that, you or me ?tag:opensolaris and solaris |
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( Jun 14 2005, 06:52:50 PM GMT+00:00 ) Permalink
go get the (smf) mug !!! If you are really in for a treat then think about what you really miss when speaking about Solaris 10 services .... start to write your own manifest for it and submitt it to stephen in the smf(5) team ... if you are lucky (and your entry(ies) is received by June 15th) you may get a cool (for hot drinks?) limited edition, custom made, smf(5) mug
stephen and liane will explain what and how you need to submit
tag:opensolaris and solaris
( Jun 14 2005, 09:37:48 AM GMT+00:00 ) Permalink
Friday June 10, 2005
UK's first OpenSolaris User Group (OSUG) meeting, 20th June 2005, 18:00+
So
finally the turn has come for London to host it's first OSUG meeting
... there has been previous meetings in both San Fransisco (or more
presicely the Sun Santa Clara Campus, one and two) as well as Sydney. We have got a great line up of speakers and are really looking forward in seeing YOU there too, since it is open to all interested parties, internal and external to Sun !
Our first meeting will be held in the Customer Briefing Center, Sun Office on 45 King William Street starting at 18:00 and probably last for 2-3h .... I am pleased to announce our speakers for the event so far Gary, Alan, Simon, Peter and I'm sure that they will make the 1'st OSUG meeting worth your while to attend. And you never know, there could be SWAGs and snack to those that attend
tag:opensolaris and solaris
( Jun 10 2005, 08:52:36 PM GMT+00:00 ) Permalink
Thursday June 09, 2005
how to approach systems management a.k.a. KISS
When speaking to many customers about Solaris there are few things that sometimes surfaces after a bit of discussion .... GUIs and management tools, are often high on that list. It therefore triggered me to write a bit about this when I saw Peter's blog and comment. Yes Solaris might not have GUIs for everything but as people know, Solaris is/was mainly a server operating system, this has both pros and cons (and effects) and as Peter rightly says many customer demands us to give them CLI's. This is easily understood if you ever have been tasked to manage tens to hundreds of servers at any time.
I also remember when working with DG/UX1 ... where the management tools would tell you in the log files what commands you actually executed after moving/clicking around in the menus .. so what do you think the customers started to do after a few of those sessions ..... you guessed right .... using the CLI
But life is changing ... Solaris is more and more common if not on workstations and laptops but sunrays. This, if nothing else really puts the Solaris user interface (GUIs ?) in the spotligth. So the first thing that was done to Microsoftify it is as you may guess JDS. Addressing the interface an end user experience will obviously take us one step forward, but still wont solve the many management tasks you may need to execute on a Solaris server. But before you start to create the next wizzy GUI you better ask yourself what is it you really want to accomplish .... Sometimes the GUI will, because of it's nature, provide you with a better picture as Jon and Simon proves, but an other excellent example of the "other way" is e.g. zfs, it is not what you should do to a filesystem but what a filesystem should do to you! (and yes zfs is coming
So when we (and that's a whole bunch of people .... including Bev (who needs to start blog'in ), Anay and Baban) are taking about KISS2 we don't only mean nice GUIs but ... what it really means to approach and manage a Solaris system ..... stay tuned .....1 or even AIX and smit for that matter
2 Keep It Simple Solaris
tag:opensolaris and solaris
( Jun 09 2005, 06:47:09 AM GMT+00:00 ) Permalink
Monday June 06, 2005
the linux kernel development process
A few days ago there was an interesting article on groklaw for anyone interested in Linux kernel development. The article describe the patch/putback process for kernel development but as a mr Anonymous writes "Interesting article. But it describes the _current_ patch submission procedure,which was only introduced _after_ this whole SCO mess started. Patch submission before March 2003 was much more chaotic." I don't necessarily agree with mr Anonymous but there is a point in that this process has changed somewhat based on the whole SCO "thing" .... I also wonder how much the BitKeeper vs git affects it all .... ?
tag:kernel and linux
( Jun 06 2005, 12:20:04 AM GMT+00:00 ) Permalink
Wednesday June 01, 2005
Crazy Frog - Axel F ...... who could believe that there would ever be a $13billion market for mobile ring tones ... NOT ME ... but I must confess after hearing and seeing Axel F a.k.a. Crazy Frog ... I now understand why some people do spend their money, he is brilliant AND I am no the only one thinking this "ridiculous ringtone known as Crazy Frog Axel F, which moved in to the top slot on the British singles chart yesterday. It’s the first time a lowly ringtone hath entered into battle with conventional full-length tracks and won" reed more here and here
So please call me
<sigh> yes I will stop nowtag:ringtones and crazy frog
( Jun 01 2005, 08:27:00 PM GMT+00:00 ) Permalink
Monday May 23, 2005
distributions based on OpenSolaris
So ... here we are, we have all seen/used Solaris 10 for some time now or if you haven't then you may at least read some of the good pressarticles and reviews. OpenSolaris is also getting closer and closer to release the source code and if you've already finished looking through DTrace there will soon be plenty more to look at. But - What will you get ?
As we see it, the binary distribution of OpenSolaris is Solaris Express. You might say that that is not truly open source software (since Sun compiled it ?). OK, so you can obviously compile it yourself and as this is a new beginning for Solaris this will give you a kernel with some core functionality, it will not yet be the complete Solaris distribution but rather the ON (OS and Networking) consolidation a.k.a. kernel ... We are addressing this and the roadmap tells us it will require some more work before we have a complete distribution. Today OpenSolaris is more like kernel.org than Fedora from Redhat. Something my colluege Eric Boutilier has had some thoughts about too .... By the way, when choosing this path, there are plenty of help out there like blastwave, sunfreeware, solarpack etc to be used ....
Another thing, (which I tend to explain to people I have meet when discussing OpenSolaris) we can't open source the code more than once ..... e.g. Xorg, GNOME et. al. are already open source'd .... ok it doesn't stop us from including it but it's just a question of prioritizing the workload
Anyways, the other option is to go for a complete (non Sun) distribution based on OpenSolaris ... and there are already a few initiatives, like SchilliX. You may even want to use it on a PowerPC platform ... then look or help Cyril and the gang with Polaris ?
Maybe you are into optimize/customize and compile it for your specific system (like the gentoo bunch) then look no further, here is the announcement for gentoo/OpenSolaris support ... this will of course use Portaris.
So there will be options (and these are only the first ones) ... if you aren't happy running Solaris Express or Solaris 10
tag : opensolaris
( May 23 2005, 12:34:39 PM GMT+00:00 ) Permalink Comments [2]
Wednesday May 18, 2005
Importing Mozilla profiles ....
I don't know if I am thick but I have never really seen/understood how you can get to re-use your mozilla settings once you have moved around (or reinstalled os etc, etc, etc) the mozilla directory (which holds all your settings and local email etc). This problem is equally bad on Windows as UNIX but because of the possibility of using the symbolic links in UNIX it makes it somewhat a lesser problem .... Windows though, is a pain .... and I really hate changing the settings again and again, it's not only typing in all the settings for mail servers, usernames, etc ... but then we have all the cookies and saved passwords  So yesterday I found out the "better way"(tm), pure coincidence, that you can just specify the directory path .... and then for the profile name you use the obscure directory name assigned by mozilla when creating a profile ... Voila ... (later you can rename the profile if you are in for the details Smoooth .... tag : mozilla |
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Sunday May 15, 2005
partition ids and dual/tripple/quad booting using grub .....
One of the things I do is to have alternatives ... I spend an awful lot of time using my laptop but also talking to customers and the like ... and as always the last thing I want to happen during a preso/demo is the system to "misbehave" but equally so I want to try out different stuff like trusted solaris, opensolaris or solaris express as much as possible .... The issues with this is that Solaris is only happy to see ONE fdisk partition of type 0x82 .... which means I can't have two Solaris partitions on that same disk ..... I could use the same partition and then have several Solaris slices in this fdisk partition but that kind of defeats the safetiness aspect when using "bleeding edge" e.t.c. stuff, although it has to be said that Solaris is very rarely giving me hard times ....
The other problem as you may already know, is that Solaris had the same partition type as Linux swap partitions (0x82). One way to get around this is to put your linux distro (root(?) and swap) partitions within a FAT16 Ext partition (0x05). This will then "hide" your linux environment from Solaris .....
But to handle both of these problems in the most effective way ... a niftier method (as I think) can be used. Firstly boot management should be done by GRUB and a particular command called parttype is your friend w.r.t. fdisk partition types .... parttype will let you change/flip partition types in the boot manager so that the OS'es will never see (i.e. you can hide) what's actually on the disk ....
This makes my /boot/grub/menu.lst look like :
parttype (hd0,2) 0x8
parttype (hd0,1) 0x82
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1
title Trusted Solaris 8 12/02 - Certified Version
parttype (hd0,1) 0x8
parttype (hd0,2) 0x82
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
makeactive
chainloader +1
title Gentoo
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hda5
initrd /boot/initrd.img
the only requirement for now is that you also have to install GRUB a.k.a. a linux distro too ..
although this is something we will revisit in the future ...
tags:
This is a personal weblog, I do not speak for my employer.
