Ultraviolet

OpenSolaris distro - AuroraUX makes Frontpage of Reddit !

2009-09-27T19:53:00.000-07:00

Reddit Article.

I know I have not updated my blog in a year or so now, Simply not had the time due to working on AuroraUX^[1] and LLVM/Clang and Compiler-RT (Our toolchain) upstream as well so that everyone will benefit.

I think there maybe is a bit of misconception that we are trying to reinvent the wheel totally.

This of course is not practical to make a *usable* OS today.

We simply just would like to bring together some partially good technologies such as LLVM and rewrite some things in Unix that have long needed a revisit for usage on the desktop in 2009 and onwards.

A good quality window manager that is not over convoluted, stable and no memory leaks however still easy to use and very *fast*/desktop interactiveness is key.

We would like to revisit Xorg, However we need more developer traction and needs to be talked about in a lot of depth. However a rewrite of the Unix windowing system is far more needed then yet another kernel. Something portable that everyone can benefit from, not just AuroraUX.

Please do drop around #auroraux on irc.freenode.net and say good day.

Cheers,
Edward.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AuroraUX

Qt Creator 1.0 is out with Qt4.5. Installing on Ubuntu HOWTO

2009-03-09T09:28:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Here is a quick and dirty HOWTO:

Download yourself the SDK from here: http://www.qtsoftware.com/downloads

sudo apt-get install libfontconfig1-dev libxext-dev libxrender-dev libSM-dev libglib2.0-dev

They have a nice IRC room on Freenode, #qt-creator

Have fun,
Regards,
Edward O'Callaghan.

The World Is Ending, So What !

2009-02-07T19:41:00.000-08:00

Today I received a somewhat distressing text message that I would like to hear by quote,

"Over half the country is 40c. Fire storms hit Victoria last night killing over 40 people and wiping out 26 towns and the heat wave in Adelaide still hasn't stopped; nearly two weeks of 40c there. Death toll picking up there in a big way."

After thinking about this for approximately 60-odd seconds, I propose the following response, as a viable solution, to the above problems which appear to be emerging around the planet.

Shut up and deal with it! These are the consequences of your actions, i.e. driving your 2L+ motor vehicle to the shops around the corner just to pick up a can of Cola, not taking a "real" active interest in your home power usage.

Instead you "choice" to spew out your constant worthless propaganda that has absolutely no effect at all on climate change!

You also make the choice not to educate yourselves in any of the relevant matters only to uses others 'opinions' in newspapers from people who really don't have a clue instead of reading something more worth while, such as, for example, The New Science magazine, which has been written by people with real "understanding" on the highly complex matters involved in large scale ecological changes.

A quick test to prove the above point would be to ask a 'climate change propaganda fanatic' what the base units are of a kW ( 1,000 J/sec ) or about the materials used in the manufacturing or disposing of low energy usage fluorescent lighting.

I also like to throw this one point in about the usage of non energy responsible software - something we will be strongly innovating with AuroraUX. Take antivirus type products as an example: I ask the reader to take it upon themselves to work out the amount of carbon put into the atmosphere per year purely from the power required in the usage of a Norton AV running over 40min, once per week on a 350watt system running XP (noting that AV max's out CPU and Disk), thus putting the system under stress and waking the CPU up out of its C states while spinning up the disk over all the installs in the UK alone. You may get an estimate from BroadBand user numbers for PC's in the UK that maybe running AV software like the above.

Another hot topic is that of Nuclear power. This is something that few people have any real comprehension about and what our power requirements "really" are in cities such as Sydney, London, etc...
People would rather have a 20-30 year old reactor running than an updated, safer reactor that could meet our exceedingly high power demands. As Coal and Nuclear are the "only current" viable solution to meet our demands, the following "must" happen:

A) Drastically reduce round the clock power usage.
B) Use more Nuclear based power generation or continue to burn metric tons of Coal per min!

Feel good campaigns, such as turning off all your lights for an hour each year (Earth Hour), mean nothing at all apart from pissing off power companies.

You can NOT spin down the massive multi-phase generators used in power electricity production. Power companies will simply have to find other ways to waste hours worth of Coal generated electricity and the likes instead of making good use of it!

In summary,

People who spew constant uneducated, non-researched propaganda should shut the hell up and stop complaining about the consequences of their actions. Go research a topic in depth and then make a productive contribution to the matters at hand. Try taking a real and active interest in your own power usage.

Note that the Victoria fires and Queensland floods could be considered 'bad examples' although this has no effect the above points.

Thank you for reading,
Edward O'Callaghan.

-- Update 09/02/09 --
Death Toll up to 111 people in Victoria.

Mounting a FreeBSD partition on Ubuntu 8.10

2009-01-24T16:26:00.000-08:00

I though I would make a note of this:

# export DISK=sda1 MOUNT_POINT=sda1
# mkdir -p /mnt/${MOUNT_POINT}
# mount -r -t ufs -o ufstype=ufs2 /dev/${DISK} /mnt/${MOUNT_POINT}

Hope this helps someone :p
Edward.

I love hg.

2008-11-18T08:07:00.000-08:00

No no.. not the element.
I though I would share the rollback thing hg has and how neat and easy it is to use.

[edward@SXCE-Workstation]:/AuroraUX/KDE4/KDE4-Testing/kde4-specs-dev:~>hg rollback
rolling back last transaction
[edward@SXCE-Workstation]:/AuroraUX/KDE4/KDE4-Testing/kde4-specs-dev:~>hg head
changeset: 202:ebee44fa159b
tag: tip
user: evocallaghan
date: Tue Nov 18 06:06:13 2008 +1100
summary: Fix KDE bugID 175420

[edward@SXCE-Workstation]:/AuroraUX/KDE4/KDE4-Testing/kde4-specs-dev:~>hg commit -m "Add Kmix support, needs testing."
[edward@SXCE-Workstation]:/AuroraUX/KDE4/KDE4-Testing/kde4-specs-dev:~>hg head
changeset: 203:cbbcb0228bf2
tag: tip
user: evocallaghan
date: Tue Nov 18 16:04:20 2008 +1100
summary: Add Kmix support, needs testing.

[edward@SXCE-Workstation]:/AuroraUX/KDE4/KDE4-Testing/kde4-specs-dev:~>uname -sv
SunOS snv_99

~

Learn Ada, not C++.

2008-11-10T04:42:00.000-08:00

Its common these days for students to learn C++ , and many apps are indeed written in C++ as a side effect of the above endless circle.

However, The truth is C++ is not all that great really.

**But why Ada..**

Over the next few blogs I am going to just throw(hehe) out a few examples and you can see for yourself.

The important thing here is to learn both before making calls on what is better for what. Clearly everything has its place. Although its good to know a little more then just past your nose ;)

Here goes...

Exception handling;

As you know exception handling consists of three components, the
exception (derr), raising the exception and handling the exception.
However, In C++ there is no exception type. When you raise an
exception you pass out any sort of type while selecting the exception
on its type. In Ada, there is a 'psuedo-type' for exceptions.

So here is some example code:

In C++

try {
my_func();
} catch (declaration) {
clean_up();
}

In Ada

begin
my_func();
exception
when ident => clean_up();
when others => clean_up();
end;

OK, now here is a example where we call a function which we know may
raise a particular exception. Although it _may_ raise one that we
don't know about so we *must* pass everything else back up to whoever
called the function.

try {
func_call();
} catch (const char* string_exception) {
if(!strcmp(string_exception, "what_we_are_look_for")) {
handle_it();
} else {
throw;
}
} catch (...) {
throw;
}

OK, now in Ada:

begin
func_call();
exception
when what_we_are_look_for => handle_it;
when others => raise;
end;

Yes it even looks better !

This shows how much safer the Ada version is, we know exactly what we
are waiting for and can immediately process it. In the C++ case, all we
know is that some kind of exception occured of type 'const char*' had
been raised, we must then check it still further before we can handle

it !

I will try to keep these short, so that is it for now.

Regards,

Edward O'Callaghan.

VirtualBox 2.0.4 is out !

2008-10-24T23:27:00.000-07:00

Nothing really very interesting.. Still no USB host support for Solaris :(
When is this going to be fixed Sun ?

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

~

Brand new USB pen.

2008-10-19T04:26:00.000-07:00

So while I was shopping for caffeine supplements in the *super* market I saw a 2GB USB pen for 5$AU. As it had "Linux support" on the front over I though I would buy it out of principle and the fact that I need some flash storage.

Here is what I did when I plugged it in:

Intel(r) Pentium(r) Dual CPU E2180 @ 2.00GHz
[edward@SXCE-Workstation]:/export/home/edward:~>/usr/bin/rmformat
Looking for devices...
1. Logical Node: /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0p0
Physical Node: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,2/ide@0/sd@1,0
Connected Device: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H62N CL00
Device Type: CD Reader
Bus: IDE
Size:
Label:
Access permissions:
2. Logical Node: /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0p0
Physical Node: /pci@0,0/pci1458,5006@1d,7/storage@6/disk@0,0
Connected Device: Verbatim Store'n'Go Mini 1.30
Device Type: Removable
Bus: USB
Size: 1.9 GB
Label:
Access permissions: Medium is not write protected.

[edward@SXCE-Workstation]:/export/home/edward:~>mount | tail -n 1
/media/STORE'N'GO on /dev/dsk/c2t0d0p0 read/write/nosetuid/nodevices/hidden/nofoldcase/clamptime/noatime/timezone=-36000/dev=6c0090 on Sun Oct 19 11:22:17 2008

[edward@SXCE-Workstation]:/export/home/edward:~>/usr/bin/pfexec umount /dev/dsk/c2t0d0p0

[edward@SXCE-Workstation]:/export/home/edward:~>pfexec zpool create MYDATA c2t0d0

[edward@SXCE-Workstation]:/export/home/edward:~>zpool status
pool: MYDATA
state: ONLINE
scrub: none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
MYDATA ONLINE 0 0 0
c2t0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

pool: rpool
state: ONLINE
scrub: none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
rpool ONLINE 0 0 0
c0d0s0 ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

[edward@SXCE-Workstation]:/export/home/edward:~>zfs list | grep -i MYDATA
MYDATA 69K 1.83G 18K /MYDATA

I can only conclude one thing from this.
Solaris needs to support auto mounting of usb pens that are formated with the ZFS FS.

~

Scons for Solaris - lol, no really..

2008-10-17T06:48:00.000-07:00

Due to popular demand, here is a spec file to build Scons for SXCE and Solaris 10.
OpenSolaris is useless for building anything past HTML thus I don't care if it does not work on OpenSolaris.

Thanks for everyones feedback on my last post.
The following can be build as follows; N.B. you will need CBE installed.

First save the below file in a file called EVOscons.spec
Then follows this;

Intel(r) Pentium(r) Dual CPU E2180 @ 2.00GHz
[edward@SXCE-Workstation]:/export/home/edward:~>/opt/dtbld/bin/env.sh
Desktop CBE version 1.7.0-rc1 built on 2008-10-07 by edward@SXCE-Workstation
Unsetting ORBIT_SOCKETDIR
Unsetting DTSOURCEPROFILE
Unsetting SDT_NO_TOOLTALK
Unsetting GTK_RC_FILES
Unsetting WINDOWID
Unsetting DTHELPSEARCHPATH
Unsetting USER
Unsetting DTDEVROOT
Unsetting OPENWINHOME
Unsetting DTXSERVERLOCATION
Unsetting XMBINDDIR
Unsetting GNOME_KEYRING_SOCKET
Unsetting SESSION_SVR
Unsetting HELPPATH
Unsetting START_SPECKEYSD
Unsetting LANG
Unsetting GNOME_KEYRING_PID
Unsetting DTAPPSEARCHPATH
Unsetting SDT_NO_DTDBCACHE
Unsetting XFILESEARCHPATH
Unsetting VTE_CJK_WIDTH
Unsetting SESSIONTYPE
Unsetting DTSCREENSAVERLIST
Unsetting GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID
Unsetting G_FILENAME_ENCODING
Unsetting AB_CARDCATALOG
Unsetting DTDATABASESEARCHPATH
Unsetting XMICONSEARCHPATH
Unsetting DTUSERSESSION
Unsetting XMICONBMSEARCHPATH
Unsetting G_BROKEN_FILENAMES
Unsetting dtstart_sessionlogfile
Unsetting COLORTERM
Using CC=/usr/bin/cc
Using CXX=/usr/bin/CC
Setting PATH=/opt/dtbld/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/usr/gnu/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/sfw/bin
Setting CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/bash
Setting MAKESHELL=/bin/bash
Setting MAKE=/opt/dtbld/bin/make
Setting M4=/opt/dtbld/bin/m4
Starting subshell /bin/ksh93 -p
$pkgtool -v --pkgformat=ds build-only EVOscons.spec

------------------------ Start of EVOscons.spec --------------------------------
#
# spec file for package EVOscons.spec
#
# includes module(s): SCons
#
%include Solaris.inc

%define src_name scons
%define src_url http://waix.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge

Name: EVOCscons
Summary: Substitute for the classic Make utility.
Version: 1.0.1
Release: 1
Source: %{src_url}/%{src_name}/%{src_name}-%{version}.tar.gz
SUNW_BaseDir: %{_basedir}
Vendor: Refer URL
URL: http://ultravioletos.blogspot.com/
Packager: EdwardOCallaghan
BuildRoot: %{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}-build
Requires: SUNWPython
BuildRequires: SUNWPython-devel

%include default-depend.inc

%prep
%ifarch sparc
echo "Sorry no sparc version yet! - Need testing.."
exit 1
%endif

%setup -q -n scons-%version

%build
# python bootstrap.py build/scons
python setup.py build --build-base=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_prefix}

%install
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
python setup.py install --prefix=$RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_prefix}
mkdir $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_datadir}
mv $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_prefix}/man $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_datadir}

%{?pkgbuild_postprocess: %pkgbuild_postprocess -v -c "%{version}:%{jds_version}:%{name}:$RPM_ARCH:%(date +%%Y-%%m-%%d):%{support_level}" $RPM_BUILD_ROOT}

%clean
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT

%files
%defattr (-, root, bin)
%dir %attr (0755, root, bin) %{_bindir}
%{_bindir}/*
%dir %attr (0755, root, bin) %{_libdir}
%{_libdir}/scons-*
%dir %attr (0755, root, sys) %{_datadir}
%dir %attr(0755, root, bin) %{_mandir}
%dir %attr(0755, root, bin) %{_mandir}/man1
%{_mandir}/man*/*

%changelog
* Fri Sep 10 2008 - edwardoc _@_ blastwave.org
- Initial version

------------------------ End of EVOscons.spec --------------------------------

Thanks,
Edward.

How to not go mad.

2008-10-13T05:40:00.000-07:00

echo 'set bell-style none' > ~/.inputrc
usermod myuser -s /bin/ksh93

[edward@SXCE-Workstation]:/export/home/edward:~>cat .kshrc
/usr/sbin/psrinfo -vp | sed 's/[^t]//' | tail -1
set -o ignoreeof
stty susp '^z'
export PS1=$'\E[0m['$'\E[1;32m'`logname`$'\E[0m'@$'\E[1;36m'`hostname`$'\E[0m]':$'\E[1;34m''$PWD'$'\E[0m:~>' #Custom prompt settings
export PATH=/usr/xpg6/bin:/usr/xpg4/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/X/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/opt/SUNWspro/bin:/usr/sfw/bin:/usr/gnu/bin:/opt/scons/bin/

# If there is no VISUAL or EDITOR to deduce the desired edit
# mode from, assume vi(C)-style command line editing.
if [ -z "$VISUAL" -a -z "$EDITOR" ]; then
set -o vi
fi

Broadcom NetLink BCM5906M Fast Ethernet Support in snv_100 !

2008-10-09T23:44:00.000-07:00

Broadcom NetLink BCM5906M Fast Ethernet Support in snv_100 !
http://bugs.opensolaris.org/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6603710

Looks like snv_100 is going to be a massive release !

Panic on boot of install DVD (SXCE snv_99) - HP Pavilion 6129TX.

2008-10-09T06:59:00.000-07:00

Workaround
  Disable the audiohd druver with kernel command line option

 -B disable-audiohd=true

HP Pavilion dv6129TX. Kernel panic from audiohd driver in snv_99 :[

Installing Scons-1.0.1 on Solaris (SXCE)

2008-10-08T21:34:00.000-07:00

I starting porting Ardour Music workstation software to Solaris (built with SunStudio 12) today and they use a build chain called 'Scons', _more info here_ :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardour_(audio_processor)

As Scons was *so* so easy to install I thought I would share it here:

Installing Scons-1.0.1 on SXCE :
------------------------ start -------------------------------

/usr/bin/gunzip -cd scons-src-1.0.1.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
cd scons-src-1.0.1/
python bootstrap.py build/scons
pfexec python build/scons/setup.py install --prefix=/opt/scons
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/scons/bin

------------------------ end -------------------------------

~

Thinking out loud.

2008-10-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

I saw this NetBook today,
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150183

So I thought to myself; Would it not be more:

* Cost effective.
* Environmentally friendly.
* Safer (data safety).
* Accessible.

To consolidate a students, business worker or home user for that matter compute needs onto a home server.

Your home server will consolidate all your data saftly on ZFS which is setup to snap shot your VM's at the end of each week (Friday evening say..) so that if your VM of XP gets a virus or whatever, your protected. If your laptop gets lost, stolen or the HDD fails or you need to upgrade it. There is no need to move your data around.

Also, you could be in a airport or internet cafe or even at a friends house and you need access to *your* computer, then its just a matter of calling up FireFox and logging into your home server.

A example config would be something like as follows;

* At least 3 SATA disks to keep your data safe in a zfs mirror with a hot spare.
* One of them nice new AMD quad cores that are so cheap these days.
* A low end Tyan MB with a few SATA ports and a nforce chipset such as a Tomcat n3400B (S2925-E).
* At least 4GB of Kingston value RAM, its dead cheap so why not !

You can grab most of the above hardware from ebuyer.co.uk and scan.co.uk or newegg.com in the US.

In regards to software configuration;

* Fresh install of Sun xVM server. - http://xvmserver.org
* A VM of Windows XP SP3 as you prob use that.
* A VM of SXCE setup with SSGD/VDI. - http://www.opensolaris.org

You can grab VDI from; http://www.sun.com/software/vdi/
SSGD from; http://www.sun.com/software/products/sgd

All of the above software is free.

I will follow this blog up with another that outlines the compleate setup of the above.

~
Edward.

HPC but no OpenSolaris ??

2008-09-29T14:38:00.000-07:00

One could question why are these not delivered with OpenSolaris..

http://www.cray.com/Products/CX1/Product/Software.aspx

http://www.cray.com/Assets/Demos/cx1/index.html

We need to pick up the demand for OpenSolaris on things such as this market !

VirtualBox 2.0.2 is out !!!

2008-09-14T04:53:00.000-07:00

I highly recommend people upgrade to this release, in particular Solaris hosts.
As this rev. seems to have solved a kernel panic I had from vbox :/

Downloads here: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
and
Release Notes here: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog

~
Edward.

Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100/5300 Driver in ON 99.

2008-09-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

yay for the integration of the Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100/5300 Driver in ON/Net 99.
Looking forward to snv_99 updated LiveCD ISO.

Regards,
Edward.

Google's Chrome Browser.

2008-09-03T03:35:00.000-07:00

I had a email from a dear friend of mine today about where we should be skeptical about Google's new Browser.

So I though I would share my reply and analysis of it:

"
2008/9/3 Neil :
> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008154594_googlebrowser030.html
>
> What gives????
>
> This undermines FF!
>
> --
> All Documents adhered to the ISO/IEC 26300 standard file format for
> electronic office documents, such as spreadsheets, charts,
> presentations and word processing documents from this email address.
> The author does not take responsibility of the recipients inability to
> read international standards and who use proprietary products such as
> MS Office.
> See: http://www.openoffice.org/
>
> Neil

I'm fine with it; Its built on Webkit which is open source. It promotes competition which intern promotes innovation !

98% of FF users will not change over as FF is clearly technically a better browser.
However, we need all the *strength* we can get, Google inc. to bring Microsoft's Internet Explorer to a 'responsible' market share. No one browser is going to be able to do it on its own.

Hense we have:
*Opera
*FF
*Chrome - http://webkit.org/
*Konquer - http://webkit.org/
*Safari <-- Retard Browser (For Mac and PC). - http://webkit.org/

About the only problem I have with it, is that its a Windows only application. However I can see Google's logic, and that is, to target a very particular market segment, that is, to take away IE's market share from the Windows OS platform.

Regards,
"

Please *do* comment with your views,
Edward.

VirtualBox 1.6.6 is out !!

2008-09-02T10:43:00.000-07:00

VirtualBox 1.6.6 (released 2008-08-26)
A *must* for any snv_95+ user due to the fix for strange linker issue that was seen.
yay!
Change Logs here: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog
and
Download here: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Regards,
Edward.

Broadcom 5722 NIC support under Solaris.

2008-08-13T05:05:00.000-07:00

<6726056>
http://bugs.opensolaris.org/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6726056
http://cia.vc/stats/project/opensolaris/.message/33f940

snv_97>.

Installing Sun Studio 12 on Ubuntu 8.04.1

2008-08-07T09:17:00.000-07:00

This is really just a quick HOWTO on installing Sun Studio 12 on Ubuntu 8.04.1 or Xubuntu for that matter.

Here is a quick Overview of the Sun Studio tool chain and IDE.
===============================================

"Sun[tm] Studio 12 software, available for free on Solaris and Linux
platforms, includes the following:

Parallelizing C, C++, and Fortran compilers
Code-level debugger
Memory debugger
Performance profiling
OpenMP support
IDE
Optimized libraries
Thread analysis"

===============================================
Anyway;

Download yourself the tarfile version of the installer from (Hint:Click "Free Download"):
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/index.jsp

Then update your box so its current and run this;
$ sudo apt-get install netbeans gawk scons

Make sure you in the current dir of the downloaded tar file (Hint:Make a new dir and stick the tar inside as we are going to expand it);

$ bunzip2 -cd SunStudio12ml-linux-x86-200709-ii.tar.bz2 | tar -xvf -

$ mv SunStudio12ml-linux-x86-200709-ii.tar.bz2 ../
$ sudo mv sunstudio12 /opt/
$ sudo mv lib /opt/
$ sudo mv netbeans-5.5.1 /opt/

And that should be all !

To run;

$ /opt/sunstudio12/bin/sunstudio &

If you like, you can,

* Add the following to your PATH environment variable:
/opt/sunstudio12/bin

* Add the following to your MANPATH environment variable:
/opt/sunstudio12/man

If anyone has a better way please *do* comment.
Thanks,
Edward.

OpenSolaris2008.11 PreInstalled on Dell hardware.

2008-07-26T02:57:00.000-07:00

I got the idea to get the ball rolling now its your turn as the community to make your vote count here;
OpenSolaris2008.11_PreInstalled.

~

Boycott Foxconn ! ~ A worth while read ~

2008-07-25T21:01:00.000-07:00

This is one of the great reason why people buy hardware not just from Sun but from Tyan and others..

A very worth while read indeed; here.
You can Digg it, here.
~

A great reply to a Broadcom chipset user.

2008-07-24T04:15:00.000-07:00

This was a fantastic reply to a Broadcom chipset user complaining about kernel panics on his old laptop!

"Hi,

Can't you just buy a better mini pci wifi card that is properly supported ?
Avoid using ndiswrapper, it will course kernel panic such as what your getting..

Regards,
Edward."

The user then goes on to complain about not wanting to spend any money on the laptop.

Which James came out with a perfect reply which I will probley have to reuse in the future;

"Apparently you fail to understand that Broadcom cards are not supported
by Broadcom due to internal policy and frivolous control restraints they
feel they need to put on everyone. It's not any system's fault for not
supporting Broadcom, they will not provide documentation for developers
to write anything decent, so is it any coincidence that it causes
systems to crash? Employing an interpreter for Windows drivers due to
Broadcom's deaf ears is a stop-gap measure but hardly qualifies as the
way to ensure yourself a good experience with a system as you've said
have not used until now. Such a small investment will save your hours of
problems with the OS, plus the bonus that you save time from not fixing
Windows problems, like the mundane and time consuming defragmentation
due to bad file system design or cleanup of redundant files, registry
garbage or update backups.

Do yourself a favor it's $10-15 (Nothing considering the devalued US
dollar), get an Atheros or Intel wireless card off eBay, there's quite a
few supported by OpenSolaris. There's a list under the laptop community
for wireless cards and their respective chip set, as Atheros and Intel,
like NVIDIA are merely the ones that write the specification, not the
fabricators. (At least not to consumers typically) They work with
Windows (Obviously) but as an added bonus if OpenSolaris doesn't work
out for you, you have a card that'll work well with the other
alternatives too! (FreeBSD and Linux) "

The moral of this story is, Don't wast your time/days over something that cost 15$ and is usually better hardware in any case.

~

New Indiana/OpenSolaris spin - snv93.

2008-07-13T21:59:00.000-07:00

Torrent file:
http://dlc.sun.com/torrents/info/osol-0811-93-global.iso.torrent
All Languages, LZMA compression, 652 MB - Fits on a 700MB CD.
MD5 check sum ; (osol-0811-93-global.iso) = d9138221bb7b7306c7b7356d0c578c51

Forum post:
http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=258248#258248

Regards,

~

Songbird 0.6 on OpenSolaris

2008-07-11T22:34:00.001-07:00

edward@opensolaris0805:~$ pwd
/export/home/edward
edward@opensolaris0805:~$ wget http://releases.mozilla.com/sun/Songbird-Solaris/releases/0.6/pkgadd/songbird-0.6.en-US.opensolaris-i386-pkg.bz2
--15:26:32--  http://releases.mozilla.com/sun/Songbird-Solaris/releases/0.6/pkgadd/songbird-0.6.en-US.opensolaris-i386-pkg.bz2
          => `songbird-0.6.en-US.opensolaris-i386-pkg.bz2'
Resolving releases.mozilla.com... 63.245.208.158
Connecting to releases.mozilla.com|63.245.208.158|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 20,959,081 (20M) [application/x-bzip2]

100%[====================================>] 20,959,081   387.74K/s    ETA 00:00

15:27:27 (381.30 KB/s) - `songbird-0.6.en-US.opensolaris-i386-pkg.bz2' saved [20959081/20959081]

edward@opensolaris0805:~$ bunzip2 songbird-0.6.en-US.opensolaris-i386-pkg.bz2
edward@opensolaris0805:~$ pfexec pkgadd -d songbird-0.6.en-US.opensolaris-i386-pkg

The following packages are available:
 1  SFEsongbird     The desktop media player mashed-up with the Web.
                    (i386) 0.6,REV=110.0.4.2008.06.18.19.04

Select package(s) you wish to process (or 'all' to process
all packages). (default: all) [?,??,q]: 

Processing package instance  from 

The desktop media player mashed-up with the Web.(i386) 0.6,REV=110.0.4.2008.06.18.19.04

This appears to be an attempt to install the same architecture and
version of a package which is already installed.  This installation
will attempt to overwrite this package.

This is an open source package.
Use and redistribution subject to license terms as described in the
documents included in the sources.
Using  as the package base directory.
## Processing package information.
## Processing system information.
  553 package pathnames are already properly installed.
## Verifying package dependencies.
## Verifying disk space requirements.
## Checking for conflicts with packages already installed.
## Checking for setuid/setgid programs.

Installing The desktop media player mashed-up with the Web. as 

## Installing part 1 of 1.
[ verifying class  ]

Installation of  was successful.
edward@opensolaris0805:~$ uname -v
snv_91
edward@opensolaris0805:~$

CIFS share with real-time virus scanning in OpenSolaris.

2008-07-08T18:01:00.000-07:00

I had a question the other day about NAS and I reply with OpenSolaris.
So I thought it would be a good idea to document the whole process here..
As always see docs.sun.com for proper documentation on the subject, here:
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/820-2429

I will be setting up the share in 'Workgroup' mode.

First we need to add in the missing bits:
$pfexec pkg install SUNWsmbs
$pfexec pkg install SUNWsmbskr
$pfexec pkg install SUNWvscankr
$pfexec pkg install SUNWvscanr
$pfexec pkg install SUNWvscanu

Next, start up the service:
$pfexec svcadm enable -r smb/server

..And of course join a workgroup:
$smbadm join -w workgroup-name

N.B. CIFS does not support UNIX or NIS style passwords. The SMB PAM module is required to generate CIFS style passwords. When the SMB PAM module is installed, the passwd command generates additional encrypted versions of each password that are suitable for use with CIFS.

Add the following line to the end of the /etc/pam.conf file to support creation of an encrypted version of the user's password for CIFS.

$pfexec echo "other password required pam_smb_passwd.so.1 nowarn" >> /etc/pam.conf

Note - After the PAM module is installed, the passwd command automatically generates CIFS-suitable passwords for new users. You must also run the passwd command to generate CIFS-style passwords for existing users.

$pfexec passwd username

Now the ZFS part; to enable a share on a ZFS FS then its simply:

$pfexec zfs set sharesmb=on fsname

Turn RT-AntiVirus scanning on {more info to come} http://opensolaris.org/os/project/vscan/ :

$pfexec zfs set vscan=on fsname

Make some useful shares ..

$pfexec zfs create -o casesensitivity=mixed -o nbmand=on -o sharesmb=on fsname/music
$pfexec zfs create -o casesensitivity=mixed -o nbmand=on -o sharesmb=on fsname/photos
$pfexec zfs create -o casesensitivity=mixed -o nbmand=on -o sharesmb=on fsname/movies
$pfexec zfs create -o casesensitivity=mixed -o nbmand=on -o sharesmb=on fsname/backups

You can down verify your shares by doing:

$pfexec sharemgr show -vp

To access the share, connect to \\solaris-hostname\share-name

*Please do comment on anything I may of missed or needs more work.
Thanks,

~

Firefox Gets the Download “Record”

2008-07-03T02:31:00.000-07:00

It’s official: The latest version of Mozilla’s popular alternative Web browser, Firefox 3, set the Guinness World Record for most software downloads in a day. The final tally settled at 8,002,530.

If your not a FireFox user already then download today at:
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Solaris/OpenSolaris users see ''Contributed Builds" :
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0/releasenotes/
$wget http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/contrib/solaris_pkgadd/firefox-3.0.en-US.opensolaris-i386-pkg.bz2
$bunzip2 firefox-3.0.en-US.opensolaris-i386-pkg.bz2
$pfexec pkgadd -d firefox-3.0.en-US.opensolaris-i386-pkg

~

Upgrading OpenSolaris2008.05 to snv91.

2008-06-20T23:16:00.000-07:00

The pkg.opensolaris.org repository, has been updated to Build 91 today.

N.B. That pkg(1) IPS has had a update too;

$export PKG_CLIENT_TIMEOUT=220
$pfexec pkg refresh
$pfexec pkg install pkg:/SUNWipkg@0.5.11,5.11-0.90
$pfexec pkg image-update

Its about 700MB of download If your comming from the snv90 update.

If you are still on snv86 ( OpenSolaris2008.05 fresh install ).
Then follow this or your box wont boot the new BE.

After the update has finished, you should get a output similar to:

$beadm list
BE Active Active on Mountpoint Space
Name reboot Used
---- ------ --------- ---------- -----
opensolaris-1 no yes - 17.06M
opensolaris yes no - 33.92M

Simply run:

$pfexec mount -F zfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris-1 /mnt
$pfexec /mnt/boot/solaris/bin/update_grub -R /mnt

Now your ready to reboot to your new updated BE.

~
Edward.

Another day another XP install..

2008-06-19T06:25:00.000-07:00

While I had to do another Windows XP SP3 install today for a client of mine I was given the opportunity to kit it out with software that I would recommend.

So I thought I would take the time to blog about the line up for this system;

* FireFox3 with Flash plugin - http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/
* Thunderbird - http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/
* ClamAV (win32) - http://www.clamwin.com/
* InfraRecord - http://infrarecorder.sourceforge.net/
* VLC - http://www.videolan.org/
* OpenOffice 2.4.1 - http://www.openoffice.org/

Quite good really, everything one would like from a basic setup and all the above software is free to share and use, seems to run alright too.

~
Edward.

Firefox 3 is being downloaded at a rate of 14,000 copies per minute.

2008-06-17T20:14:00.000-07:00

"Update 12:05 p.m. PDT: Mozilla said on its developer blog that Firefox 3 is being downloaded at a rate of 14,000 copies per minute.

That's 13 gigabits per second. No wonder the servers were struggling. "

Become part of the official Guinness World Record

2008-06-17T18:47:00.000-07:00

.:: Today you'll make history with Fire Fox 3 ::.

Are you ready to make history?
Are you ready to set a World Record?
Today is Download Day.

To become part of the official Guinness World Record you must download Firefox 3 by 17:00 UTC on June 18, 2008, or roughly 24 hours from now.

Download Fire Fox 3

Don't forget to pass the message on to your friends and family.

A update on Broadcom and why not to buy there wifi chipsets

2008-06-13T19:31:00.000-07:00

A fascinating business indeed,
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/05/henry_nicholas_indicted/

Please do leave your comments.
Regards,

Boycott Laptops with Broadcom WiFi

2008-06-12T19:10:00.000-07:00

"It seems to be a recurring theme, but we keep hearing about different WLAN parts that don't work with NDIS wrapper, or other problems building the NDIS wrapper etc.

I've never used the NDIS wrapper, and I refuse to do so. I also refuse to purchase or recommend any laptop with a Broadcom WLAN part on it, at least until Broadcom changes their position and makes it possible for 3rd parties (even under NDA) to develop device drivers for their WLAN products.

The reason is simple: until laptop manufacturers start losing sales due to people who take the same position, they won't stop including Broadcom WLAN on their products. The loss of a few individual WLAN cards won't impact Broadcom at all, but if Gateway or Dell stops purchasing WLAN parts, then its a whole new ballgame. And the more laptop vendors that we can get to understand that use of Broadcom leads to lost sales, the more impact it will have.

Either Broadcom will take notice, and correct their behavior (e.g. by offering 3rd parties access to device driver info under NDA, writing drivers themselves for platforms like OpenSolaris, or even better, offering up open technical specs), or their WLAN products will gradually fade from popularity so that they are no longer relevant.

To be honest, I don't care which result comes about. But please, don't use or purchase Broadcom WLAN. And to those of you writing neat things like NDIS wrapper and reverse engineering efforts like the bwi driver in *BSD, I'd recommend you rethink whether enabling further sales of laptops bundled with Broadcom WLAN is really something you want to encourage.

(For specific alternatives to Broadcom WLAN, look for either Intel or Atheros WIFI.)"

by Garrett D'Amore - gdamore.blogspot.com

This applies to Windows and Linux as well as OpenSolaris, FreeBSD & NetBSD users.

Upgrading OpenSolaris2008.05 to snv90.

2008-06-10T18:51:00.000-07:00

Many of you have installed and are running the first spin of the OpenSolaris distro, that is OpenSolaris2008.05 and have been wondering why SXCE have still been leading the way while OS has been falling behind out of sync with SXCE.

Well now the first update is out that will bring us up to sync with every second ON release. Just with a simple;

pfexec pkg refresh ; pfexec pkg image-update

However,
As this is the first update, it has its own problems.
Two bug trackers here:

http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=2119 (Pidgin does not start)
http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=1989 (Connection times out while installing or upgrading packages)

Both can be solve and I hope to illustrate that here.

Let start with the upgrade (~1GB download):
Bring up a default BASH shell by right clicking on the desktop:

$export PKG_CLIENT_TIMEOUT=120
$pfexec pkg refresh ; pfexec pkg image-update
.. This make take some time, make a coffee and relax.

"PAY ATTENTION TO THE ATTACHED UPDATE PROCEDURE!!! Failure to do so will
prevent your system from rebooting."

"Instructions to update OpenSolaris 2008.05 to build 89 or later
================================================================
The command "pkg image-update" can be used to update an OpenSolaris
2008.05 system to build 89 or later. However due to changes in the
GRUB boot system, one must manually update the Master Boot Record (MBR)
to include these latest changes.

When "pkg image-update" completes successfully, it will print a message
of the form

A clone of opensolaris exists and has been updated and
activated. On next boot the Boot Environment opensolaris-1 will
be mounted on '/'. Reboot when ready to switch to this updated
BE.

The name of the newly created clone can also be seen by looking for the
"Active on reboot" entry in the output of the "beadm list" command

$ beadm list
BE Active Active on Mountpoint Space
Name reboot Used
---- ------ --------- ---------- -----
opensolaris-1 no yes - 17.06M
opensolaris yes no - 33.92M

First, mount the clone under the /mnt directory

$ pfexec mount -F zfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris-1 /mnt

Next, update the GRUB configuration on your ZFS boot device(s) using

$ pfexec /mnt/boot/solaris/bin/update_grub -R /mnt

When you're ready to boot into the updated boot environment, you can
reboot(1M) or init(1M) as usual."
*Details taken from:
http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=62982&tstart=0

After the reboot you can fix Pidgin by doing the following:

$cd /usr/lib/purple-2/
$pfexec elfedit ssl-nss.so
> dyn:runpath
elfedit: [14: .dynamic]: no runpath (DT_RPATH or DT_RUNPATH) found
> dyn:runpath /usr/lib/%I:/usr/lib:/usr/lib/mps:/usr/lib/mps/%I
   index  tag                value
    [39]  RUNPATH           0x39c            
/usr/lib/%I:/usr/lib:/usr/lib/mps:/usr/lib/mps/%I
> quit
elfedit: Output ELF file has changes pending. Use 'write' to save them, or
'quit -f' to exit without saving
> write
> quit
$

If you find any problems leave a message and remember please do report bugs if you find them.
http://defect.opensolaris.org

Edward.
~

OpenSolaris and Blastwave

2008-05-05T18:45:00.000-07:00

As you may all know Blastwave is one of the main providers for software on the Solaris platform.

See:
http://www.blastwave.org/

http://www.opensolaris.com/

Now that OpenSolaris is out on the street one may like to have things like VLC and Mplayer installed but may not be about to find anything in the pkg.opensolaris.org IPS respo.

This is just a short howto on getting Blastwave working with OpenSolaris using IPS in just *2* easy steps.

1) Add Free repositories to your IPS / PKG tools configuration:

$pfexec pkg set-authority -O http://blastwave.network.com:10000 blastwave
$pfexec pkg authority -H

blastwave http://blastwave.network.com:10000/

opensolaris.org (preferred) http://pkg.opensolaris.org/

$pfexec pkg refresh

2) Installing _Stuff_ :

$pkg search -r vlc

$pfexec pkg install IPSvlc

and that's it !

Oh, A side note; I like to have OpenOffice and NetBeans installed from pkg.opensolaris.org

We can do this as follows:

$pfexec pkg install netbeans

$pfexec pkg install openoffice

That's all..

OpenSolaris 2008.05, its out.. Yes its really here !

2008-05-04T22:24:00.000-07:00

Everyone has talked so much about it, and after only just a year and a epic amount of work its finally here !

See:
http://www.opensolaris.com/get/index.html

Find bugs or things that you feel should have been fixed or included? Remember to participate in the community that is opensolaris :D
http://defect.opensolaris.org/

Post your comments,
Edward.

SXCE A decent media play experience..

2008-04-14T08:36:00.000-07:00

Songbird, is a media player built on top of Firefox.
Now you maybe wondering why build a media player out of a web browser. Well here is the short answer:

Music is social and so is the internet. It can also be noted that the internet is very big but we have a excellent modern day tool, you guest it, a web browser to navigate this landscape.
However, your media library is not far off the kind of landscape that this internet is, in one word, cluttered. In other words you end up not knowing what you got and what you don't have..
To add to this, much of your media content is now becoming more and more part of your online experience such as internet radio and music/artist blogs. So why not fuse all this together with the web browser ?

Welcome to the Songbird media player (main site) :
http://www.songbirdnest.com/
(Solaris port) :
http://opensolaris.org/os/project/nightingale/

Install Howto for "Songbird 0.5 release for Solaris x86" :

$/usr/sfw/bin/wget http://releases.mozilla.com/sun/Songbird-Solaris/Songbird_0.5_solaris-i386.tar.bz2
$bunzip2 -cd Songbird_0.5_solaris-i386.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -
$su
_root-password_
#mv Songbird_0.5 /opt/
#exit
$/opt/Songbird_0.5/songbird &

And that's all.. :~)

Regards,
Edward.

SXCE B86 and Gnome-panel random Crashing fix

2008-04-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

Drop down to console login and run:

$su
_root-password_
#strip -x /usr/lib/X11/libX11.so.4

SXCE and Basic Networking.

2008-04-13T03:58:00.000-07:00

For this instalment we are going to look into basic network knowledge in Solaris.
There are two ways to configure networking in Solaris, the first of which is a tool known as Network Auto-Magic or nwam(1).
By running:

$svcs -x network/physical:nwam

Provides the status if nwam is online or not, Network Auto-Magic is a project to simplify and automate network configuration on Solaris. Basically autoconfigures your NIC from your local DHCP/DNS server.

However, It is some times necessary configure a static IP or provide DNS infomation manually. To to manually configure networking in Solaris one must disable this service in favour of the default by doing the following:

$su
_root-password_
#/bin/zsh
#svcadm enable network/physical:default

Things you should keep at hand are:
* IP Address of the System
* Hostname
* Subnet Files: /etc/netmasks
* Default gateway
* DNS Server list. Files: /etc/nsswitch.conf *and* /etc/resolv.conf

Then you can configure each of the above as follows:

Static:

* IP Address (192.168.1.3) and Hostname (solarisrox)
#echo '192.168.1.3 solarisrox' >> /etc/hosts; echo 'solarisrox' > /etc/hostname.hme0"

N.B. Assuming that hme0 was the interface you wanted to use.
Hint: Can be found with ifconfig -a
*Default gateway (192.168.1.1)
#echo 10.0.0.255 > /etc/defaultrouter

DHCP:

#echo "" > /etc/hostname.hme0 > /etc/dhcp.hme0 > /etc/defaultrouter
#echo "wait 15" >> /etc/dhcp.hme0

DNS:

First check /etc/nsswitch.conf for the line "hosts: dns files" is ok.
Then inside /etc/resolv.conf check to make sure it looks something like this:

search myisp.com
nameserver 1.2.3.4
nameserver 5.6.7.8

After all your configuration you can simply restart the network service as follows:

#svcadm restart network/physical:default

Comments are always welcome..

Regards,
Edward.

SXCE on the Desktop

2008-04-12T00:19:00.000-07:00

Solaris is a great and highly advanced OS, it has many features that can be used on the home desktop as well as enterprise class systems that run the very core of the Internet, Supercomputers (HPC) and Banks. One of my favourite such features is the ZFS file system.

However, for people who have used GNU/Linux, such as Ubuntu, and are trying out Solaris for the first time may have the first impressions that Solaris is somehow slower then Linux.
This is however not the case. Solaris has many things running under the hood that servers would find useful but Desktop users have no such use for, such as ssh running or sendmail.

SXCE or Solaris Express Community Edition can be downloaded here for free:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/downloads/
You can check your hardware with this neat tool:
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/hcts/device_detect.jsp
(Click "Start Sun Device Detection Tool 2.0" on the page.)

After a default install, login and choice JDS as your default desktop session, now right click on the desktop and run the following in the terminal:
------------

$su
_root-password_
#/bin/zsh
#svcadm disable basicreg cde-calendar-manager cde-ttdbserver cde-printinfo webconsole wbem sendmail sac ssh autofs ipsec/policy ipsec/ipsecalgs
#echo "set maxphys=4194304" >> /etc/system
#dispadmin -d IA
#shutdown -y -g0 -i6

------------
After this your desktop should be both more secure and more interactive.

If you find anything more you would like to add, please comment.
If you would like to learn more, see:

docs.sun.com

Regards,
Edward.

Thank heavens for your neighbours!

2008-04-11T23:36:00.000-07:00

Thank heavens for your neighbours!

Its like this, we are using power supplied by coal fired power plants, one of the percularities about the said power plants is that you cant speed up or slow down the enormous turbines in any rush, it takes days, thus if the requirement for power suddenly drop, well, that power is still being generated.

The coal is still being burned, and that power that was going to go to a usefull however it will now have to be spent somewhere (waisted), incidentally that is why we have streetlights and office lights, to sink the power of an evening when industry demands are reduced.

It would seem that the green movement fscks everything it touches, don't it?

Regards,
Edward.