OpenSolaris distro - AuroraUX makes Frontpage of Reddit !

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

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 !

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

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.

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++.

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 !

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.

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..

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.

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 !

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.

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)

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.

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 ??

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 !!!

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.

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.

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 !!

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.

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

snv_97>.