May 11, 2008

Jim GrisanzioImmigration a Key to Innovation

May 11, 2008 12:21 PM GMT
Great article in Newsweek from Fareed Zakaria -- The Rise of the Rest -- about how large chunks of the world are dramatically improving and growing significantly in an era of ever reducing violence. Finally. A positive view of globalization, and one distinctly lacking all the fear about the US falling to second class (or even third class) economic status (which is nothing more than propaganda). The gloom-and-doomers and isolationists in the US are an obviously and obnoxiously vocal minority, and they will miss this positive view because it's actually based on embracing the entire world with that nasty word -- immigration. Zakaria says that "the potential for a new burst of American productivity depends not on our education system or R&D spending, but on our immigration policies. If these people are allowed and encouraged to stay, then innovation will happen here. If they leave, they'll take it with them."

Jim GrisanzioKaizen

May 11, 2008 11:44 AM GMT
Can You Become a Creature of New Habits?: "Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain. If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness." -- New York Times on M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book “This Year I Will...”

Take one step at a time. And small steps are best. The tiny, continuous improvements add up, though, and this is actually a very efficient way to just get things done and better in the process. Kaizen.

Jim GrisanzioAvoiding Competition

May 11, 2008 10:46 AM GMT
You catch that Fortune article -- You have 7 years to learn Mandarin -- about China surpassing the United States economically in seven years? Whether it's seven years or fifty doesn't really matter, I suppose, since people will be arguing about how to measure this for a while. And the measurements themselves are changing, it seems. How convenient. Whatever. I think it's cool either way because it offers new opportunities, and that´s what I´m after. In fact, aside from the word freedom, I can´t think of another word that describes Americans better than the word opportunity. Can you?

But Fortune seems defensive. We are supposed to "worry" about this, and we are told that American individuals "can avoid competition with Chinese workers by doing place-based work, which ranges in value from highly skilled (emergency-room surgery) to menial (pouring concrete). But the many people who do information-based work, which is most subject to competition, will have to get dramatically better to be worth what they cost. For government leaders: Improve U.S. education above all."

The first part of that paragraph is ridiculous. You can't "avoid competition" in a global economy, and I´m not "worrying" at all. Why not embrace the change as an opportunity? In fact, wouldn't be cool to live in China for a bit to check all this out first hand? Wouldn´t it be cool to learn some Chinese and interact with Chinese from their perspective for a while? I don´t see very many people in the US thinking this way about the rise of China (and India, for that matter, and some other emerging markets around the world, too). In fact, Sin-Yaw Wang has it right when he comments about the Fortune piece: "The new generation of business leaders, now in their 20s or 40s, must learn to do business in China and with Chinese. 7 years is not that long to master a language, especially when one is not even trying." I agree. And I´m reading this view (the not trying bit) over and over again. It´s defensive. Oh, well. I suppose that´s an opportunity for those who see it differently, right?

Darren MoffatMissing Apple Mac hardware

May 11, 2008 09:27 AM GMT

My current home machine is a first generation (ordered the day after the announcement) PPC Mac Mini. I initially ordered it with 512Mb RAM and no WiFi or Bluetooth. It has since been upgraded to 1G (the max this machine can take) and had the WiFi/Bluetooth added (and it now lives in the UK rather than California where it was bought). When I first bought it it was as a secondary machine to learn where MacOS was, I hadn't used MacOS since System 7 at that time. It soon became my our primary home desktop and got given gifts of a (wired) Mac keyboard and 20" Cinema screen in addition to its upgraded memory and wireless capabilities.

It has been serving us well but I feel like a new machine. While I love OpenSolaris and spend a huge number of hours developing for it and using it MacOS is what I want to continue using for my personal stuff for now (I like iTunes, iPhoto, Safari and more importantly so does my wife). So if the current PPC Mac Mini is to be repurposed it needs to be Apple hardware.

I titled this "Missing Apple Mac hardware", why ? I can't find a non laptop Mac that actually fits what I want in terms of computing resources and cost. Disk space isn't an issue I'd buy the machine in the lowest possible disk configuration because all my data is stored on a ZFS on a separate system running OpenSolaris and mounted on the Mac using NFS.

The best CPU/RAM combination I get buy on a current Intel Mac Mini is 2GHz and 2G RAM for £558. The next option is a Mac Pro and that starts at a wallet breaking £1,749, it is a nice workstation but out of budget for my desktop machine. There is Mac hardware in between that price range but with, for me, a fundamental problem because it has an integrated LCD and comes with a keyboard. Now integrated systems are great I remember fondly using the Sun ELC workstations at University and my current Sun machine at home (and the office) is a Sun Ray 270 (ultra thin client with integrated LCD). However I like my 20" Apple Cinema display and I want to keep using and it doesn't need to be replaced, same for the keyboard/mouse.

The Apple Mac I want to buy would have a CPU around 2.4 to 3GHz and 4G RAM, a single disk and a reasonable graphics card - this isn't a games machine (I use consoles or my phone for games these days) - for helping with photo processing. Of course it should be "green" in that it should allow me to reuse my existing LCD monitor and keyboard (both Apple products!). Pretty much something like a Sun Ultra 20M2but capable of legally running MacOS X 10.5 and for about that price

So Apple where is my missing Mac ?

Update: I know I can do dual monitor on with an iMac (first saw that on a mono SE30 with an external colour display and putting windows "across" the boundary it was done perfectly!) but I already have two monitors on the desk (the Sun Ray 270 mentioned above) and I don't really have space for another one. The big issue with the top end Mac Mini is the memory only goes to 2G according to Apple and some of that will be taken away by the Intel GMA graphics. One of the reasons I need at least 4G RAM is that there is always two users logged in (with fast user switching) to this machine. A bit of space to upgrade beyond 4G of RAM would be nice.

May 10, 2008

Jim GrisanzioInside the Image Packaging System

May 10, 2008 11:16 PM GMT
Stephen Hahn, Bart Smaalders, and Danek Duvall talk about the new OpenSolaris Image Packaging System that enables users and developers to get the software they need when they need it. IPS is also a new tool for community growth as developers around the world build and maintain packages and contribute the software to the network repository. To contribute, go to the IPS project.

Jim GrisanzioIntel Dave 2

May 10, 2008 09:37 PM GMT
David Stewart is back on YouTube -- OpenSolaris on Xeon video, Episode 2 - Saving Power -- talking about how to improve power management, which is certainly a good thing for a world using way too much juice. If you want to contribute to this effort, go to the Tesla Enhanced Power Management Project and also the OpenSolaris Intel project.

Jim GrisanzioSitting in the Audience

May 10, 2008 10:59 AM GMT
At the 49 second mark of this YouTube clip -- Sun Headline News: CommunityOne 2008 -- you'll see me, Bonnie Corwin, and Shawn Walker sitting together at the OpenSolaris keynote on Monday. That's cool. I remember the guy pointing his camera at us. But what gets me is this: there was practically no light in the audience at all. How did that camera pick up so much detail under those conditions? Amazing. Anyway, I also saw a quick shot of Michelle Olson, and Peter Tribble actually gets a little talking role at the end. Thanks to Bill Rushmore for pointing out the video.

Jim Grisanzio“I can’t let myself waste even a second"

May 10, 2008 09:42 AM GMT
Elite Korean Schools, Forging Ivy League Skills and South Korea's Top Students: "It is 10:30 p.m. and students at the elite Daewon prep school here are cramming in a study hall that ends a 15-hour school day. A window is propped open so the evening chill can keep them awake. One teenager studies standing upright at his desk to keep from dozing. Kim Hyun-kyung, who has accumulated nearly perfect scores on her SATs, is multitasking to prepare for physics, chemistry and history exams. 'I can’t let myself waste even a second,' said Ms. Kim, who dreams of attending Harvard, Yale or another brand-name American college." -- New York Times.

Can't waste even a second, eh? Humm. I wasted a lot of seconds when I was in school. Mostly on sports, but a lot in school, too. Oh, well. I'm working hard now. Next life I'll start a bit earlier.

Jim GrisanzioPragmatic Cooperation

May 10, 2008 09:29 AM GMT
On Visit to Japan, China's Hu Has No Time for Old Grudges: "China has become Japan's largest trading partner, with the trade volume between the two nations at $236 billion last year. More than 20,000 Japanese companies operate in China, many of them selling precision equipment and industrial materials that are essential to its export-driven boom." -- Washington Post.

20,000.

Roy WoodProtect your Site Against Questionable Redirects and Frames

May 10, 2008 08:29 AM GMT
After reviewing statistics for my topsite blog directory, I observed traffic from a website that uses redirects and frames to exploit my website with questionable advertisements (porn). Here is the format: http://????????.com/go/?/301??/http://www.topbloglists.com. I inserted the "?" as substitutes.

Obviously, I felt my site was being hijacked and I was miffed. But this was not the first time this happened to me.

Approximately two months ago, I emailed the webmaster three times requesting their members NOT be allowed to employ links that use frames to create banner-like ads above my pages. I never received a response to my emails, but the activity did stop until today.

Luckily, I found this script to deal with the issue. Place it within the <_head>. Here is the script's source along with a post on questionable linking.

May 09, 2008

Jim GrisanzioOpenSolaris on C1 GNU/Linux Panel

May 09, 2008 11:36 PM GMT

Well, it seems it's more than just a panel, eh? Barton has all the details -- GNU/Linux Distro Smack Down! Only at CommunityOne. Should be a lot of fun.

Update: Here are the guys from the panel last week:

OpenSolaris at CommunityOne

Karsten Wade, Fedora; Barton George, Sun (moderator); Glynn Foster, OpenSolaris; Jono Bacon, Ubuntu; Zonker Brockmeier, OpenSUSE.

Peter TribbleLiving in the Ghetto

May 09, 2008 10:14 PM GMT
Where I work is very much a pure Microsoft shop in terms of user environment - ie. desktops.

(The company makes its money using real Unix servers.)

I'm one of the very few who actually run Solaris on a Sun workstation. And, yes, sometimes I feel like I'm being pushed into a ghetto.

A world where you have to talk to Microsoft Exchange to read your mail, which means Outlook Web Access (which, frankly, is a shockingly poor attempt at being a mail client); where you're sent documents in Office 2007 format that you can't read; where half the company intranet simply doesn't function. Catering to those of living outside the walls simply isn't in Microsoft's world view, it would seem.

So, given the list of features, I'll have to grab the OpenOffice 3 beta and give it a try.

Darren MoffatWorst (and Best) keyboards

May 09, 2008 08:11 PM GMT

Seems like for some reason I didn't actually post this when I wrote it on Jan 10th 2008, so I'll post it now

I've just read over the PC World "10 Worst Keyboards of all time" article. Out of the 10 there was only 3 I hadn't actually used (the IBM PCjr, the original PET, and the Atari 400. All the others I've actually used at least once. I found it interesting on the selection of the Sinclair keyboards, the ZX Spectrum one suffered all the same problems as the Timex 1000 but the metal "cover" also came off over time. I replaced the key membrane on my speccy at least once and upgraded the heat sink to try and stop it failing again (didn't really help in the long run)).

My current vote for the worst keyboard of all time is actually the iPhone/iTouch - yes it doesn't have a real keyboard but an on screen touch one instead, and the later lacks Bluetooth for connection of a "real" keyboard. I don't own an iPhone/iTouch just played with friends so maybe it gets better over time.

My favourite keyboard - Sun Microsystems Type 7 (USB) US UNIX layout. The layout is critical despite being a Brit I hate the UK keyboard layout with a passion it sucks for writing C or shell code because " and # get moved! The UNIX layout is also important so that Control is on the same row as return - caps lock has no use since I stopped writting COBOL code.

Peter TribbleOpenSolaris in VirtualBox

May 09, 2008 07:51 PM GMT
I've been playing around today with VirtualBox, after finding that the latest version claims to run on Solaris 10.

Which is true, but you need to jump through a few hoops first.

First, you need to make sure that libGL.so can be found. I guess this varies a bit depending on whether you're using mesa or have the nividia drivers, but I ended up setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH_64 to /usr/X11/lib/amd64.

Then you need libXinerama; if you're running an older version of Solaris (my test machine was running S10U3 == 11/06) then applying patch 125726-02 will do the trick.

Then if you're running 64-bit you'll need a copy of libdlpi. I just snarfed a copy off one of my test opensolaris boxes (actually indiana preview 2 - I have seen comments that the one from the official OpenSolaris release won't work as it's too new).

(Yes, I realize there might be a bit of a chicken and egg situation there!)

Then I tried booting the indiana preview 1. Which worked just great. No network, but I expected that. The only glitch I had was the key to escape from the guest - which is set to Right Ctrl by default, which I discovered I don't have. I reset that to some other key that I do have and don't use for anything else.

Having learnt from that, I had a go at the OpenSolaris 2008.05 release having found a CD that I had brought back from CommunityOne, and that worked fine (and picked up the network).

Roy WoodShell Based Random Number Generator

May 09, 2008 06:20 PM GMT
I observed a a few searches in my metadata stats for a shell based random generator. I know Korn, Bash, and Z Shell shells support a RANDOM variable. Depending on the shell, I will use a print and/or echo command to output its value. The pseudo-random generator outputs an integer between 0 and 32767 - yes, a very limited range. Here are a few examples for these three different shells.

Korn Shell
# ksh
# echo $RANDOM
23508
# echo $RANDOM
22618
# echo $RANDOM
1864
# echo $RANDOM $RANDOM
4958 29989
# print $RANDOM
30418
# print $RANDOM
4992
# print $RANDOM $RANDOM $RANDOM
29436 27342 12946

Seed the sequence of numbers
# RANDOM=100
# print $RANDOM
12662
# echo $RANDOM
23392
# RANDOM=100
# echo $RANDOM
12662
# echo $RANDOM
23392

Bash Shell
# bash
# echo $RANDOM
3107
# echo $RANDOM
7897

Z Shell
# zsh
# print $RANDOM
32274
# for i in {1..10}
for> do
for> print $RANDOM
for> done
10740
12659
9498
2798
3541
10384
21216
15221
22157
15198

Seed the sequence of numbers
# RANDOM=`date '+%H%S'`
# echo $RANDOM
12488
# echo $RANDOM
5266

Bill SommerfeldNice review of OpenOffice..

May 09, 2008 05:01 PM GMT

A few good words for OpenOffice from the Instapundit..

 

Simon Phippslinks for 2008-05-09

May 09, 2008 08:33 AM GMT

May 08, 2008

John Levonblogs.sun.com RSS feed

May 08, 2008 11:10 PM GMT
For reasons beyond my ken, blogs.sun.com doesn't actually list an RSS feed anywhere I can find, but it's at http://blogs.sun.com/main/feed/entries/rss.

Update:: it's now grown an RSS icon. Thanks!

Jonathan SchwartzOpenSolaris, Amazon, MySQL and Glassfish... Clouds Parting

May 08, 2008 06:42 PM GMT
We made some big announcements this week at our annual developer forums, CommunityOne and JavaOne. I thought I'd highlight a couple in particular.

We announced the first commercial release of OpenSolaris - targeting high speed developers and development teams (not consumers...). OpenSolaris focuses on developers wanting to be freed from proprietary software models, who see innovation and automation in operating systems as a source of competitive advantage.

If Solaris 10, OpenSolaris's older brother, is for IT departments prioritizing carrier grade stability over rapid innovation, OpenSolaris targets the exact opposite - developers, from high performance computing to social networking, that prioritize a constantly refreshing repository filled with community innovations (and ZFS-based automated rollback) over an unchanging qualification target. Go to OpenSolaris.com to download a free copy, or click on the OpenSolaris logo to have a bootable CD delivered to you (free of charge). Or if you want a simpler way of trying it out... just go to Amazon!

We also announced a partnership with Amazon, through which we've made OpenSolaris, alongside MySQL and Glassfish, available with commercial support on Amazon's elastic computing cloud. From where I sit, this is a profound change in the industry - the world's most popular database is now available, and commercially supported, as a cloud service. As is the fastest growing Java container, and a redefined OpenSolaris for the modern world.

The traditional software industry, first revolutionized by open source, next by software as a service, is now embarking on a third revolutionary change... infrastructure as a service.

Sure feels like the clouds are parting.

(And again, if you'd like a free copy of OpenSolaris sent to you on a bootable, "live" CD, just click on the OpenSolaris logo above.)

Simon Phippslinks for 2008-05-08

May 08, 2008 08:37 AM GMT

Jim GrisanzioOpenSolaris 2008.05 Opens in China

May 08, 2008 07:18 AM GMT
Nice to see OpenSolaris 2008.05 already moving in China. Two blogs from Sun's Qingye John Jiang: OpenSolaris 2008.05 in Retrospect (see Chinese version here) and Photos from the Installfest (in Chinese and English). If you are familiar with the OpenSolaris activities in China, you know that it has been an utterly amazing year there -- especially on universities. But now that Indiana is out there as a product, I have a feeling that the China OpenSolaris community is going to actually increase its growth rate. Also, the OpenSolaris community in China is now directly interacting with the community in the U.S., Europe, and India and people all over the are noticing this development. A quote from John's blog: "20 years ago, there were less than 50 universities in China that had a computer science department, while this number exceeds 800 in 2008."

Jim GrisanzioGartner on Open Source at Sun

May 08, 2008 06:50 AM GMT
Open Source at Sun Microsystems, 2008: "No other major IT platform vendor has committed so much of its core assets to the open-source software model as Sun Microsystems. Certainly, companies such as IBM, Oracle and BEA Systems have dramatically expanded their own open-source strategies in recent years, but only Sun has literally open-sourced nearly the entire family of products — that is, its intellectual property (IP) — from its operating system to Java." -- Gartner

FOSS at Sun. It's a lot.

Jim GrisanzioOpenSolaris Summit Pics: Two

May 08, 2008 06:43 AM GMT

Here are a few more images from the 2008 OpenSolaris Summit this weekend in Santa Cruz. The summit was an excellent event. Many good sessions, but even more importantly, it was fantastic meeting all the people around the world I've been dealing with for four years now. Check in on the summit wiki in the next couple of weeks because the presos will be posted there.

OpenSolaris Summit 

OpenSolaris Summit OpenSolaris Summit

93 Summit images on Flickr.

May 07, 2008

Jim GrisanzioOpenSolaris Launch at CommunityOne: Pics

May 07, 2008 09:20 PM GMT
OpenSolaris 2008.05 took center stage at CommunityOne yesterday. I just walked around and took photos and talked to people all day. The buzz was palpable. Congratulations to everyone involved in bringing this distribution to life. New users go to opensolaris.com along with those interested in developing applications for the operating system, and developers interested in working on the system itself and many other related projects go to opensolaris.org.

OpenSolaris at CommunityOne OpenSolaris at CommunityOne

OpenSolaris at CommunityOne OpenSolaris at CommunityOne

OpenSolaris at CommunityOne OpenSolaris at CommunityOne

71 images from CommunityOne 2008 here on Flickr.

Tim MarslandOpenSolaris 2008.05

May 07, 2008 08:28 PM GMT

I'm thrilled by the latest delivery of the Sun's OpenSolaris distro, and I was happy to see the "party" atmosphere at Community One on Monday. A lot of people have worked very hard to put the thing together, and everyone wanted to mark this event - both as the culmination of a lot of work, and as the beginning of a new phase of building out the distro with more content - both by Sun, our business partners, and by our communities. Thanks to everyone for their efforts.

If you haven't already given it a spin, try it out - it's a live CD image you can download from here.

May 06, 2008

Marcelo LealWhat’s next?

May 06, 2008 09:33 PM GMT

OpenSolaris 2008.05 installation

I do remember when i did try to use The FreeBSD kernel with Debian userland softwares. I do remember when i have tryed/used the Solaris 9 environment with the NetBSD ports system, and Gentoo portage system too. Yesterday, i think that whole problem was fixed, with the release of the OpenSolaris distribution. I think a lot of users and admins that work with POSIX (unix like) Operating Systems, were waiting for a Solaris environment with a real package manager. Now, it’s true!
I remember the desire to see Apple releasing OSX to x86 hardware, and using a unix like kernel… maybe the time was the problem here, because with some luck we could have now a OSX based on Solaris/OpenSolaris. But what i really think is the next step (or just my will), is see Apple selling (i don’t imagine they releasing it for free :), the Aqua interface/applications to any unix like OS: GNU/Linux, *BSD, and… OpenSolaris! C’mon, i have a great OS already…
Can you imagine that? Solaris + a solid package manager + Aqua?
Ok, we have great environment and applications (gnome, kde, enlightenment), i don’t need to list them all… but don’t you agree that would be great?

Stephen Hahn2008.05: More ways to get it

May 06, 2008 06:33 PM GMT

As I did for the preview releases, I'll collect links to mirror sites here. These will also get links on the various download pages out there.

Bart and I just finished updating the package repository with the new packages we'd received the past few weeks, and that means 2008.05 is out the door. (Thanks to everybody who tried the release candidate, filed a bug, shuffled a package, wrote or proofread a document, or just spent energy anticipating the bits.) You can get the ISO image, suitable for burning to a 700 MiB CD or immediate use in virtual environment, directly from the following locations:

Reading the logs, and talking with some of our mirror sites, we know we all served out a lot of downloads for the previews; if you're interested in being a mirror, please let me know. (2008.05 remains completely redistributable.) We're using a bigger download complex this time, but every mirror helps.

If you already downloaded and installed Preview 2, it's more complete, easier, and probably faster to update directly using image packaging: see the update guidelines. These instructions involve a small script to safely update a clone of your installed system, and then switch to that on a system reboot. (If you were running Preview 1, you should update that to Preview 2, and then go on to 2008.05.)

Update 1: My thanks to Tobias Lundquist, who's once again mirrored via FTP and HTTP (Internet 2) in Sweden.

Update 2: My thanks to Luca, who's put up an HTTP mirror in Romania.

These links are for the gzipped CD image, which contains the 12 "primary languages". It installs quite a bit faster, particularly on systems with slower CPUs. There is also an LZMA-compressed image, which has localization support for 42 languages, including those primary ones. It's available from dlc.sun.com, genunix.org, ftp.df.lth.se, mirrors.xservers.ro, and as a torrent. (Consult the language lists for specifics.)

[ T: ]

May 05, 2008

Tim MarslandVirtualBox 1.6 at Community One

May 05, 2008 09:29 PM GMT

Hmm. Always wondered if I could write a blog entry "live" from a conference session. Since I'm writing this entry "live", I'll apologise ahead of time for muddling my tenses as I move more into the present tense!

I'm here at community one listening to Joost Pronk and Achim Hasenmueller talking about the latest improvements and coolness in VirtualBox. Achim's team has just released version 1.6, which has an impressive list of features that can be found in the changelog right here.

Now the Q&A begins

Now some roadmap items that are being worked on

You can download VirtualBox 1.6 by following the downloads link from virtualbox.org.

Mark JohnsonInstalling OpenSolaris on Xen

May 05, 2008 07:44 PM GMT
Here are some quick instructions on how to install a DHCP based PV OpenSolaris guest/domU on a hypervisor based on the Xen open source community.

First, download the OpenSolaris CDROM.

Here's the py file I'm using... Your path to pygrub will differ if your using a linux dom0.

: alpha[1]#; cat pv.py
name = "opensolaris-pv-install"
vcpus = 1
memory = "1024"
bootloader = "/usr/lib/xen/bin/pygrub"
kernel = "/platform/i86xpv/kernel/amd64/unix"
ramdisk = "/boot/x86.microroot"
extra = "/platform/i86xpv/kernel/amd64/unix -B console=ttya,livemode=text"
disk = ['file:/tank/guests/install/opensolaris/os200805.iso,6:cdrom,r',
        'file:/tank/guests/opensolaris/disk.img,0,w']
vif = ['']
on_shutdown = "destroy"
on_reboot = "destroy"
on_crash = "preserve"
: alpha[1]#; 

Setup your paths correctly, create your disk, etc. Boot the OpenSolaris LiveCD

: alpha[1]#; xm create -c pv.py
Using config file "./pv.py".
Started domain opensolaris-pv-install
v3.1.4-xvm chgset 'Fri May 02 10:23:19 2008 -0700 15873:3e3bd3d19023'
SunOS Release 5.11 Version snv_86 64-bit
Copyright 1983-2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.
Hostname: opensolaris
Remounting root read/write
Probing for device nodes ...
Preparing live image for use
Done mounting Live image
USB keyboard
 1. Albanian                      22. Latvian                       
 2. Belarusian                    23. Macedonian                    
 3. Belgian                       24. Malta_UK                      
 4. Bulgarian                     25. Malta_US                      
 5. Croatian                      26. Norwegian                     
 6. Czech                         27. Polish                        
 7. Danish                        28. Portuguese                    
 8. Dutch                         29. Russian                       
 9. Finnish                       30. Serbia-And-Montenegro         
10. French                        31. Slovenian                     
11. French-Canadian               32. Slovakian                     
12. Hungarian                     33. Spanish                       
13. German                        34. Swedish                       
14. Greek                         35. Swiss-French                  
15. Icelandic                     36. Swiss-German                  
16. Italian                       37. Traditional-Chinese           
17. Japanese-type6                38. TurkishQ                      
18. Japanese                      39. TurkishF                      
19. Korean                        40. UK-English                    
20. Latin-American                41. US-English                    
21. Lithuanian                    
To select the keyboard layout, enter a number [default 41]:

1. Chinese - Simplified
2. Chinese - Traditional
3. English
4. French
5. German
6. Italian
7. Japanese
8. Korean
9. Portuguese - Brazil
10. Russian
11. Spanish
12. Swedish
To select the desktop language, enter a number [default 3]:
Configuring devices.
Mounting local partitions/cdroms
Reading ZFS config: done.

opensolaris console login: 
 May  5 08:06:30 opensolaris in.routed[639]: route 0.0.0.0/8 --> 0.0.0.0 nexthop ...
opensolaris console login: 

Log into LiveCD (jack/jack). Make sure your networking is up (it can take a minute or two until the DHCP client runs).

opensolaris console login: jack
Password: 
Last login: Mon May  5 08:07:00 on console
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.11      snv_86  January 2008
jack@opensolaris:~$ 
jack@opensolaris:~$ ifconfig xnf0
xnf0: flags=201004843 mtu 1500 index 2
        inet 192.168.0.117 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255

Start up a VNC Server, connect to it on port 5901, and run through the install.

jack@opensolaris:~$ mkdir .vnc;cp .Xclients .vnc/xstartup 
jack@opensolaris:~$ vncserver

You will require a password to access your desktops.

Password:
Verify:
xauth:  creating new authority file /jack/.Xauthority

New 'opensolaris:1 ()' desktop is opensolaris:1

Starting applications specified in /jack/.vnc/xstartup
Log file is /jack/.vnc/opensolaris:1.log

Once your install has completed, create a py file for the your new guest, and you are ready to go...

name = "opensolaris"
vcpus = 1
memory = "512"
disk = ['file:/tank/guests/opensolaris/disk.img,0,w']
vif = ['']
on_shutdown = "destroy"
on_reboot = "restart"
on_crash = "destroy"

Have Fun!

Dave MinerOpenSolaris, the distro

May 05, 2008 02:19 PM GMT
As of a little while ago, the official bits for OpenSolaris 2008.05 went live, at the distro's home site, opensolaris.com. While it may seem odd to say, I view this day more as a beginning than an ending (though I am more than happy to call an end to the 60+ hour weeks that went into building it!). It's a beginning in many ways, but I'll just say that while we've shipped an image and loaded up a pretty good number of packages into the repository, most of the functionality we plan to ultimately have isn't there yet, not to mention the number of packages we want to have in the repository.

At the moment I'm too worn out from the weekend at the OpenSolaris Summit to even attempt to write anything technical, as it likely wouldn't make any sense, so I'll just keep this short and close with a big THANK YOU to everyone on the Caiman team for all the work they've done in getting us to this milestone. It's time to feel good about what we've done.

Look forward to seeing lots of you at CommunityOne!

Stephen HahnCommunityOne: here and there

May 05, 2008 07:38 AM GMT

Sunday I spent at Moscone, teaching laptops and projectors to get along. Saturday, Nathaniel, Benjamin, and I dropped in for lunch at the Developer Summit. I managed to talk with a few people before the boys found large whacking sticks, and then it seemed best to drive to Pescadero for some beach time.

I'll be busy for the morning of CommunityOne. For Rich's keynote, I'll be running some of the less violent demos. Almost immediately after that, lead modernizer David Comay and I will be going into more detail in our session

S297399 Getting Started with OpenSolaris™; New Features & Building OpenSolaris™ Packages; 11:00 a.m., Moscone South/Esplanade 300.
We've got some additional demonstrations, including a worked example of package publication using some pre-release tools, which could be exciting.

I'm hoping to have some time for questions during the session but, if not, I'll be circulating during the afternoon and happy to talk to people about 2008.05, image packaging, or whatever. And, of course, there will be time to talk at the party after the day's sessions. In any case, I should be easy to spot: I have a new tie.

I'm told you can still register on-site—it's not too late.

[ T: ]

Adam Leventhaldtrace.conf post-post-mortem

May 05, 2008 07:06 AM GMT

This originally was going to be a post-mortem on dtrace.conf, but so much time has passed, that I doubt it qualifies anymore. Back in March, we held the first ever DTrace (un)conference, and I hope I speak for all involved when I declare it a terrific success. And our t-shirts (logo pictured) were, frankly, bomb. Here are some fairly random impressions from the day:

Notes on the demographics at dtrace.conf: Macs were the most prevalent laptops by quite a wide margin, and a ton of demos were done under VMware for the Mac. There were a handful of dvorak users who far outnumbered the Esperanto speakers (there were none) despite apparently similarly rationales. There were, by a wide margin, more live demonstrations that I'd seen during a day of technical talks; there were probably fewer individual slides than demos -- exactly what we had in mind.

My favorite session brought the authors of the three DTrace ports to the front of the room to talk about porting, and answer questions (mostly from the DTrace team). I was excited that they agreed to work together on a wiki and on a DTrace porting project. Both would be great for new ports and for building a repository that could integrate all the ports into a single repository. I just have to see if I can get them to follow through now several weeks removed from the DTrace love-in...

Also particularly interesting were a demonstration of a DTrace-enabled Adobe Air prototype and the very clever mechanism behind the Java group's plan for native Java static probes (JSDT). Essentially, they're using the same technique as normal USDT, but dynamically generating the tracing description structures and sending them down to the kernel (slick).

The most interesting discussion resulted from Keith's presentation of vprobes -- a DTrace... um... inspired facility in VMware. While it is necessary to place a unified tracing mechanism at the lowest level of software abstraction (in DTrace's case, the kernel), it may also make sense to embed collaborating tracing frameworks at other levels of the stack. For example, the JVM could include a micro-DTrace which communicated with DTrace in the kernel as needed. This would both improve enabled performance (not a primary focus of DTrace), and allow for better domain-specific instrumentation and expression. I'll be interested to see how vprobes executes on this idea.

Requests from the DTrace community:

Ben was kind enough to video the entire day. We should have the footage publicly available in about a week. Thanks to all who participated; several recent projects have already gotten me excited for dtrace.conf(09).

Stephen Hahnpkg(5): Reverse proxying your depot with Apache HTTPD

May 05, 2008 06:44 AM GMT

As part of the changes to get Developer Preview 2 ready, we decided to rejigger the HTTP handling on pkg.opensolaris.org so that we could have more options as more people attempt to use the early versions of image packaging. Previously, we ran pkg.depotd directly on port 80, in its read-only mode; now we use Apache HTTPD to listen on port 80, and use mod_proxy to proxy those incoming requests to a pkg.depotd instance listening on a separate port. With a couple of different approaches

Proxying and rewriting is one of those endlessly fun activities that somehow actually ends up being productive. Last time, proxying fun led Steve and I to fiddling around such that we ended up with proxy and rewrite patterns to enable the country portals for opensolaris.org.

If you want to share the top-level component of your URL space, you'll need to watch pkg(5) developments, as you have to map the list of operations one-by-one—and I know there are some new operations forthcoming. That would involve adding something like the following to a VirtualHost directive in your Apache configuration.

ProxyRequests On

Redirect /index.html http://pkg.opensolaris.org/status

ProxyPass /abandon http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/abandon
ProxyPass /add http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/add
ProxyPass /catalog http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/catalog
ProxyPass /close http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/close
ProxyPass /feed http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/feed
ProxyPass /file http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/file
ProxyPass /filelist http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/filelist
ProxyPass /manifest http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/manifest
ProxyPass /open http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/open
ProxyPass /search http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/search
ProxyPass /versions http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/versions

ProxyPass /css http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/css
ProxyPass /logo http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/logo
ProxyPass /icon http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/icon

ProxyPass /status http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/

Configuring your server in this fashion allows you to mix an image packaging server in with your other site content. You can easily deliver static content alongside your depot, for example.

If you don't mind pushing your package repository down one level in your URL space, then the above simplifies to

ProxyRequests On

ProxyPass /pkg/ http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/

(which should be a hint on how to create a repository farm under a single URL). To use the latter, you would use pkg(1)'s image-create subcommand

$ pkg image-create -F -a mypkgs.com=http://www.myserver.com/pkg /path/to/image

to connect your image to your reverse-proxied packaging depot.

In the two examples above, you should of course replace machine names like pkg.opensolaris.org and port numbers like 10000 with values appropriate to your own installation.

Happy proxied package serving!

Feel free to share your alternative configurations or approaches with other HTTP servers here, or on pkg-discuss-AT-opensolaris.org.

[ T: ]

Peter TribbleEt tu, Brute?

May 05, 2008 04:34 AM GMT
So Jim's posted some photos of the OpenSolaris Developer Summit.

It was great to meet so many people in person. We had some good talks, lots of discussions (not all of which actually led to results, but you can't have everything). One of the things that is clear is that open communication is vital, and we definitely had some of that.

We're on the way to building a stronger community, and there was some additional encouragement organised for us. Go Team International!

Next up, Community One.

Jonathan SchwartzOur Q3

May 05, 2008 03:49 AM GMT

We announced the results of our third fiscal quarter (Q3) on Thursday last week, and the results weren't what I, or any of us, wanted.

As you can read in the press release, we delivered $3.267 billion in revenue for Q3, roughly flat with a year ago. On that revenue, we delivered a GAAP loss of 4 cents (equal to the charge associated with the acquisition of MySQL, which closed within the quarter) - on that revenue, we generated around $320m in cash.

The low light of the quarter was revenue in the US - which declined year over year by nearly 10%, a big step down for a geography that typically contributes 40% of our total revenue. The highlight of the quarter was our India performance, up 30% year over year - and our chip multi-threading Niagara systems, which grew (billings) 110%.

We had growth in 12 of 16 geographies in which we sell, but a shortfall in the world's largest economy (and the largest in Sun's portfolio), is tough to make up elsewhere. So we showed no growth at the corporate level.

Despite a weak US economy, we still see growth and opportunity across the world. We are going to be making some changes as a result of the quarter, certainly, but not in our core vision or strategic direction - network infrastructure is being built out across the world, developers will continue to define its architecture and shape demand, and we will continue to position ourselves to drive and capture that market.

With that, I'll go through a few questions:

What happened in the US?
Late in the quarter, we saw a fairly aggressive slowdown - among smaller customers, and for larger systems (like enterprise servers and large tape libraries). As you recall, we left Q2 with a healthy backlog, lots of momentum, and feedback from customers that we were totally on the right track, so we were as surprised as anyone that deals started stalling in early March.

Why did big systems slow?
It's counterintuitive, but larger systems and purchase orders's are easier to slow down than smaller purchases. When you sell the systems and storage behind a big buildout, it's typically a long selling cycle, and a fairly long implementation process (systems aren't powered up the day they arrive). So holding off for a few weeks, either because you're spooked about the US mortgage crisis or because your CFO decided to put a pause on capital spending, is fairly straightforward.

And remember, our business is a portfolio - from high growth, low end blades and training services, to slower growth, high end enterprise systems an infrastructure software. There is no one system or product for all workloads, it's a portfolio.

So how are you going to adjust going forward?
We'll continue to diversify our business - geographically, and with the introduction of our Open Storage initiatives this past week and acquisitions like MySQL and Vaau, we'll continue moving into adjacent markets.

We also announced a restructuring plan, through which we'll be making targeted reductions in operating expenses. The net result will be the elimination of up to 2,500 jobs.

To be clear - we are taking assertive, and prudent steps to focus on growth opportunities, and to pull our cost structure in line with our business model. As we've done in years past, we're doing both - making choices to invest and disinvest.

Evolving companies are never done making choices.

Where did you grow in the quarter?
In 12 of the 16 geographies we serve - including India (up 30%), Brazil (up 20%), up in China, Russia, the Middle East, Canada, to name a few places. In general, the world continues to look to technology as a source of growth, automation and efficiency. Even our Wall Street business was up this past quarter.

On the product front, our focus on energy efficiency continues to pay off, with Niagara systems grew (billings) 110% year over year, and our newest (AMD, Intel and SPARC) blade systems growing at an even higher clip. The MySQL team delivered a great growth quarter, and Service revenues were up 3% (a major portion of which are software related, of course). Disk storage billings were up 6%.

Deferred product revenues were again up nicely, more than 25% - these deferred revenues tend to be for higher end systems and more complex configurations, with gross margins above the corporate average. Deferred Services were down, attributable to the ERP transition I mentioned earlier (we expect to recover that in Q4).

What didn't go well?
Enterprise systems, which were great growers in Q1 and Q2 (20% and 8% growth, respectively), were down in the quarter - and not specifically attributable to competition. We saw exceptional performance on our APL systems built with Fujitsu, and a strengthening partnership. Tape libraries were also down, although media sales were strong.

Given the size of both these line items, our higher volume lower end businesses were not yet at a sufficient scale to eclipse the slowdown on the lower volume, high end systems.

Why don't you just stop giving your software away?

Because we prioritize developer adoption. Let me give an example.

Last week, we saw a very high profile media company raise a considerable sum of money. They had not otherwise been on our radar. I sent a note to the head of our global sales team, given the fundraising had cited a growing infrastructure buildout, and asked if we'd made contact.

He said no, but we were immediately reaching out - and it turns out they're completely built around MySQL.

So before we arrived, before we were engaged, and before they began building out a large infrastructure, the MySQL team had scored a design win - ahead of the proprietary competition. What should we have charged them beforehand? No matter what it was, they wouldn't have used the product - startups and developers don't pay for software. But here's a diffrent question: what would we have paid them to select MySQL over the proprietary alternatives before embarking on a massive expansion?

Right question. We didn't pay them, the MySQL team earned their adoption.

Will they buy a license now? Maybe not, but we'll be well positioned if and when they, like Facebook or Nokia or the New York Times, do. And in the interim, it costs us nothing for the reference. I was with a bunch of startups at our StartupCamp this morning, and asked how many folks in the audience *didn't* use free software... no hands were raised. Why are we focused on startups? Because we're focused on all developers, in big companies and small.

How do you feel about the competition?
Just fine, we looked at the deals slowing in the US, competition wasn't our big issue - it's not that someone else was getting the purchase order, it's that no PO was being issued in the quarter. We're more exposed to the US markets, and potentially more exposed to discretionary purchases (although I don't really believe that servers are more discretionary than storage - they're converging). Avnet, one of our big distributors, had a similar experience in the US.

Why didn't you pre-announce the quarter?
We wanted to be sure, when we made our announcements, to have finalized our numbers and our plan to adjust our cost structure going forward. Given we're in the midst of an ERP transition, we were still finalizing work late into April. Secondarily, we needed to review our FY 2009 restructuring plan with the board before going public. We announced as soon as we'd met, reviewed and approved the plan.

How did you lose money compared to a year ago profit?
Well, without dipping into GAAP accounting, we generated a lot of cash in the quarter (more than $320m), and getting from cash to GAAP income involves a fair number of line items associated with acquisition accounting, amortization of goodwill, tax provisions, stock option expensing - all of which, on a non-cash basis, added up to 22 cents worth of charges.

Are you repurchasing your own shares?
We don't comment on buyback plans, but we'll report any potential purchases at the end of the quarter.

When will the US recover? Will the malaise spread overseas?
We build network innovation at Sun, we don't predict the global economy.

And with that, you've hopefully got a clearer sense of what we saw, and what we see. So I'll end on a particuarly vexing question,

"Why does Sun's CEO waste time writing that blog?"
Because I believe in providing clarity surrounding our strategy and operations - not just once a year in the Annual Report. I believe clarity behind our direction is useful for our shareholders, customers, partners and employees.

In good times, and in challenging ones.

________________

Safe Harbor Statement

Jonathan's blog contains forward-looking statements regarding the future results and performance of Sun including statements with respect to the effects of our restructuring plan, and expectations for deferred revenue. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and actual results could differ materially from those predicted in any such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in such forward-looking statements include: risks associated with developing, designing, manufacturing and distributing new products; lack of success in technological advancements; pricing pressures; lack of customer acceptance of new products; the possibility of errors or defects in new products; competition; adverse business conditions; failure to retain key employees; the cancellation or delay of projects; our reliance on single-source suppliers; risks associated with our ability to purchase a sufficient amount of components to meet demand; inventory risks; and delays in product development or customer acceptance and implementation of new products and technologies. Please also refer to Sun's periodic reports that are filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2007 and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarters ended September 30, 2007 and December 30, 2007. Sun assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update these forward-looking statements.

Marcelo LealAbel Braga, e o melhor Inter que eu já vi!

May 05, 2008 02:52 AM GMT

Abel Braga, o grande técnico do colorado! Nos meus 33 anos de idade, já escrevi sobre os maiores jogadores de futebol que vi nos gramados, e agora escrevo sobre o maior treinador que já vi no Sport Club Internacional: Abel Braga. Não sou muito de colocar a culpa nos treinadores, e poucas vezes “fiz campanha” para troca de treinadores no colorado, pois acredito que o principal são os onze jogadores que estão ali, dentro das quatro linhas. Mas com base nestes jogadores, digo, na qualidade que cada torcedor enxerga no plantel do seu clube do coração, criamos expectativas…

Considero o Muricy Ramalho um bom treinador, mas depois de três anos à frente da equipe colorada, sem conseguir chegar numa final (Copa do Brasil, Campeonato Brasileiro, Copa Sul-Americana), Muricy foi alvo das minhas críticas. O internacional tinha um grupo qualificado, montado também pelo Muricy e pelo então presidente do Interancional, Fernando Carvalho.

Gosto de futebol, e portanto acompanho o que acontece neste esporte dentro e fora do Brasil. Nesses meus 33 anos de colorado, fora o título da Copa do Brasil de 1992, minha melhor época como torcedor do Internacional tinha sido com o colorado sob o comando de Abel Braga, ainda no início de sua carreira. O Inter com Abel Braga venceu o gre-nal do século, com uma virada histórica com um jogador a menos em campo, vindo a sagrar-se vice-campeão Brasileiro. No ano seguinte a segunda melhor participação do colorado em uma Libertadores da América até então: 3° lugar.

Longe do Internacional Abel Braga ganhou campeonatos estaduais, ajudou a revelar bons jogadores no futebol nacional e chegou por duas vezes consecutivas à final da Copa do Brasil (uma vez com o flamengo, e outra com o fluminense). Vale lembrar que com times relativamente “fracos”, onde na minha visão, o trabalho do técnico foi fundamental. Quando o colorado anunciou a saída de Muricy Ramalho em 2006, eu gostaria de ver o Abel Braga novamente no comando da equipe colorada… e foi quando o título deste post começou a ser criado: “O melhor Inter que já vi“!

Abel Braga chegou e começaram as mudanças… primeiro trouxe Fabiano Eller, cria sua, e o segundo melhor zagueiro que já vi jogar no beira-rio (o primeiro foi o Gamarra). Com Clemer no gol, montou a zaga com Fabiano Eller e Bolívar (que antes não era nem relacionado, agora era lançado como zagueiro). Sem Élder Granja na ala direita, Abel colocou Ceará (outro que não era aproveitado, e muito criticado), e Jorge Wagner na ala esquerda. Abel Braga também trouxe Fabinho para primeira função ao lado do incansável Tinga, Alex e Fernandão na meia, e Rafael Sóbis na frente. Uma campanha irreparável no gauchão, perdeu apenas um jogo no início do campeonato, e perdeu o título com dois empates na final. Foi duramente criticado por alguns que “achavam” que o inter tinha obrigação de ganhar do grêmio, e ainda golear. Imaginem que em um dos maiores clássicos do futebol Brasileiro, um time entra com a obrigação de ganhar e ainda golear…

Bom, dois empates em grenal não é nada absurdo, e eu continuava crente no bom trabalho que estava sendo feito. E a sequência deste trabalho o mundo já sabe: Campeão da Taça Libertadores (perdendo apenas um jogo), vice-campeão Brasileiro, e Campeão Mundial FIFA (lançando Alexandre Pato para o mundo, com apenas 17 anos). No ano seguinte, 2007, o Abel Braga não conseguiu uma boa participação na Taça Libertadores, eu acredito que em virtude do Internacional não ter reposto jogadores importantes que tinha perdido do plantel campeão de 2006 (principalmente na zaga). O Internacional vendeu jogadores como: Fabiano Eller, Bolívar, Fabinho, Tinga, Jorge Wagner, e Rafael Sóbis. Abel saiu após a eliminação do Inter na Taça Libertadores daquele ano, e voltou no segundo semestre de 2007 para o segundo turno do Brasileirão. Nesta fase, o técnico colorado começou a recriar a equipe… alguns jogadores importantes puderam estrear no colorado em agosto (Guiñazu, Magrão, Sorondo, volta de Fernandão de Lesão, término da suspensão de Marcão, etc..)

Este ano, o colorado já começou ganhando o torneio de Dubai, com um time todo remodelado, e mais uma vez tendo uma campanha impecável no campeonato gaúcho. Já na Copa do Brasil o Inter passou das duas primeiras fases da competição ganhando dos adversários por mais de dois gols de diferença. Sem necessidade de segunda partida. Dia 24 de abril deste ano, o colorado precisava golear o time do paraná para passar para a próxima fase da Copa do Brasil. Era necessário vencer por 3 gols de diferença, pois havia perdido o primeiro jogo por 2×0. Com dois desfalques importantes (Guiñazu e Alex), com vários jogadores no departamento médico em virtude de uma epidemia de Hepatite A, Abel armou um time que não só fez 3 gols de diferença, mas fez 4 (5×1, com mais uma aposta sua marcando dois gols e fazendo o passe para mais um, Andrézinho). Hoje, mais uma vitória épica aconteceu no beira-rio, o internacional sagrou-se campeão gaúcho pela 38ª vez, vencendo o Juventude por 8×1!

Esta o Abel estava devendo pois nunca havia ganhado um gauchão…

Abel Braga foi campeão da Libertadores ganhando do São Paulo de Muricy Ramalho, e que tinha o time atual campeão da competição, e campeão mundial. Ganhou o mundial FIFA enfrentando a equipe do Barcelona de Ronaldinho Gaúcho, e neste ano de 2008 já ganhou o campeonato gaúcho e o torneio de Dubai, batendo a equipe da Internazionale.
Faço questão de escrever isto antes de saber se Abel levará o Inter a mais algum título ou não, mas porquê acredito que já está mais do que provado que Abel Braga foi o técnico das maiores conquistas do Sport Club Internacional, e hoje é um dos maiores técnicos do futebol Brasileiro. Seria interessante ver o confronto de Abel e Luxemburgo na Copa do Brasil, mas não será contra o Palmeiras que o colorado irá disputar a partida das quartas-de-final, e sim contra o Sport Club do Recife.
Por último, parabéns a todos os colorados espalhados pelo mundo, por mais esta conquista maiúscula! E seria bom que parcela da imprensa, e também dos torcedores do colorado, demonstrassem o respeito e reconhecimento que este grande técnico merece.

Marcelo LealPower supply, a source of electrical p…roblem

May 05, 2008 01:04 AM GMT

Power supply (picture by wikipedia)...

About a week ago, i did start to face a problem with my desktop computer at home. The machine was just hanging, or sometimes shutting off… after the first shuttdown, when i did try to power on the computer, i did hear a tipical “bip” serie from the CPU, and have saw the BIOS message about overheating. Ok, we are not totally blind now, we have a clue about the origin of the problem. So, i shuttdown the computer, and did start a cleanning procedure on the heat sink. I have another heat sink (used) here, but after the cleanning, i just add another thin layer of thermal grease to the heatsink, and gave it another try… no luck…

CPU (picture by wikipedia)...

Second chance, did change the heat sink, and another try… no luck again. Now i was not much confident about the overheating, because i start to think: “two heat sinks with dissipation problems“? And we are not in summer here… The computer’s BIOS has some indicators about the CPU thermal state, and so i did look it and took note of the numbers. About 60° C, even 70°C.. i do confess i did not have any parameters. So, i did a new power on, and running against time i did install lm_sensors (excellent application, i think OpenSolaris needs something like this on x86 hardware). The only problem i did see with the ubuntu gutsy installation, was the fact that after i did try to use the gnome applet, i had to realize that i need to execute the sensors-detect perl script. The Debian rules avoid user interaction at installation time, but i think here a dialog was essential…

Now, with the gnome applet up and running, i could see the “red” alarm about overheating. The numbers were slightly different from the indicators of the system BIOS, but by the red color on the CPU temperature, i could see that something was really strange with the CPU. The CPU is a Pentium IV 3.0 Ghz, and i have a old 2.4 Ghz CPU on a “not workingmotherboard, so… i did change the CPU to see if the problem was not the CPU itself. No luck again…
Ok, now i was convicted that the problem was not the CPU or the heat sink, and the problem was on the motherboard or the power supply. I was praying to be the power supply because i already have a not working motherboard, and my computer is a old one (socket 478), with 2,5Gb DDR RAM, etc… So, let’s try the power supply first!

Bingo! After remove the connectors from the motherboard, i could see that the connectors were not in a good state, and after change the power suppy… everything was working again! The gnome applet is showing 45° C on average, and the color is yellow. I did change the heat sink for a new one, and the speed is 2850 RPM on average. Last step is take note of these “normal” values to have a parameter for future situations like this.
Peace.

May 04, 2008

Simon PhippsMeet Me At JavaOne 2008

May 04, 2008 11:58 PM GMT

If you're attending JavaOne this year, do come to my session on Wednesday at 2:50pm. It's T-7064 and I will be talking about the Adoption-Led Market and the challenges it brings to the open source and free software community of communities. It's in room 305.

Alternatively, come to the Thirsty Bear on Tuesday evening around 8pm and I'll see you at the open source un-BOF for chat, food and drink.

Marcelo LealBubbles

May 04, 2008 11:04 PM GMT

I did receive a good feedback (email, at #opensolaris irc channel, etc… c’mon people, leave a comment :),about my last post about the OpenSolaris.com bubbles. So, i have decided to use the new logo on my blog header for a while. Tomorrow is the great release of the new OpenSolaris binary distribution (project Indiana), and that’s a good reason to keep the bubbles too.

Long and successful life for the bubbles!

May 03, 2008

Jim GrisanzioOpenSolaris Summit Pics: One

May 03, 2008 03:02 PM GMT
I finally made it to the OpenSolaris Summit in Santa Cruz. These are just some warm up shots from the bar last night. I got in late so I didn't get everyone who was there, but everyone will show up here at one point or another. The conference starts today and runs through tomorrow. Should be fun ...

IMG_3721 IMG_3722

IMG_3734 IMG_3736

IMG_3738 IMG_3740

IMG_3742 IMG_3730

IMG_3728 IMG_3727

IMG_3725 IMG_3724

IMG_3723

Simon Phippslinks for 2008-05-03

May 03, 2008 08:32 AM GMT

Roy WoodInsightful Quotes by the Revered Physicist Albert Einstein

May 03, 2008 01:48 AM GMT
Here are some insightful quotes by the revered physicist Albert Einstein. I used an echo statement to act as a delimiter, especially towards the bottom of the list. I do not know who Kevin Harris is but it must have taken him awhile to compile this list.

echo "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."
echo "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
echo "Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."
echo "I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."
echo "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
echo "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
echo "The only real valuable thing is intuition."
echo "A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."
echo "I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice."
echo "God is subtle but he is not malicious."
echo "Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."
echo "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
echo "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
echo "Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
echo "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
echo "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
echo "Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds."
echo "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
echo "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
echo "Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it."
echo "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
echo "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."
echo "God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically."
echo "The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."
echo "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
echo "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."
echo "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."
echo "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
echo "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school."
echo "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
echo "Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."
echo "Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity."
echo "If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."
echo "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
echo "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
echo "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
echo "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
echo "In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep."
echo "The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."
echo "Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves."
echo "Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"
echo "No, this trick won't work...How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?"
echo "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
echo "Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever."
echo "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
echo "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
echo "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
echo "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
echo "The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."
echo "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
echo "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
echo "One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year."
echo "...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought."
echo "He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
echo "A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
echo "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

Copyright: Kevin Harris 1995 (may be freely distributed with this acknowledgement)

May 02, 2008

Erwann ChenedeCompiz integrated in OpenSolaris 2008.05

May 02, 2008 02:05 AM GMT

Compiz is now available out of the box in OpenSolaris 2008.05 (and also since nevada build 85).

To enable it you just need to start the GNOME appearance preference dialog. It is located on Opensolaris 2008.05 under System->Preferences->Appearance-> Visual effect tab.


appearance location in OpenSolaris 2008.05


In nevada it's located under Start Menu->Preferences->Appearance-> Visual effect tab


appearance location in nevada

 

If your system is capable of running compiz you'll see the following dialog :



visual effect tab screenshot


To enable compiz select either the normal or extra settings and that's it :)

If you want to customize your compiz fusion plugins settings you can access the compiz settings manager either via the preferences button or via system->preferences->CompizConfig Settings Manager.


If you are presented with these choices and you know your hardware doesn't support compiz you might be hitting bug 1408.


If you find bugs in either the desktop integration of compiz or compiz itself let me know by logging a bug at defect.opensolaris.org.

Tim MarslandSolaris 9 containers available too

May 02, 2008 01:51 AM GMT

In case anyone didn't notice, we released Solaris 9 containers too. There's a datasheet on it right here, and Dan Price has a great entry on it here.

May 01, 2008

Stephen HahnLive chat on #os200805

May 01, 2008 08:11 PM GMT

We're talking about OpenSolaris 2008.05 over on IRC, using the #os200805, from now until 2 p.m. Pacific Time. If you haven't got an IRC client, you can use freenode's Java applet, which worked great (until Danek kickbanned me). Enter a nickname, and then ask some questions.

Apparently the load from 60 000 users blew out the chat system, so we moved to IRC.

Jim GrisanzioCrazy English in China

May 01, 2008 04:41 PM GMT
Fascinating piece about this guy Li Yang teaching "Crazy English" to huge crowds of people in China. His technique is rather unique, but I can see how it may have significant benefits for anyone learning another language as an adult. The larger language issue in China, though, is illustrated by this utterly amazing quote from the article: "Linguists estimate the number of Chinese now studying or speaking English at between two hundred million and three hundred and fifty million, a figure that’s on the order of the population of the United States." Just think about that. Just think about how that changes things in the future with language barriers beginning to melt away and what means for global communications and global economics. Also, Ampontan has a detailed analysis of the article that's well worth reading and adds some interesting context from Japan.

Simon Phippslinks for 2008-05-01

May 01, 2008 08:36 AM GMT

Jim GrisanzioIntel Dave

May 01, 2008 05:12 AM GMT
Catch Intel's David Stewart on YouTube -- OpenSolaris & Intel Xeon Processors: Episode 1. More videos coming. More engineering info at the OpenSolaris Intel project.

Jim GrisanzioAdvocacy Front Page

May 01, 2008 03:33 AM GMT
I put the OpenSolaris Summit and CommunityOne graphics on the front page of the Advocacy Community Group. Need to do something with all the photos we have, though. We have more than 4,000 images of community members on Flickr now. It would be nice get them on the ACG pages in some way.

Dennis ClarkeNone of the following people went to college

May 01, 2008 01:47 AM GMT

{ rant du jour }

    Just FYI. If you have a teenager looking at college be sure to remind them that having a degree doesn't really mean much anymore. It is a lot of time and a lot of money spent with no promise of return on investment.

    Here is a short list of people that did not ever attend or graduate from college or university :

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