OpenSolaris discussions.

As everyone knows, public mailing lists can be the heart of the open-source community. OpenSolaris is no exception.

The OpenSolaris discussions page lists all the mailing lists - some of them were just added today.

OpenSolaris-discuss is the big mailing list. Send an email to opensolaris-discuss-subscribe@opensolaris.org to subscribe. The Jive archive is also available for this list.

Feel free to subscribe and join in.

And, here's the thread about un-BFUing your system I alluded to in my earlier post.

[/software/solaris] permanent link

OpenSolaris graduates.

Finally. OpenSolaris is now public. No more NDA. Halleujah.

The upside of the NDA process is that Sun has been able to get some preliminary feedback before showing it off to the world. So, in concert with the legal vetting that was going on, roughly 145 developers got a 'sneak peek.'

IMHO, this is pretty much akin to the Incubation process that Apache enforces all incoming projects to go through. Sun just didn't know what code they could release and what they couldn't. So, showing it to everyone wasn't a real possibility.

As I mentioned on OSNews, four Apache infrastructure folks have been sitting in on this pilot program. I hope our input has helped.

OpenSolaris starts out with releasing Build 17.5 - you have to start with the Build 16 available in the Solaris Express (SX) linked to on the OpenSolaris website. The most notable change from Solaris 10 is that grub is now the bootloader on Intel machines. Yay! That by itself is cause to upgrade to Build 16 at least.

However, that comes at a cost: you can't upgrade your Solaris 10 GA box to Build 17.5 - you have to upgrade to Build 12 or higher first. So, the easiest way to do this is to jump from GA to SX, BFU to 16, and then BFU to 17.5.

If you upgrade via BFU, you can not ever return and do a traditional upgrade: you must from that point forward always BFU your system. Caveat emptor. Some Sun folks have posted that they've been sort of able to un-BFU a system - but it's not for the faint of heart, nor will they support it. LiveUpgrade may be helpful too; but I haven't had a chance to play with it either.

I was able to compile Build 16 in about 2 hours and 7 minutes on my Pentium 4 desktop - that seems about par for the course.

As a bit of technical appetizer, here's some additional steps that aren't in the release notes (but are in the developer reference) that might be helpful if you do decide to BFU your system. You do this after nightly completes. ('unset CC' is your friend if you happen to set your CC variables; otherwise the build will fail in odd ways.)

First off, set your environment (yes, as root):

# export FASTFS=/opt/onbld/bin/i386/fastfs
# export BFULD=/opt/onbld/bin/i386/bfuld
# export GZIPBIN=/usr/bin/gzip

Then, you run:

# /opt/onbld/bin/bfu <build_dir>/archives/i386/nightly

I got the following harmless errors (which is known and should be fixed soon):

cp: cannot access /net/greenline.eng/meta0/smf/post-5090532/sysidtool.xml
bfu: could not copy /net/greenline.eng/meta0/smf/post-5090532/sysidtool.xml
cp: cannot access /net/greenline.eng/meta0/smf/post-5090532/kdmconfig.xml
bfu: could not copy /net/greenline.eng/meta0/smf/post-5090532/kdmconfig.xml

After I got the BFU prompt, I did:

bfu# /opt/onbld/bin/acr
bfu# reboot

Voila. uname now reports:

SunOS blahblah 5.11 build i86pc i386 i86pc

Now, the hard part begins. Come and join the effort:

http://www.opensolaris.org/

[/software/solaris] permanent link

Why McNabb is better than T.O.?

As a Cowboys fan, I'm just laughing at what T.O. is doing in Philly. Justice.

Some great quotes from Sal Paolantonio's current ESPN column...

In a recent column, (Stephen A.) Smith - who often talks to Owens - intimated
that the Eagles simply were not used to players rocking the boat, because the
leader in the locker room is the ultimate "company man," Donovan McNabb.

"I definitely need to know the definition of 'company man,'" McNabb replied.
"A smart player? A smart athlete? A smart person? Knowing how to handle a
situation? Knowing how to handle things in the right manner? That may be
something that defines me."

Perfect retort by McNabb.

And, of course, the Philly talk radio stations are getting into it too:

Every day, in drive time on WIP-AM, the city's raucous sports radio station,
the divisive Howard Eskin - a personal friend of Reid's - has crucified Owens.
When Owens complained that he needed a new deal because he had to "feed his
family," Eskin started a food drive for No. 81, so that Owens wouldn't miss a
meal. It was Eskin who first reported that Owens slept in some team meetings
and was late for others last season  a report that the Owens camp did not deny
publicly, but privately accused the Eagles front office of leaking.

Ha! I'm certainly not betting against Reid and McNabb in this one...

[/sports] permanent link

Intel Inside on next-gen Apple

So, it's true. Apple is ditching the PowerPC and adopting Intel machines. However, combined with things like Rosetta, this isn't completely insane behavior by Apple. They are saying all the right things.

This is a huge gamble, but a necessary one.

My hunch is that IBM has no plans for taking the PowerPC mobile, so if that is truly the case, then Apple really had no choice. The PowerBooks are stuck on the G4 processor which is vastly inferior to the G5s. (I have both, so I know!)

This forced Apple to play their trump card.

I've been fairly sure that Apple has had Mac OS X running on Intel - considering the FreeBSD roots, it's almost imperative that they would have needed that at some point to help the bootstrap process. So, that came as no real shock - it's just that they are switching everything over to it is a bit more of a surprise.

As mentioned at lunch today, can we imagine the uproar if Sculley had actually released Star Trek?

Only Jobs has the capital with the fanatics to pull this off; and he's stretching the limits big time. I had a number of fellow Mac users stop by my office and groan at the announcement. However, Jobs has brought Apple this far (and from the brink!) and to say he doesn't have the best interest of the company in mind is absurd. Yet, this couldn't have been a change that the Pepsi folks could have sold back in the early 90s.

The other common theme that everyone in the office is wondering is who the heck is going to buy a Mac in the next 18 months? I just bought two new Apple boxes in the last six months - so I can probably tide over until the Intel ones actually ship. But, eh: Apple must realize this is going to kill sales in the short-term. I know Steve said, "There will be some great PowerPC hardware coming down the pipeline." Riiiight. No one cares. No one wants obsolete hardware that the vendor has no intention of supporting.

One other technical note that I've seen is that the Apple boxes will not run OpenFirmware. I'm betting Apple is relying upon Intel's DRM to not run Mac OS X on anything but their hardware. This may be a stumbling block (albeit minor) if they want to move to AMD later. However, the cost of moving to the x86 instruction set is far more than switching from Intel to AMD processors - so that'd be a relatively low-key change if Intel can't deliver on their promises too.

Finally, of note, no more Classic - Rosetta will not support any OS 9 apps - which means no more FrameMaker. Drat. Drat. Drat.

[/software/macos] permanent link

Game 55: Coco unleashed...

So, Kenny Rogers' wins his eighth in a row.

Yet, it gets marred by Coco making an obscene gesture to the Royals bench after he got the last out in the bottom of the ninth. It wasn't even a save situation! I won't even try to defend it. Groan.

ESPN Motion has the clip.

Way to go, guys. Not.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

AnandTech benchmarks on Mac OS X concerning Apache...

I know several folks have mentioned the AnandTech benchmarks with respect to MySQL. Read the original AnandTech article. I read it too.

Thinking the Apache results were rather fishy (as I have a dual G5 on my desktop and I've seen better performance than they claim), I sent an email to the author. He promptly replied with his httpd configuration. In the article, he claimed he used Apache 1.3 - however, the config file I received was clearly for 2.0. (Definitions of MPMs, etc, etc.)

I've replied back to him pointing that out; and pointing out that I think flood is a far better performance tester than the dreadful ab. I've not yet received any further response from him.

I've heard unconfirmed reports that httpd 2.x is even faster on Tiger than Panther because 64-bit code is available natively and httpd 2.x runs better on 64-bit platforms than 32-bit ones (due to the time calculations and SSL algorithms).

I'll see about getting some 'real tests' this week on my G5. Who knows - I might confirm them, I might not. We'll see. But, not indicating the difference between 1.3 and 2.0 is wonky.

[/apache] permanent link

Game 50: 1st place in the AL West

Okay, so I've been away for the last few weeks on business. The Rangers have kept at it and done a mighty fine job. They are currently one of the hottest teams - they've won their last nine in a row.

A quick glance at the standings shows that the Rangers are 30-20. Wow. The Angels are at their heels (they've played two more games: one of them is a rain-out that the Rangers will have to make up in August against the White Sox). The Angels don't currently have Vlad or K-Rod - but they'll be back before the end of the road trip. The Mariners aren't the worst team in the AL West (shock!). And, the Athletics are still in a odd funk, but who knows, they may get wicked hot soon.

Rogers won his seventh consecutive start now - he's sitting on a 7-2 record. Yow! Of course, Cordero leads the league in saves. Young has been pitching rather well since his shaky start to the season (since mid-April, he's gone at least five innings and allowed at most two runs!). Park is doing acceptably; his control seems to elude him at times. Drese seems to have been really shaky - to the point where he and Barajas (who has no business catching for Texas) had a 'scuffle' of sorts.

On the offensive side, Teixeira is doing real well - he was a HR short of the cycle tonight. He ranks 4th in the AL in HRs and 8th in RBIs. Excellent. Dellucci is doing an excellent job getting on base (but had the day off today) - can you believe he leads the league in on-base percentage. Soriano is adjusting to life as a #5 hitter - which should allow him many more chances to drive in runners. With Dellucci getting on base a ridiculous amount of time, dropping Soriano makes sense.

I'll try to do a recap of the last 21 games (yah!) this week as I slowly address the pile of things that got placed on my desk.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link