OpenSolaris :: System Monitor

• is this a bug ? Available disk space: 0 bytes
  

OpenSolaris :: Sun Studio Express

• Need Sun compiler
  
• Installed Sun Studio Express

root@opensolaris:~# bash -x ./pkg-install.sh 
+ export PKG_CLIENT_TIMEOUT=220
+ PKG_CLIENT_TIMEOUT=220
+ export PKG_TIMEOUT_MAX=100
+ PKG_TIMEOUT_MAX=100
+ pkg install sunstudioexpress
DOWNLOAD                                    PKGS       FILES     XFER (MB)
Completed                                    9/9   8551/8551 208.10/208.10 

PHASE                                        ACTIONS
Install Phase                            14392/14392 
PHASE                                          ITEMS
Reading Existing Index                           9/9 
Indexing Packages                                9/9 

OpenSolaris :: OpenOffice 3.0

• OpenOffice 3.0 but over 150MB
  
• wish to see OpenOffice package will be included in the future installation CD
  

root@opensolaris:~# pkg install openoffice
DOWNLOAD                                    PKGS       FILES     XFER (MB)
Completed                                    1/1   3932/3932 151.65/151.65 

PHASE                                        ACTIONS
Install Phase                              4464/4464 
PHASE                                          ITEMS
Reading Existing Index                           9/9 
Indexing Packages                                1/1 

OpenSolaris :: Web Stack installation

• first package installation will be the Web Stack

root@opensolaris:~# bash -x pkg-install.sh 
+ export PKG_CLIENT_TIMEOUT=220
+ PKG_CLIENT_TIMEOUT=220
+ export PKG_TIMEOUT_MAX=100
+ PKG_TIMEOUT_MAX=100
+ truss -o /root/pkg-install.log pkg install pkg:/amp-dev@0.5.11-0.101
PHASE                                          ITEMS
Indexing Packages                            554/554 
DOWNLOAD                                    PKGS       FILES     XFER (MB)
Completed                                  52/52 22133/22133 334.56/334.56 

PHASE                                        ACTIONS
Install Phase                            25190/25190 
Reading Existing Index                           9/9 
Indexing Packages                              52/52 

OpenSolaris :: TIME OUT

• doing pkg refresh always give me "time out" message

root@opensolaris:~# pkg install sunstudioexpress
Creating Plan -                        
pkg: Maximum (4) network retries exceeded during download. Details follow:
Transfer from 'http://pkg.opensolaris.org/release' timed out. (happened 4 times)

• Below workaround worked for me (nevermind about root user , default is to use pfexec as normal user). There are 2 environment variable which are PKG_CLIENT_TIMEOUT and PKG_TIMEOUT_MAX
  

root@opensolaris:~# bash -x pkg-install.sh
+ export PKG_CLIENT_TIMEOUT=220
+ PKG_CLIENT_TIMEOUT=220
+ export PKG_TIMEOUT_MAX=100
+ PKG_TIMEOUT_MAX=100
+ pkg install SUNWjruby
DOWNLOAD                                    PKGS       FILES     XFER (MB)
Completed                                    1/1 11655/11655     9.45/9.45 

PHASE                                        ACTIONS
Install Phase                            13525/13525 
PHASE                                          ITEMS
Reading Existing Index                           9/9 
Indexing Packages                                1/1 

OpenSolaris 2008.11 (Final)

• Reinstalled again on my aging machine (dinosaur). The machine is Dell PowerEdge 350 with Pentium III 850Mhz , 1 GB of RAM , 80 GB of hard disk , ATI Rage XL graphic cards and 2 x iprb NIC's
• Installation is a breeze and within few clicks you are done !
  
• Saw the little "Update Manager" icon appeared to inform new upgrade available and wait for moment (7 mins actually)
• can always check the boot enviroment via the package manager GUI or via command line

root@opensolaris:~# beadm list
BE Active Mountpoint Space Policy Created
-- ------ ---------- ----- ------ -------
opensolaris N / 3.10G static 2008-12-12 11:48
opensolaris-1 R - 2.62G static 2008-12-13 13:24

Ubuntu 8.10 on HP NC6400 notebook

After finished backup of my existing Ubuntu 8.04 , Ubuntu 8.10 was finally installed !
One sweet thing I noticed , my WIFI LED is blinking (at last) ! It never blink in previous version which apparently due to bug.

Installation is really simple even tough for dual boot system like me !

Openoffice 3.0 did not make it but anyway it can always be download from the Openoffice website.

Now I need to restore my data and all set to go !

Upgrade Opensolaris :: Part 2

Finally :

opensolaris:~$ pfexec pkg image-update
DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB)
Completed 563/563 8802/8802 47.76/47.76

PHASE ACTIONS
Removal Phase 1068/1068
Install Phase 786/786
Update Phase 17819/17819
PHASE ITEMS
Reading Existing Index 9/9
Indexing Packages 563/563

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


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: Please review release notes posted at:
http://opensolaris.org/os/project/indiana/resources/relnotes/200811/x86/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

opensolaris:~$ beadm list
BE Active Mountpoint Space Policy Created
-- ------ ---------- ----- ------ -------
opensolaris N / 12.98M static 2008-11-16 22:55
opensolaris-1 R - 5.45G static 2002-01-01 01:05

Upgrade Opensolaris

To upgrade OpenSolaris image :

opensolaris:~$ pfexec pkg image-update

Please update pkg(5) using 'pfexec pkg install SUNWipkg' and then retry
the image-update.

No worry !

opensolaris:~$ pfexec pkg install SUNWipkg
DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB)
Completed 1/1 110/110 0.41/0.41

PHASE ACTIONS
Install Phase 3/3
Update Phase 167/167
PHASE ITEMS
Reading Existing Index 9/9
Indexing Packages 1/1

Desktop Effect

I do not see any reason why I should not enable the desktop effect ! Sweet !
To enable it , just got to "System" => "Preferences => "Appearance" and select the "Visual Effects" tab.

Device Driver Utility

I decided to pull off my newly installed OpenSolaris hard disk into a more power machine (slightly - A Pentium 4 machine with 3 Ghz CPU and 1 GB of memory).
Well , expected the OpenSolaris booted up and running but it cannot detect the network card.

No worry , go to Application => System Tools and run the "Device Driver Utility". Right click on the network card and select "View Details" and it will show quite a lot of information but what I am really interested is the URL where I can download and install the network card driver (I guess I am lucky when the myk driver version 2.6.3 just release recently).


The URL link is : http://homepage2.nifty.com/mrym3/taiyodo/eng/ which is the website for free NIC drivers for Solaris. I hope this driver will be able to make it to the OpenSolaris package repositories or perhap it is already in there ?

I just download it and do the usual : make and make install but make sure you have a working C compiler installed. I am using the OpenSolaris package manager to install the Sun Studio Express (around ~200 MB) but i guess you can also use the GCC compiler.

It is all documented in the "Readme.txt".

(6) Making binaries only for OpenSolaris users.

The driver likely work with GLD v3 in OpenSolaris, known as Nemo.
You can enjoy the new functions by recompiling the source code.

% rm Makefile.config
% ln -s Makefile.config_gld3 Makefile.config
% /usr/ccs/bin/make

OpenSolaris 2008.11(rc1)

The official releases is getting closer for OpenSolaris 2008.11 but I decided to give a try but running on a *very* old hardware : Dell PowerEdge 350. Luckily I managed to get extra 256MB to pump up the memory to 768MB. But the hard disk is dead. Really dead but I got an old IDE disk (Baraccuda) lying around somewhere.

All I can said , the installation is straightforward and I am impressed with the artwork or graphics. Really nice !

And here you go:

OpenSolaris 2008-11 desktop with Nimbus theme.



Things I like :

• GUI such as icons and theme are really well done
• Feel like Ubuntu (since I used Ubuntu since the beginning)
• ZFS filesystem as default (sweet)
• TimeSlider tool
• Device Driver Utility
• DTrace Toolkit (DTT)
  

Things I am missed :

• No OpenOffice in default installation (for a desktop distribution).
• No Tomboy. (Guess MONO will not be coming soon)
• No GIMP
• Package Manager not working (for me at least but command like to the rescue)
  
• No F-Spot

Scanner for Brother DCP-115C and Ubuntu Hardy

I never used the Brother DCP-115c scanner function. I have this printer for quite sometime but I seldom used for printing or scanning.

To cut story short : I need to use scanner function

• I know I need the SANE software installed first.
• Get the scanner drivers for Brother DCP-115C
• Configure it

It was surprising easy to setup for Ubuntu Hardy.

To install the SANE software:

Then download the drivers from Brother web site.

Next , follow the instruction on this web site to configure the driver.

Then launch the SANE and voila !

Redmine on Glassfish v3

Look like someone is faster than me ! It's have been my to do list to run Redmine on top of Glassfish. I have existing Redmine installation that running on top of Apache and Mongrel (the usual suspect). Well big thanks to Arun Gupta, now we have Redmine on Glassfish v3. Time to get some performance statistic between Apache+Mongrel and Glassfish v3.

Wondering maybe I should do it on Glassfish v2 too....just a thaught !

This is what I want ...

I have been downloading a lot of Sun software recently and most of the time I am using the Sun Download Manager (SDM) tool as the download manager. I must admit when I first used the SDM earlier version, I was not too impressed but lately Sun have been putting some attention to it.

That alright to me. But I still prefer to download it using some text command such as ncftp or wget.
And here it go, you used wget command to download Sun software.

Solaris Performance ToolsCD 3.0 available online

I got this news from Sun Blog (thanks - Stefan). This is what I have been looking for !

You can download it directly from here.

Here a brief description (from the Su Blog)

At Sun, for our customers and partners, the Solaris Performance ToolsCD is a well known project of the Frankfurt benchmark center since 1999. This collection of (public domain) tools on a CD enables you to analyze on optimize Sun systems. The tools are used and maintained on a daily basis during our benchmark projects. The CD covers as well many information and links to performance related literature.
This is the fourth release of the ToolsCD with the focus on Solaris 10 support for SPARC and x86/x64 based Sun systems.

The CD covers within 300 MB:

• dimSTAT v8.1 - collect and analyze performance data

• Dtrace Tools - Brendan Gregg's collection of Dtrace scripts

• K9Toolkit - freeware tools written using the KStat library on a Solaris 9

• sysperfstat - displays utilization and saturation for CPU, memory, disk and network, all on one line.

• cpuinfo - displays CPU configuration (number, type, clock and strands)

• meminfo - displays configuration of physical memory and swap devices or files

• iobar - displays io for disk-devices in a |cpubar|-like fashion

• iotop - displays |iostat -x| in a |top|-like fashion

• checkcable - prints the link up status for network interfaces

• nicstat - prints statistics for the network interfaces such as KBytes/s read and write, Packets/s etc.

Upgrade to Hardy Heron

UBuntu Hardy Heron Beta have been released ! The final release of Hardy will be end of April 2008 based on UBuntu 6 months release cycle !

To upgrade to Hardy Beta , I refer to this website as initial guide. I really the new background image for Hardy ! What a beauty !

Happy upgrade !

p/s
My wireless network is not working after the upgrade and its look like ipw9345 is being removed ! Shit !

VirtualBox v1.5.6 on UBuntu Gutsy

Solaris 10 is installing on VirtualBox v1.5.6. I am installing Solaris 10 using ISO image instead using the normal DVD.

Creating VirtualBox disk for guest OS is pretty straightforward. I am impressed with VirtualBox GUI. Damn simple !

You can grab a copy of the VirtualBox End User documentation from here

Let see how the performance of VirtualBox as compared to VMware. VMWare performance on my laptop is quite unpleasant when running both Window 2000 and Solaris 10.

Cube

I just love the CUBE !

VirtualBox on UBuntu Gutsy

I have been trying to install Solaris 10 on Ubuntu Gutsy using VirtualBox but it never go beyond this stage ...

Having searching around for clue , I decided to use the latest version of VirtualBox (v1.5.6) instead on v1.5.0.

Downloading it now and let hope it works !

Installation is pretty easy and instruction can be found here.

Update :
If you have installed the old version of VirtualBox (v1.5.0) , please do remove it first before installing the v1.5.6.

 # apt-get remove virtualbox-ose 

Nikon D40x

I bought a digital camera in Japan recently. The model is Nikon D40x. I am not a good photographer and absolutely ZERO knowledge about anything about digital camera especially digital SLR. I have a lot of colleagues who are more knowledgeable than me and sometime I just hang around them to learn a bit here and there.

Every gadgets I bought I will definitely try to connect it and access it from Linux.

1. Using USB Mass Storage

I expected this to work on Ubuntu Gutsy but unfortunately it did not because of this bug.
There is a patch available for but it is not available now as an update yet plus I am too lazy to recompile a new kernel recently.

2. Using the built-in MMC slot

My laptop had a MMC card reader. Inserted the card and voila ! Only problem is you have to take out the card from the camera.

Google just released Picassa v2.7 for Linux and installation is simple.

Gnome Bluetooth

I have a Sony Ericsson P1i and I used this phone to snap a lot of pictures. Since as usual there is no Linux version of Sony Ericsson Management software, I need to transfer all these photos to my laptop. So the faster way is Bluetooth.

On UBuntu Gutsy, it is very easy. Just install the Gnome Bluetooth package and run the application from Applications -> Accessories -> Bluetooth File Sharing, turn on bluetooth on both side (laptop & phone). Simple as that !

As root :

# sudo apt-get install gnome-bluetooth