www.lewiz.org

I know I didn’t blog about this when I first read about the proposed update, but now that it is real and I can use it, it’s definitely worth a mention.

Sun ship a modified version of the panel calendar that supports multiple timezones, very handy when you work in a global organisation and regularly collaborate with people in different timezones.

Admittedly, this doesn’t apply too strongly to me in my current role at Sun, but at home, it’s very handy to glance quickly and know what time it is in China.

Hopefully Sun will quickly abandon their (in my opinion) third-party changes now that a far superior implementation is available upstream.  I present you, the Gnome calendar:

 

The first update in what must be well over a month… the biggest change in my life has been at work (I’m sorry to say).

As part of Sun’s drive to maintain profitability they have begun outsourcing some of the more basic work to partner engineers in Poland.  This has both pros and cons:

The plus side is that I no longer have to deal with some of the more mundane problems like disk swaps, memory DIMM replacements and so on.  It also means that, as Sun made a profit, I got a bonus.  It wasn’t much to write home about though… my quarterly bonus was calculated as 128% of 0.8% of my base salary (don’t ask), except in my case, they worked it out pro-rata for the number of months I’d been working.  In the end I took home a whopping £67 (pre-tax) this month(!)

The downsides are that Poland get their hands on some calls before we do… in the longrun this can cause more work for us.  As well as this, Sun had to let go a number of employees.  Fortunately the large majority of those let go put themselves forward for voluntary redundancy, so I like to think it worked out well for most involved.

Guillemont Park, the main campus for Europe and the Middle East (EMEA), now has a desk:engineer ratio that is looking a little underwhelming.  During the last two weeks most of us have moved desks; instead of being spread out over two sides of the building, we’re now all on one side, and I believe there may be plans underway to move engineers from another building to the now vacated side.  This is all rumour though, so who knows what will happen.

I’m happy with my desk relocation; it’s obviously not great to leave behind people who I’ve been working closely with, but the benefit to me is that I’m now sat in an OS/kernel/software community.  Over the coming months I’m trying to move into a more software role, although I will still be expected to handle other types of calls as they come in.

Furthermore, I am no longer in a team that deals exclusively with a large telecommunications company based in the UK… I now support this company, as well as a number of other important Sun customers, including investment banks, telcos and so on.  I am a member of the so-called ‘elite’ team.  (it refers to the customers, not the engineers!)

With some team members leaving, there was cast-off kit going round and somehow I’ve managed to upgrade myself from a single 19” CRT with Sun Ray to a dual-headed 19” flat panel Sun Ray config.  In terms of desktop real-estate, this mirrors my home setup, which is handy.

Hope everybody is having a good December… don’t forget to fire up xsnow!

If you are seeing errors about reading from a particular disk block on your system console, you can use the format utility to ‘repair’ the problem. In addition, you can use an analyze mode to detect (and repair) problems:

# format
Searching for disks…done

AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS: 0. c0t0d0 /pci@1f,4000/scsi@3/sd@0,0
Specify disk (enter its number): 0
selecting c0t0d0
[disk formatted]
Warning: Current Disk has mounted partitions.

FORMAT MENU: disk – select a disk type – select (define) a disk type partition – select (define) a partition table current – describe the current disk format – format and analyze the disk repair – repair a defective sector label – write label to the disk analyze – surface analysis defect – defect list management backup – search for backup labels verify – read and display labels save – save new disk/partition definitions inquiry – show vendor, product and revision volname – set 8-character volume name ! – execute , then return quit
format> analyze

ANALYZE MENU: read – read only test (doesn’t harm SunOS) refresh – read then write (doesn’t harm data) test – pattern testing (doesn’t harm data) write – write then read (corrupts data) compare – write, read, compare (corrupts data) purge – write, read, write (corrupts data) verify – write entire disk, then verify (corrupts data) print – display data buffer setup – set analysis parameters config – show analysis parameters ! – execute , then return quit
analyze> read
Ready to analyze (won’t harm SunOS). This takes a long time,
but is interruptable with CTRL-C. Continue? y

pass 0 4884/26/70 pass 1 4884/26/70

Total of 0 defective blocks repaired.
analyze>

Handy little script to output the MAC address of your Sun Ray DTU. Based on Chris Gerhard’s Sun Ray firmware version blog post from a week or two ago:

$ /opt/SUNWut/bin/utwho -c | nawk '$3 == ENVIRON["LOGNAME"] {print substr($5,4)}'
0003ba4ea9dd

In Solaris Nevada/Express build 64 a patch has finally been applied to Gaim (hopefully soon-to-be Pidgin) that implements working gnome-keyring support for storing and retrieving passwords.

This now means that my primary LDAP password for logging on to all of the machines on the SWAN network is no longer sat in a plain-text XML file in my home directory.  Same thing for my MSN password and so on.

This is a big move for the Sun Ray desktop environment where the arguments made by the Gaim/Pidgin developers do not hold true.

Hopefully in the future we can see this change being pushed upstream in a more refined form, one that implements an authentication hook that can be used by plugins… this way we don’t need to link the main Gaim/Pidgin library against gnome-keyring or the Windows/KDE/Mac equivalent.

I’ve had a half-drafted blog entry sat around for about two months now.  I started to write it after I did an initial install of a (at the time) bleeding-edge copy of Solaris Nevada.

For those that don’t know, Nevada is the code-name for the next version of the Solaris operating system, Solaris 11.  Nevada is actively developed where all of the new features, improvements, bugs and bug fixes end up before they get putback to Solaris 10 in the form of updates or patches.

Most of Sun runs on Solaris 10 Sun Ray servers, but in the department I work we run and maintain our own servers: one runs Solaris 10 and three run Solaris Nevada.  By choice I use Nevada for the more recent version of the Java Desktop System or GNOME.

In an office workstation role, Nevada/GNOME works surprisingly well.  From time to time Solaris does panic, but the bug is always logged and fixes come in with future builds.  At home, on a stand-alone desktop PC, both Solaris Nevada and Solaris 10 fall well short of the current mark, which I will define to be somewhere in between Windows Vista, Mac OS X and, of course, Ubuntu Feisty Fawn.

As a long-term Ubuntu user I can’t help but cringe when I look at various aspects of the normal Nevada installation, use and maintenance.  Depend on moods in the office, brining these problems up elicits one of two responses:

1. Yes, but… the Linux kernel sucks.  There’s no stable driver API, it crashes a lot, it’s a hackers’ OS, etc.  My response to this is: so what?  Solaris is no use to anybody at all if it requires n hours a week/month in maintenance, doesn’t work with their hardware and can’t run their applications.  Years ago when I tried to convert my Dad to Linux his reason not to was quite simply that it didn’t run his accounting software.  And besides… my desktop crashes less frequently than the Sun Ray servers at work (not a fair comparison, I know).


2. Yes, but… nobody is willing to do the work, it isn’t a priority, businesses don’t want it, etc.  This is definitely a more reasonable response.

So what is Solaris Nevada lacking that Ubuntu already provides:

1. Package management, package management, package management.  For the enterprise the current solution might be acceptable, but desktop users need to be able to painlessly install updates.  Basically what Solaris needs is apt-get/dpkg.


2. Installation.  The Solaris installation is archaic, although it does mostly work.  The text interface scares newcomers (even intermediate/advanced ones) off.  Nevada needs to pay close attention to what Microsoft have done with Vista and Ubuntu are doing with their live CD installers.


3. Software.  Ubuntu ships with a sensible set of default utilities, applications and configuration tools.  For the most part, so does Nevada.  But what Nevada (and Windows and OS X) doesn’t offer is a single interface to find more software for a given task.  This is where I bring up (again) apt-get, but this time in conjunction with a great big repository of software, one very similar to those offered by Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, SuSE, etc.


4. Community.  Ubuntu has the most incredible community I’ve come across on the Internet.  Thousands upon thousands of people of different levels of Linux experience together to help people use their computers.  OpenSolaris is a great community that Sun has helped foster; using what they learned from this they need to set out and create a Desktop OpenSolaris community aimed at the everyday desktop user.

So how does Ian Murdock fit in?

Ian Murdock joined Sun on March 19th this year.  Ian founded the Debian Project and was the first DPL (Debian Project Leader), he’s been hired by Sun to help with Operating System Platform Strategy.  He’s already made it very clear that he wants to close the usability gap between Solaris and Linux, but also that he believes Linux needs to play an important role in what is to come.

Over the last week or so Project Indiana has been banded about quite a bit.  I don’t think anybody really knows quite what Indiana has in store for us just yet—I’ve certainly heard nothing more than I can read on the Internet, despite the fact I have access to SWAN.  It is entirely possible that Indiana has nothing at all to do with Ian Murdock, but the rumourmill has been set in motion, and an interesting little fact is that Murdock was born in the US state of Indiana…

What will Project Indiana be?  A better question might be ‘What do I want Project Indiana to be?’   I hope that Indiana will be the start of a big push for Solaris to hit the desktop.  I hope that Indiana can take over what the guys over at gnusolaris.org / Nexenta have begun:

A complete desktop operating system, based around the OpenSolaris kernel, a GNU userland and oodles of open source and third-party applications hosted in an easily accessible repository.

What if, given the fact that Sun endorse Ubuntu on their UltraSPARC T1 processors, Project Indiana became Ubuntu Indiana…

Installed Nevada b56 on my desktop machine, only to discover that things were off to a very bad start:

I’ve not submitted a bug just yet, but I shall do so tomorrow.  In the meantime, I’ll be running the Ubuntu for a little longer ;)

The latest OS X builds have ZFS support. This is brilliant stuff, but there are a few questions that I have about this:

• Why isn’t ZFS the default FS? HSFS sucks monkey balls.
• Can it do ZFS root?
• Will they be introducing a good GUI in 10.6?
• How about a decent kernel in 10.7?

  It’d also be interesting to see how Apple go about handling failed writes… a panic makes sense in the enterprise, but is it right for the desktop?

  To be honest… the way things are going, you have to wonder why Apple don’t make the sensible decision to bolt their proprietary GUI crap on top of a solid, proven system.  A system that introduced the world to DTrace and ZFS… Solaris.

With the major hurdle out of the way, I have to think about how to progress.

Number one on my list of things to fix is… the mouse. It’s a pain in the backside having to switch my USB trackball into the SunRay unit when I want to use it. I’m hoping to pilfer a new rolly-wheel USB mouse from work tomorrow to alleviate this problem.

Going from a 24” widescreen panel to a single 17” monitor results in what is affectionately known as “scrolling hell”. I don’t like it. The way I see it there are a few options: run at 1280×1024 on the 24” panel at work; live with it; or (this one I actually like) attempt to get a dual head group set up for the TWO SunRay units I brought home from work.

SunRay units are seriously cool pieces of kit. SunRay’s can act as either a master, slave or operate solely (I guess that’s like a master with no slaves). By configuring two SunRay’s as a master/slave pair, two monitors can be associated to a single session, allowing a much larger virtual desktop. Xinerama is the Xorg feature that supports this, and it can work in two ways:

1. The wrong way. The X server is told that the display is X by Y pixels in size. It treats it no differently from one physical monitor.

1. The right way. The X server is told that there are two monitors and where each one is, relative to the other (or indeed in absolute terms, if you like things that way). It treats the virtual display with respect: it knows to maximise applications to a single display only, to present the window list and menus on the primary screen only, and (arguably most usefully of all) knows not to stick important notices in the middle of the virtual display, spanning two physical monitors.

   At home I obviously run things the “right” way. At work, James has a dual-head setup and has it configured (last time I looked) the “wrong” way. It’s a pain in the backside, but I recall that when I used his SunRay my desktop was spanned across two monitors in the same “wrong” way. This is interesting: I could use the “wrong” way to allow me to make the majority of my desktop visible at the same time. I could go further, and limit my vertical resolution to 1024 on the 24” panel at work… this would allow me to get the full display at home easily.

   Plenty more things for me to work on…

After wasting a good number of hours this weekend attempting to get my SunRay connected to the SunRay failover group at work I decided to give it another shot.

I decided to ignore vmware, ignore Solaris Nevada installed natively and focus on what I am familiar with: Ubuntu (actually, I’d have preferred FreeBSD for either ipfw, ipf or pf: anything beats Linux’ iptables).

The primary ingredient in getting a SunRay unit connected to a server is DHCP. I decided to bring my laptop into the foray as a test utility. After much messing with iptables I finally figured out how to set my machine as a NAT router, routing packets between eth0 (my physical network interface, connected back-to-back with my laptop (which had the wireless card disconnected!)).

Once I could successfully ping the SunRay server from my laptop, I switched my focus to the SunRay unit, and the specific DHCP config. This turned out to be easier than I had expected. Last Thursday Chris Gerhard suggested I follow links on his blog to find a list of all of the required DHCP options to get things working… this I did, and at this point I ended up at Think Thin’s Sun blog, where I was fortunate to find the two main options: XDispMgr and TFTPsrvN.

These two options are used to communicate the IP address of the SunRay display server and firmware TFTP server to the SunRay unit. Without these two options set, you’ll receive the plenty frustrating “22 B” error code.

These two options are all very well and good, but when the blog entry covers both the Microsoft and Sun DHCP servers specifically, it’s easy to feel left out when you’re using the ISC DHCP server on Linux. More hunting and I found the following dhcpd.conf options:

option space SunRay;
option SunRay.AuthSrvr code 21 = ip-address;
option SunRay.AuthSrvr YOUR-SUNRAY-IP-HERE;
option SunRay.FWSrvr code 31 = ip-address;
option SunRay.FWSrvr YOUR-SUNRAY-IP-HERE;

I configured the two values with the IP address of our primary SunRay server: ebusy. Restart the DHCP server and the SunRay unit practically sprung into life… a few of the ordinary establishing connection OSD pictures followed by the never-before-so-beautiful “Welcome to ebusy” login prompt!

By now, I truly knew that all was good with the world… insert Sun badge and boom! The desktop I had been using for my day-to-day tasks at work a mere hour earlier!

And now, for some truly beautiful shots of the magic at play:

That’s the SunRay unit with my badge in the slot… of course I could use any other SunRay card, but that wouldn’t allow me to attach to the session I have associated with the card.

That’s my desk, here the left monitor is my regular desktop Ubuntu installation, but the right monitor is being driven by the SunRay and shows my work session. My laptop is uninvolved at this point, but is kept on so I can charge my mobile :)

The whole SunRay@Home experience is very good… of course it’s not as snappy as work, but it is absolutely usable; the main slowdowns are when switching virtual desktops, minimising/maximising lots of large windows and the initial card insert.

I’m not going to attach my DHCP server config file as it is quite specific to my setup, as is the Linux iptables stuff. If you do want to know more, feel free to drop me a line, or leave a comment and I will probably let you know the specifics.