An Open Source Fascicule

Sun Student Reviews Contest - Winners Announced!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Mahadeokar) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:37:00 +0000

Hello all!

The Sun Student Reviews Contest which saw students all over the world blog their opinions about opensolaris 2008.05 and NetBeans 6.1, came to conclusion on 6th June. The winners of the contest were announced today.

And I am very happy to say that this blog was given joint 2nd prize! I would like o thanks Sun Microsystems and all the judges who found this blog worth mentioning!

Kudos to all the winners and best luck to all the other participants! Thanks again.

opensolaris - Advanced compiz effects hangs laptop.

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Mahadeokar) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:26:00 +0000

Hello.

I am dealing with a tricky OpenSolaris bug and trying to tackle it since the last two days. Here I will list chronologically what exactly I encountered in this period. If you experience the same problem or have same hardware please follow the following post and take note.

Problem surfaces:
I installed opansolaris on my laptop and tried to explore the compiz effects feature.
Rightclick on desktop >> desktop background >> visual effects >> advanced.
And after an instant my laptop hanged!

Problem recurs:
Then I restarted my system and again after an instant the laptop hanged. Note that it reboots with the advanced visual effects that I set previously. This still continues whenever I boot with the gdm enabled.
Then I posted about this problem on the opensolaris forum. I got a reply from an opensolaris representative (Niveditha Rau who has tried to help in all possible ways. Thanks a lot for that!) asking me the graphics card information in my laptop.
Here is the complete laptop configuration and card information:

My laptop configuration.

Graphics card Info

Possible solution:

First we concluded that I was running into http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=1334
The solution was to update the intel_drv.so module and the associated dri modules. So, I disabled gdm using:
pfexec svcadm disable gdm
Next I copied the binaries provided using:

cp test-binaries/32-bit/intel_drv
.so /usr/X11/lib/modules/drivers/
cp test-binaries/32-bit/i915_dri.so /usr/X11/lib/modules/dri/
cp test-binaries/32-bit/i965_dri.so /usr/X11/lib/modules/dri/
cp test-binaries/64-bit/intel_drv.so /usr/X11/lib/modules/drivers/amd64/
cp test-binaries/64-bit/i915_dri.so /usr/X11/lib/modules/dri/amd64/
cp test-binaries/64-bit/i965_dri.so /usr/X11/lib/modules/dri/amd64/

Here is the test-binaries.tar.gz file that contains the required driver binaries.
Now after doing an ls in these directories confirms that the drivers were copied successfully.

But still the problem persisted. The laptop hangs as soon as I boot with the gdm enabled!

Next approximation:
The problem had originally surfaced when I had switched on the compiz. So I thought maybe I I can somehow restore the original settings then the problem will vanish. Note that the desktop used to work fine with the live cd with default visual effects.
So now I looked for a bash script or command that will restore the original settings.
I was suggested to try unsetting the gconf key /desktop/gnome/applications

/window_manager/default
So I explored about gconf and found this useful gnome desktop article.
Accordingly Config file: /usr/share/gnome/default.session
is invoked at the GDM startup.
I compared the file given at the above link with that on my system and found the two somewhat different. So I replaced the file on my system with the new one. Result - Only the startup panel message is changed and the desktop hangs as soon as it shows up...

What Next...

I explored a bit more and found that in the /usr/share/gnome/wm-properties directory there are two files:
1. compiz.desktop
2. metacity.desktop
Did a cat to read them but couldnt figure out much.

Should I give up?

Well since two days I have explored many commands and scripts but not come to anything useful yet. But what I think is that there must be a way to restore the default compiz or metacity settings... as they were in the live CD.

So I hope to hang on and explore a bit more till I find a way out! If any body has a solution I will be more than thankful.

All you need is to restore the default compiz settings according to me... Is it that big an issue? Come on and find a way out!!!

Thanks!

PS:

The hanging problem has been overcome. Please follow the comments to find out more. Special thanks to Moinak Gosh who helped me out and the Opensolaris Forum.

Now I can log on to my desktop with the default settings. But still the driver problem remains and so I must refrain from using Compiz. I hope to sort that out in near future. Any suggestions are welcome!

Open Solaris – Tracing and probing the “D” way!

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Mahadeokar) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:53:00 +0000

Imagine - You are an responsible for a very important software system. And going by the Murphy's law, as it happens so often, you realize that the system has developed an impossible bug – one which you couldn't have imagined in your wildest dreams. You summon your entire team – go through the entire source code , all possible nooks and corners, day-in day-out but you fail to discover that small bug that puts your everything at stake! What do you do?

Solution: Simple – stop imagining! Well – things may not be as simple in actual world. I am only a student and I am least experienced or eligible to comment on the software bugs and its horrible side effects, but whatever knowledge I have makes me think that life would be so simple if we had a tool that would help us fight the “bugs” (they are so famous!).

Imagine again – The bugs are attacking your property (your dear software) with a very cunning strategy. Luckily, your software system revolves around the Open Solaris O/S. So you have THE D POWER!! You deploy probes – your detective tools that constantly monitor suspicious areas to hunt down the enemy. As soon as the bug tries to play its dirty game, the probe fires an alert – which calls upon your defensive unit – the “D” code which battles the bugs and finally conquers it! Kudos!

Well you no more need to imagine these things! With D-trace functionality built in the Open Solaris O/S kernel you can actually fight all bugs that otherwise would have been so much pain, as well as monitor your system and get all kinds of information that will help you to achieve a state of perfection that you always dreamt of!

On a more serious note – Goodness of The D Trace

Ever since I started exploring Open Solaris, (about 20 days back) the feature that aroused my curiosity the most was the D Trace. Since then I tried to explore it in my way and here is a brief account of what I learned.

D – Trace definition.

DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework for the Solaris Operating Environment. DTrace provides a powerful infrastructure to permit administrators, developers, and service personnel to concisely answer arbitrary questions about the behaviour of the operating system and user programs.

Should I (student) know about it?

D-Trace is basically for use of administrators developers and advanced system personnel as mentioned in the definition. So is it worth spending my time learning such a high level thing? My answer is - A loud YES!

Firstly let me clarify that I am a complete no-no when it comes to experience with D-Trace. But the basic idea of monitoring the system and conquering bugs drew me to exploring it. And the more I explored it the better I felt. D – Trace model is very simple to understand provided you have basic knowledge of the kernel and functioning of Operating System.

The DTrace Architecture and Components.

Note - The above figure is taken from the Solaris Dynamic Tracing Guide. If it is illegal to use such images please notify me, I will be more that happy to remove it.

How does it work?

The D – Model couldn't have been simpler! DTrace helps you understand a software system by permitting you to dynamically modify the operating system kernel and user processes to record additional data that you specify at locations of interest, called probes. A probe is a location or activity to which DTrace can bind a request to perform a set of actions, like recording a stack
trace, a timestamp, or the argument to a function. Probes are like little programmable sensors scattered all over your Solaris system in interesting places. If you want to ﬁgure out what’s going on, you use DTrace to program the appropriate sensors to record the information that is of interest to you. Then, as each probe ﬁres, DTrace will gather the data from your probes and report it back to you. If you don’t specify any actions for a probe, DTrace will just take note of each time the probe ﬁres. The Dtrace programs or “scripts” are written in D language.

The D language.

For those who think C language is gold and AWK or Perl is silver the D language will be a walk in the park for you! D as the name suggest is intended to be a superset of C and has striking resemblance.

Data types and Operators

D supports almost all data types in C as well as some real utility data types like intptr_t.

The data types sizes vary according to 32-bit or 64-bit environments. All arithmatic, relational, logical, bitwise and assignment operators are supported.
Variables

In comparison to C, the D language supports a host of utility built-in, clause-local as well as thread-local variables. The most interesting type I found was Associative Arrays.
Data Structures , built in actions and subroutines.

There is an explicit string type instead of the char* of C. Struct and union are similar to C. There are a robust set of subroutines and built in functions provided.
Program Structure.

The program structure is very easy to understand and is modular. D programs consist of a set of clauses that describe probes to enable and predicates and actions to bind to these probes.
Providers.

There is a large set of providers that help us monitor almost anything imaginable in the system. I have not explored this area much and so I will refrain from commenting further. I will try deal with providers in near future.

D-Trace support

D-trace and D script development is supported in all of the leading IDE and plugins are available for NetBeans, as well as Sun Studio.

Here is the screen-shot of D-trace window in NetBeans.

Conclusion.

D-Trace is one of the many amazing unique features that Open Solaris has to offer and which keeps me glued and interested in open Solaris. It not only is useful for system administrators but it will make you feel glad if you have the desire to explore what ease modern day computing has to offer. And for those who like to keep up-to date with latest trends and technologies, believe me D-Trace would do you absolutely no harm at all!

Resources.

1. BigAdmin - DTrace

2. Solaris dynamic tracing guide.

3. DTrace by Example: Solving a Real-World Problem

4. Top 10 DTrace scripts

5. DTrace GUI plug-in for Netbeans and SunStudio

6. DTrace Tools.

Complete Newbies to OpenSolaris?? Start here..

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Mahadeokar) — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:18:00 +0000

If you are a complete newbie to Open Solaris , Sun Student Cources might just prove to be the kick start you need! They offer you a brillinant course on Solaris and all its features.

An introduction to the Solaris Operating Environment and the opensolaris opensource project.

Here is a brief overview of the topics covered in the course:

Introduction to JDS
SMF - Service Management Facility
Containers - OS level virtualization in Solaris
ZFS - A new generation of filesystems
DTrace - Systematic observability

Optional modules :

Solaris installation.
An introduction to the Solaris kernel

There is also a discussion forum where all doubts can be discussed and solved.
After completion of the course you will get a cool certificate! Here's mine:

Best Luck!!!

OpenSolaris 2008.05 VS Ubuntu 8.04

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Mahadeokar) — Thu, 22 May 2008 08:58:00 +0000

OPEN SOLARIS 2008.05

VS

UBUNTU 8.04 Hardy Heron

OpenSolaris and Ubuntu can be considered as two of the leading open source operating systems that are huge in their own right. Both the giants came up with their new and highly awaited releases recently. OpenSolaris 2008.05 and Ubuntu 8.04 – Hardy Heron! I tried to explore both and draw few comparisons that I found interesting.

Note – I am not an expert in either field and here I have made a modest attempt to come up with my thoughts. Please correct my wrong conclusions. I hope you find it interesting.

Booting.

Booting time for both distros (It may be wrong to call OpenSolaris a “distro”) is almost similar.

One striking thing for me here is that Open Solaris asked me for the Key Board format (which in my case was UK-English). So open Solaris scores in this area.
Installation Ease.

OpenSolaris has reformed the installation interface be leaps and bounds as compared to its other previous releases. Ther installation is a easy four step process and can be done by any newbie.

The only issue for me is that the OpenSolaris installer did not detect my existing windows partitions. It only detects the main partition and other big chunk combining all other partitions.

Ubuntu on the other hand does detect all the windows partitions as well as the other O/S that may be installed on your machine – SUSE in my case. So in this case Ubuntu scores over OpenSolaris for me!

Ubuntu 8.04 is an LTS release and gives you the option of installing within windows so that you don't have the overhead of the re-partitioning, formatting and other things. The small installer program will copy a fully-functional Ubuntu system into a directory on your Windows drive (this includes a USB keydrive), which you can then boot in a "dual-boot" configuration.
Live CD comparison.

1. Both operating systems provide plenty of features for networking, multimedia and entertainment and most of the leading and essential open source softwares are there with both the Live CD – Thunder Bird, GIMP Image Editor, Totem movie player among others.

2. But the OpenSolaris live CD fails to detect any existing other file systems while ubuntu detected my windows as well as SUSE. And what more? Ubuntu allows us to even access all documents and fiiles in windows as well as modify them. (I even removed a virus from windows using the Ubuntu Live CD).

3. Ubuntu Live CD has Open Office bundled with it so that you can use doc files and presentations using Live CD. Open Solaris will say that the component is not installed and you will have to download it from internet once you have installed open Solaris on your machine

4. After shutdown Ubuntu waits for us before we remove the Live CD so that the next time we boot the we dont have to rush and remove the Live CD if we want a normal boot. Open Solaris gives no such option..
Overall Desktop look and feel.

Both the O/S have a user friendly access for all the functions and provide plenty of options for customizing according to user preferences. In case of Ubuntu it is now possible to easily switch between user sessions without the inconvenience of entering your username or password numerous times, a time-saver on computers shared by multiple users.

Both O/S have good visual effect options and are catching up with other giants like Vista.
Device Detection.

Here again Ubuntu wins. While OpenSolaris did not detect the blue-tooth , wire-less card and the battery left, of my laptop, Ubuntu detected all the devices connected to my machine. It even gives the battery left in the laptop.
File System.

Ubuntu like all linux distro's has ext3 file system. OpenSolaris has the ZFS file system. The features of ZFS include support for high storage capacities, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management, snapshots and copy-on-write clones, on-line integrity checking and repair, and RAID-Z.
D-Trace functionality.

DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework for the Solaris Operating Environment. DTrace provides a powerful infrastructure to permit administrators, developers, and service personnel to concisely answer arbitrary questions about the behavior of the operating system and user programs. Ubuntu does not offer such features. (Please correct me if I am wrong).
Zones and Containers.

Zones provide a new isolation primitive for the Solaris OS, which is secure, flexible, scalable and lightweight: virtualized OS services which look like different Solaris instances. Together with the existing Solaris Resource management framework, Solaris Zones forms the basis of Solaris Containers. Open Solaris 2008.05 carries this Solaris feature not found elsewhere. Though these utilities (D-Trace and Zones) are of not much importance to the end-users they are very helpful for the large system administrators.

For me both Operating Systems have great things to offer. While Ubuntu is the more established one, Open Solaris has started to make waves and is the one we need to watch out for! As the support for both is only on the increase we can expect great things in future from both these giants of OS world!

ScreenCast - Open Solaris 2008.05 installation on Virtual Drive

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Mahadeokar) — Sun, 18 May 2008 22:25:00 +0000

If you are wary of installing Open Solaris 2008.05 on your hard disk, there is a very easy alternative to try it out! Use the Virtual Box 1.6.

In my last post we saw how easily we can run Open Solaris 2008.05 within windows using Virtual Box 1.6. Now installing pen Solaris on the Virtual Drive is even easier. I have made a screencast of the whole process. Hope it helps!

Overview of the Steps for installation:
The installation process takes four steps and is very user friendly.

1. Disk- You enter the disk partitioning information.

2. Time Zone - Here you will be asked to enter your region, location and time zone information. A graphical world map is also provided.

3. Locale - Here you will enter the interactive language.

4. Installation - In this step the O/S will actually be installed on the Virtual Disk.

Points that can be noted:

I have deleted several parts of video which was recursive or where no useful action took place. The installation process too about 1 hour 17 minutes! I have deleted most of that part.

The OpenSolaris.vdi file that got created as a result of installation on my actual hard disk was just 2.47 GB. Now thats not very huge is it? This file will expand dynamically as the guest O/S requests more space.

Click to watch the Live Open Solaris 2008.05 installation on Virtual Disk:

Guided tour to run Open Solaris 2008.05 in windows using Virtual Box 1.6

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Mahadeokar) — Sun, 18 May 2008 18:32:00 +0000

Introduction:

Open Solaris 2008.05 can be tested by directly booting it through the live CD. Another alternative is to use virtual box 1.6 to directly run Open Solaris within windows as any other application. Here we will see just how easily it can be done.

Tools Required:

Open Solaris 2008.05 ( Boot-able Live CD)
Virtual Box 1.6 for windows x86 platform.

Installing Virtual Box:
To install Virtual Box just click on the set-up file that you downloaded and follow the instructions. Here is the first step that will lead to installation. The next steps are easy.

Creating a new Virtual Machine for Open Solaris.
Next step will be to create a new instance of virtual machine on your computer. Open the Virtual Box, (Start -> All Programs ->Sun xVM Virtual Box -> Virtual Box) Following window will show up. Click on new.

Next window will give you a small message as shown. Click Next.

In the next window give the name to your virtual machine. I named it Open Solaris.

In the OS type drop-down-menu, select Solaris. Click Next.

In this window you can select the amount of RAM that will be allocated to VM. By default it is 512 MB. I kept it as it was.

Creating Virtual Hard Disk:
If you are running Virtual Box for the first time no virtual hard disk will exist. In the next steps we will create a new virtual hard disk to run our guest operating system.

Click on the New button to start the process.

This will start the New Virtual Disk Wizard. Click Next.

We can have two options while creating the hard disk:

A dynamically expanding image, which will adjust to the needs of guest O/S.
Fixed sized image, which will occupy predefined size.

I went for the first one.

In the next window, we will specify the space that the virtual disk will occupy. This size will be reported to the guest operating system. I gave the size as 10.17 MB.

We also must specify the path in which the hard disk image file will be stored.

After you click next, the new Virtual Disk will show up in the Boot Hard Disk option. Click Next.

Finally you will be shown a summary of the whole process. Click finish to complete creation of the new machine.

Running Open Solaris 2008.05 using virtual machine.

Once you have created the virtual machine, you will see the Open Solaris option in Virtual Box as shown. Double click it to start the first run wizard.

In next step we specify the Installation media type. Here we will select CD/DVD option to use the Open Solaris Live CD. Make sure you have inserted the appropriate CD in the CD drive.

Click Next.

In the last step you will see the summary and some instructions. Click Finish.

Open Solaris 2008.05 is up and running!

Its as simple as that! Now you can explore all the features of Open Solaris from within windows and run it as any other application.

You can also install Open Solaris on the Virtual Disk, using the installation option provided with the Live CD from within the virtual box. I will do that next, before going on to install Open Solaris 2008.05 directly on my hard disk. Till then keep Opening the Solaris!!

Note: A similar guide is also available here. But it is a very concise. So I thought that a slide by slide description would be better for first time users. Hope it helps!

Blog Index - Open Solaris 2008.05 Thru a Novice Perspective.

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Mahadeokar) — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:29:00 +0000

This is an index to all the posts that I have made till date regarding my experiences with Open Solaris 2008.05. I hope these blog entries are considered in the Sun Student Reviews Contest.

1. Open Solaris 2008.05 Live CD overview - This post gives an overview of all the functionality offered by Open Solaris 2008.05 Live CD.

2. Guided tour to run Open Solaris 2008.05 in windows using Virtual Box 1.6 - This will guide you by step to setup and run OpenSolaris 2008.05 within windows like any other application, using Virtual Box 1.6.

3. ScreenCast - Open Solaris 2008.05 installation on Virtual Drive - This is a live video of installation of OpenSolaris 2008.05 on Virtual Disk created using Virtual Box in windows.

4. OpenSolaris 2008.05 VS Ubuntu 8.04 - OpenSolaris and Ubuntu came up with their new and highly awaited releases recently. OpenSolaris 2008.05 and Ubuntu 8.04 – Hardy Heron! I tried to explore both and draw few comparisons that I found interesting.

5. Open Solaris – Tracing and probing the “D” way! - Here I share in detail my explorations of the D-Trace functionality that has impressed me the most in Open Solaris.

6. opensolaris - Advanced compiz effects hangs laptop. - Check out the Compiz problem that hanged my laptop. I tried for three days and finally I got my lapyop running. Thanks Opensolaris Forum which helped me a lot!

I will be updating this page as I continue to explore Open Solaris. Stay tuned!

Open Solaris 2008.05 Live CD overview.

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Mahadeokar) — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:57:00 +0000

Open Solaris 2008.05 is available for download. I made a live CD and tried to explore. Here is a brief account of my experiences with it.

Note: I am a first time user of Open Solaris, and I am also a complete novice when it comes to working with other OS like Ubuntu. So, if I present some wrong concepts here, please excuse me and duly correct me.

1. Booting the CD
The booting time is almost same as that of other Live CD operating systems that I had used namely – Ubuntu and Open Suse. During booting, we are asked for three things:

I. The Key Board format that is being used – Default – 41 (US)
I was pleased to see this option as my laptop has the UK format and hence I had the option to enter 40. This feature was not found with Ubuntu! (Please correct me if I am wrong)

II. The interactive language:
By default it is English (3). We are also provided with a host of other language options that are provided with most other operating systems.

III. The login name and password.
We can login in as a default user or as root. Password for root is opensolaris.

2. Overall desktop look and feel
The operating environment is user friendly and there are plenty of options provided for customizing the desktop. A host of attractive themes are provided as well as options are there for adding extra visual effects (similar to those we find in modern operating systems like Windows Vista though not that advanced), constraint to the graphics card available.

3. System Administration tools
A host of system administration tools are provided for overall monitoring of the system. Some of the notable ones are:

1. Disk usage analyzer.
It is a graphical, menu-driven application to analyze disk usage in a Gnome environment. It can scan either whole file system tree of user-requested subdirectory.

2. Device Driver utility.
It provides useful information regarding all the devices that are installed.

3. System Monitor
This is like the Task Manager utility of Microsoft Windows. Gives useful information regarding processes, System, Packages and File Systems.

4. Package Manager
Gives information regarding packages that are installed or can be installed. Also gives option to install/ un-install / update packages from the opensolaris.org repository.

Tools like Keyring Manager, Print Manager, Printer Queue Manager among others are also provided. These are quite interesting and worth discussing as a topic in itself.

4 .Setting your preferences.
Many options are provided for setting the preferences. Some notable tools are:

CompizConfig Settings Manager – This tools provides quick access from where you can customize almost all settings required. This is one of the highlights of Open Solaris as far as I think.
Main menu – This provides access to all applications installed categorically.

Options are also provided for configuring mouse, keyboard, network, file management, printer among others.

5. Accessories:
All requisite accessories are provided and notable among them are gDesklets – A desktop applet for Gnome, PDA Synchronization tool, Archieve Manager among others.

6. Internet and Networking.
For accessing the internet Mozilla Firefox is provided as the default browser. Pidgin Internet Messenger is also provided along with Thunderbird mail and news. Special tools are also provided for Video Conferencing.

7. Multimedia – Pictures, songs, videos and more!

1. Managing images and editing them is very effective with the Image Viewer and Organizer utilities as well as the GIMP Image Editor. Gtkam Digital Camera Browser makes managing and storing camera captured images easy.

2. For playing songs and videos we Totem Movie Player is provided. Though it does not play .mp3 files on live CD (asks for a decoder plugin) the .wav files can be played through the live CD.
Tools are provided for recording sound along with a CDRipper tool.

8. Office tools:
Open office is not bundled up with the Live CD and must be installed separately once the O/S is installed on hard disk. The text and PDF document viewer is provided along with the live CD.

9. Entertainment and games.
Several games are provided for time-pass and entertainment. Notable among them are Chess, Robots, lango among others.

10. Device detection.
This area is laking in functionality for me. The Live CD detected my pen drive as well as the floppy drive of my PC. But it failed to detect the other operating system installed on my hard – disk, namely Windows and Open Suse. It also did not detect bluetooth and sound system of my laptop. If I have been foolish enough to not get these features please correct me.

Well, that almost wraps up all the important functionality that Open Solaris offers. I may have missed upon other key features and if so feel free to comment. I would also love to hear what features you found most interesting. Overall, Open Solaris has come up with rich set of features and looks like its here to stay. I will try to test and explore it more before I install it on my hard disk. It does promise a lot. Stability? Thats what we need to find out!

Lets start exploring Open Solaris!

noreply@blogger.com (Jay Mahadeokar) — Sun, 11 May 2008 16:35:00 +0000

Open solaris has released its latest version, OpenSolaris 2008.05 (click to download).
In this blog we will explore all the new features that this release has to offer, as well as try to compare the release with other operating systems that are around.

For the starters, you can download the Open Solaris iso image, and make a Live CD to test the release. Here is the screen-shot of the desktop:

Here are some useful links:

1. OpenSolaris 2008.05 - Release Notes

2. Learning OpenSolaris

3. Open Solaris Discussions.

4. Open Solaris Communities.