tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:49:00 +0000Unix, Unix and more Unix - Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and Linux tidbits served daily (well, almost)http://www.theunixblog.com/noreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)Blogger115125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-8666185723823701398Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:45:00 +00002009-07-02T18:12:05.326+10:00Command LineUnixDealing with tar archives containing absolute path names can range from just annoying to potentially dangerous - unwittingly uncompressing the archive may range from silently growling at your simpleton co-worker who created the archive to sudden gut wrenching realization that you just overwrote some important files in unintended locations. Needless to say that creating tar archives with absolute http://www.theunixblog.com/2009/07/unix-pax-to-rescue-extracting-absolute.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-1122884825794145395Thu, 07 May 2009 23:49:00 +00002009-05-08T10:00:57.093+10:00SparcSunOracleIf you're following the press, many so called industry experts are proclaiming that there is now a cloud of uncertainty gathering over SPARC recently in light of the recent Oracle-buying-Sun announcement. Most of this speculation largely coming off as competitive FUD you hear from IBM and HP is referring to the theory that Oracle really wants software from Sun and that the hardware side of the http://www.theunixblog.com/2009/05/oracle-to-boost-investment-in-sparc.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-8780353437533191773Fri, 01 May 2009 11:08:00 +00002009-05-01T21:20:53.716+10:00There is not as much ribbing on the Microsoft theme as it used to be in the Windows 95 days, but now and again there are still some gems popping up on the web. Here is a good piece on the theme of "If Everything Was Made by Microsoft" courtesy of Cracked.com (I almost split my sides laughing):http://www.cracked.com/article_17323_if-everything-was-made-by-microsoft.htmlhttp://www.theunixblog.com/2009/05/laugh-of-day.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-4790796257749797387Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:36:00 +00002009-03-13T14:04:45.480+11:00AIXUnixPerformanceBenchmarking and vendor benchmarking specifically is a dirty word in IT - only the naive take the benchmarks at face value and more wise will know that if you want to know the performance levels of the proposed configuration, you have to do it yourself exactly with the configuration you're planning to put in production. Otherwise you'll be committing yourself to a purchase strictly based on the http://www.theunixblog.com/2009/03/tpc-c-benchmarketing-hall-of-fame.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-3162170688235647244Sun, 08 Mar 2009 02:56:00 +00002009-03-08T15:49:33.642+11:00LinuxUnixSolarisIf you've been around the Unix discussion groups, most likely you have run into countless arguments on the merits of Solaris vs. Linux and which one is better for a particular task or which one is technically superior. The scenario is quite typical where Solaris proponents claim superiority on the technical grounds while referring to Dtrace/ZFS and Linux fans claim that Linux is more ubiquitous, http://www.theunixblog.com/2009/03/solaris-vs-linux-in-data-center.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-1880253705962118816Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:16:00 +00002009-03-08T15:53:37.024+11:00UnixNot so log ago Unix was almost universally disparaged as a platform that is slowly but surely heading for the dust bin, a dim light that is soon to be stomped out by better-than-sliced-bread Windows and then Linux. Well, even in the dark times of the global recession Unix is actually looking like a come-back-kid. The fresh off the press IDC Worldwide Server Quarterly survey is painting a very http://www.theunixblog.com/2009/02/unix-is-coming-back-idc-report-says.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-5788090182446580960Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:08:00 +00002009-01-09T12:30:19.621+11:00Another piece of not so pleasant news - the RISC processor bunch has lost yet another member with PA-RISC being announced to be finally End-of-Life'd by HP. You can no longer order HP 9000 even if you really wanted to. Here is the complete announcement from the HP site:http://www.hp.com/products1/evolution/9000/eol_announcement.htmlIt is sad to see this processor go especially considering the http://www.theunixblog.com/2009/01/another-one-bites-dust-pa-risc-is.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-1087961500024511007Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:49:00 +00002009-07-02T18:09:59.997+10:00As sad as it is, all big three Unix workstation vendors (Sun, HP and IBM) have terminated their respective RISC workstation product lines. Which means that there are no more Sun Ultras or Blades, IBM IntelliStations or HP Visualize boxes much coveted in the not so distant past. I'm particularly impartial to Sun workstations and I think it is a big loss to the SPARC ecosystem as a whole. http://www.theunixblog.com/2009/01/message-to-sun-bring-back-sun-sparc.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-2154669381238663992Sun, 17 Aug 2008 02:37:00 +00002008-08-18T21:14:10.561+10:00DTrace just recently gained some new providers (tcp and ip providers) for tracking all of the under-the-hood goings of Solaris TCP/IP subsystem.http://opensolaris.org/os/community/dtrace/NetworkProvider/That is great news. Not so great news is the fact these providers are only available in Nevada builds at this point in time. So if you're and the lock-and-stock version of Solaris 10, well, you'rehttp://www.theunixblog.com/2008/08/accessing-socket-data-using-dtrace.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-9073499401035330727Fri, 04 Jul 2008 23:36:00 +00002008-07-05T10:07:09.765+10:00As every self-respecting Unix sysadmin you should be a lazy creature. And by lazy I mean inventive enough to reduce any amount of otherwise tedious work to an absolutely minimum - leave the tedious boring stuff to the Windows monkeys, they strive on it. Thankfully the modularity and simplicity of Unix user environment is really conducive to automating the hell of pretty much anything that comes http://www.theunixblog.com/2008/07/automating-bulk-uninstalling-packages.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-2047531027343903836Sat, 07 Jun 2008 08:43:00 +00002008-06-07T18:49:30.336+10:00I would say that the most exciting feature of AIX 6.x has to the Live Application Mobility or put more plainly an ability to snapshot the run state of the application an resume it on a different physical machine. Of course this can improve the uptimes of applications dramatically while being able to avoid the downtimes for maintenance, hardware upgrades, etc. To give a little better idea how Livehttp://www.theunixblog.com/2008/06/live-application-mobility-in-aix-61.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-1430027465939634976Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:43:00 +00002008-06-05T22:00:07.781+10:00Wow, this is great news. If you didn't get the significance of this announcement, I guess I would need to remind you that Solaris Cluster is the best (I repeat the best) clustering product for any Unix or non-Unix platform (well, in my opinion anyway). Solaris Cluster features probably some of the best OS integration out there compared with other competing products (i.e Veritas Cluster Server, HPhttp://www.theunixblog.com/2008/06/solaris-cluster-express-is-available.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-6963222120703634827Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:56:00 +00002008-06-05T21:34:21.059+10:00As I have already mentioned in the previous post, I'm not the biggest fan of Solaris 10 SMF. In all fairness I have to say it is a very capable beast that can simplify life in many departments, but it is a beast to nonetheless. The old model of starting up daemons on bootup via init scripts was a lot more limited than SMF, but it was very transparent. I always knew where to look with init scriptshttp://www.theunixblog.com/2008/06/some-tips-for-smf-hacking-on-solaris.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-1023292901327329031Wed, 04 Jun 2008 06:32:00 +00002008-06-04T16:44:39.004+10:00I can't say that I'm a big fan of the Solaris SMF framework for managing services, even though in terms of capabilities it offers some really good features like automatic restarts and dependency management. The reason I'm not a fan is the XML hell that is associated with creating the descriptors/manifests for the new services that need to be registered with the framework. I guess I'm not the one http://www.theunixblog.com/2008/06/take-pain-out-of-smf-manifest-creation.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-1743693176996119145Sat, 10 May 2008 02:39:00 +00002008-12-09T17:55:52.033+11:00I have a pretty ancient (on the scale of computing industry) piece of equipment occupying a portion of my desk - a 12 year old SGI O2 workstation. And you know what, so far I have no plans to get rid of it. I still think that it is probably one of the best (if not the best) workstation ever made - it is beautiful to look and the technology inside is still pretty impressive even by today's http://www.theunixblog.com/2008/05/irix-or-vista-irix-of-course.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-6888876757513769108Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:44:00 +00002008-04-26T22:50:26.585+10:00Here is a nice little demo of PowerVM and LivePartition mobility on AIX 6.1 I came across of on YouTube. It is very impressive to a see an application being migrated from physical machine to another without skipping a bit. Very impressive and hats off to IBM for advancing AIX on Power this far. Have a look for yourself.http://www.theunixblog.com/2008/04/nice-aix-61-livepartition-mobility-demo.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-5606723667713246406Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:48:00 +00002008-04-17T20:28:00.541+10:00HP hasn't failed to disappoint me in the last 8 years ever since HP-UX 11i was released. Not so much that HP delivers something bad for HP-UX, but rather it seems like nothing gets delivered at all. And each and every time you're left with a sinking feeling that this product is plain stagnating and rotting in the stable. With the last announcement of HP-UX 11i v3 update 2 when you would think it http://www.theunixblog.com/2008/04/hp-disappoints-with-yet-another-hp-ux.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-786485510529425530Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:45:00 +00002008-02-18T00:13:41.833+11:00Yep, you read this right. I'm officially declaring Linux to be more usable than Windows (provided of course that there is parity in available application software). The reason I'm saying this is Linux and Ubuntu in particular has passed the litmus test of usability in my book - my wife has declared Ubuntu Linux to be more pleasurable for use than Windows XP. I can't say that my wife is passionatehttp://www.theunixblog.com/2008/02/its-official-linux-is-better-than.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-6709579511374084322Sat, 19 Jan 2008 11:49:00 +00002008-01-20T10:47:36.310+11:00I'm pretty sure you've heard the news about Sun buying MySQL and by and large the response from the community has been quite positive, both of the companies have a lot to gain from this and MySQL can make some serious inroads against Oracle-like bloatware littering the RDBMS market. Of course as with any piece of news there is always someone who will always beg to differ and will try to put a "http://www.theunixblog.com/2008/01/dvorak-vs-mysql.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-4384982635834117572Sat, 22 Dec 2007 13:39:00 +00002007-12-23T01:10:43.255+11:00An interesting piece of news hit the press about two weeks ago regarding the NYSE's announcement to to move to Linux with what HP owning the deal. Even though there isn't a whole lot of details publicized about this move it appears that the move is taking place within the HP account (not a win from a competing vendor) - the platform is being transitioned from what appears to be a mix of HP-UX andhttp://www.theunixblog.com/2007/12/nyse-is-moving-to-linux-hmm.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-5621835157644337415Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:59:00 +00002007-11-08T11:25:29.014+11:00I just noticed that Sun release a fresh new release of SunMC, which stands for Sun Management Center. SunMC is a very solid monitoring framework targeted primarily at monitoring Sun-based infrastructure, so it is not quite as wide in coverage as Tivoli or OpenView, but certainly does a much better job at monitoring Sun hardware that either former or the letter. Although make no mistake SunMC can http://www.theunixblog.com/2007/11/sunmc-4-is-out.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-949945141474950564Sat, 03 Nov 2007 11:19:00 +00002007-11-03T23:00:47.249+11:00Don't you miss the days when Unix workstations were ruling the desktops of the engineering elite? When almost every serious engineer's desktop was adorned with either Sun SparcStation or Silicon Graphics funky colored Indy, Indigo or O2? Well, it looks like Silicon Graphics has been completely erased by its own shortsightedness and the market forces and Sun has been relegated to the highest end http://www.theunixblog.com/2007/11/is-niagra-2-workstation-coming-i-hope.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-9147503465518736888Sun, 14 Oct 2007 09:56:00 +00002007-10-14T20:02:50.845+10:00SolarisEver wondered how to find out what environment variables the process is running with? Well, it is remarkably easy with pargs utility on Solaris, just give it a "-e" argument to force it to produce environment variables:pargs -e Comes handy when troubleshooting processes that rely on environment variables for various functions.http://www.theunixblog.com/2007/10/how-to-get-environment-variables-for.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-934705686443401281Sat, 29 Sep 2007 01:47:00 +00002007-09-29T12:30:00.597+10:00Command LineI guess I'm too old school, I still don't like using a blank space as a separator between words in a file name -- with every opportunity I replace the blank spaces with underscores because white spaces always trigger bugs in many file handling scripts. Unless every command in the script that works with file name can account properly for blank spaces in the file name, you're risking some funny http://www.theunixblog.com/2007/09/finding-files-with-spaces-in-filenames.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7106803005141115526.post-8290039463466156040Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:07:00 +00002007-09-24T23:14:21.967+10:00SolarisRemember the good old days when you had to use ndd to know whether network interfaces on your machine negotiated the bandwidth and duplex settings correctly? And to make matters worse some interfaces would have slightly different ndd getters to obtain that information, which was fairly frustrating sometimes. Well, it's been a long time coming, but with Solaris 10 you don't have to that any more. http://www.theunixblog.com/2007/09/obtaining-network-interface-information.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (0xbadbeef)0