• Setup OpenSolaris 1002-127 PV DomU at Xen 3.4.2 & Libvirt 0.7.1-15 (2.6.31.6 pvops) on top of F12 per John Levon
• Installing OpenSolaris on Xen
• OpenSolaris 2008.11 guest domain on a Linux dom0

The procedure:

1. Download OpenSolaris 2009.06 ISO
2. Mount the ISO somewhere

   pat-m6400:~ # mount -o loop,ro /vm/opensolaris/osol-0906-x86.iso /mnt

3. Copy the kernel and rootfs somewhere convenient

   pat-m6400:~ # cp /mnt/platform/i86xpv/kernel/amd64/unix /vm/opensolaris
   pat-m6400:~ # cp /mnt/boot/amd64/x86.microroot /vm/opensolaris

4. Create a disk image for your root filesystem

   pat-m6400:~ # dd if=/dev/zero of=/vm/opensolaris/root.img bs=1G count=1010+0 records out
   10+0 records in
   10+0 records out
   10737418240 bytes (11 GB) copied, 127.888 s, 84.0 MB/s

5. Create a Xen config file (let’s call it /vm/opensolaris/opensolaris-install.cfg) with the following content:

   name = "opensolaris"
   vcpus = 1
   memory = 1024
   kernel = "/vm/opensolaris/opensolaris/unix"
   ramdisk = "/vm/opensolaris/x86.microroot"
   extra = "/platform/i86xpv/kernel/amd64/unix -B console=ttya"
   disk = ['file:/vm/opensolaris/osol-0906-x86.iso,6:cdrom,r', 'file:/vm/opensolaris/root.img,0,w']
   vif = ['bridge=br0']
   on_shutdown = "destroy"
   on_reboot = "destroy"
   on_crash = "destroy"

6. Now start your VM:

   pat-m6400:~ # xm create -c /vm/opensolaris/opensolaris-install.cfg

7. You should see something like:

   Using config file "./opensolaris-install.cfg".
   Started domain opensolaris (id=21)
   
   v3.4.1_19718_04-2.1 chgset '19718'
   SunOS Release 5.11 Version snv_111b 64-bit
   Copyright 1983-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
   Use is subject to license terms.
   Hostname: opensolaris
   Remounting root read/write
   Probing for device nodes ...
   Preparing live image for use
   Done mounting Live image
   USB keyboard
   1. Albanian                      23. Lithuanian
   2. Belarusian                    24. Latvian
   3. Belgian                       25. Macedonian
   4. Brazilian                     26. Malta_UK
   5. Bulgarian                     27. Malta_US
   6. Canadian-Bilingual            28. Norwegian
   7. Croatian                      29. Polish
   8. Czech                         30. Portuguese
   9. Danish                        31. Russian
   10. Dutch                         32. Serbia-And-Montenegro
   11. Finnish                       33. Slovenian
   12. French                        34. Slovakian
   13. French-Canadian               35. Spanish
   14. Hungarian                     36. Swedish
   15. German                        37. Swiss-French
   16. Greek                         38. Swiss-German
   17. Icelandic                     39. Traditional-Chinese
   18. Italian                       40. TurkishQ
   19. Japanese-type6                41. TurkishF
   20. Japanese                      42. UK-English
   21. Korean                        43. US-English
   22. Latin-American
   To select the keyboard layout, enter a number [default 43]:

8. Press enter to select the default…

   1. Arabic
   2. Chinese - Simplified
   3. Chinese - Traditional
   4. Czech
   5. Dutch
   6. English
   7. French
   8. German
   9. Greek
   10. Hebrew
   11. Hungarian
   12. Indonesian
   13. Italian
   14. Japanese
   15. Korean
   16. Polish
   17. Portuguese - Brazil
   18. Russian
   19. Slovak
   20. Spanish
   21. Swedish
   To select desktop language, enter a number [default is 6]:

9. Press enter again…

   User selected: English
   Configuring devices.
   Mounting cdroms
   Reading ZFS config: done.
   
   opensolaris console login:

10. Now login with jack/jack

    opensolaris console login: jack
    Password:
    Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.11      snv_111b        November 2008
    jack@opensolaris:~$
    

11. And su with the password opensolaris

    jack@opensolaris:~$ su
    Password:
    Feb  5 20:29:29 opensolaris su: 'su root' succeeded for jack on /dev/console

12. Now do ifconfig -a to discover your IP address. You might have to try a few times since it seems to take a minute or two to get an IP:

    jack@opensolaris:~# ifconfig -a
    lo0: flags=2001000849 mtu 8232 index 1
    inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
    xnf0: flags=1004843 mtu 1500 index 2
    inet 192.168.69.124 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.69.255
    ether 0:16:3e:79:d:ba
    lo0: flags=2002000849 mtu 8252 index 1
    inet6 ::1/128
    xnf0: flags=2000841 mtu 1500 index 2
    inet6 fe80::216:3eff:fe79:dba/10
    ether 0:16:3e:79:d:ba

13. Now go to a dom0 shell and find the domain id:

    pat-m6400:~ # domid=`xm domid opensolaris`
    pat-m6400:~ # echo $domid
    21
    

14. Use xenstore-read to find the vnc port and password:

    pat-m6400:~ # xenstore-read /local/domain/$domid/guest/vnc/port
    5900
    pat-m6400:~ # xenstore-read /local/domain/$domid/guest/vnc/passwd
    5PaJpX6n
    

    Supposedly you can also discover the IP address this way, but I’ve never seen
    it:

    pat-m6400:~ # xenstore-read /local/domain/$domid/ipaddr/0
    xenstore-read: couldn't read path /local/domain/21/ipaddr/0

15. Now you can VNC to the OpenSolaris installer – use the port and password you just discovered. Note the double colon (::) to use port number rather than
    display number

    pat-m6400:~ # vncviewer 192.168.69.124::5900
    Connected to RFB server, using protocol version 3.8
    Performing standard VNC authentication
    Password:
    Authentication successful
    [...]

16. You should see the OpenSolaris installer – hurrah! Go through the install process, click ‘restart’ and the domain should shutdown.
17. Once it is down (you can check with xm list), create another config file – opensolaris.cfg

    name = "opensolaris"
    vcpus = 1
    memory = 1024
    bootloader = "/usr/bin/pygrub"
    disk = ['file:/vm/opensolaris/root.img,0,w']
    vif = ['bridge=br0']
    on_shutdown = "destroy"
    on_reboot = "destroy"
    on_crash = "destroy"

18. Now you can create the VM again using the new config

    xm create -c /vm/opensolaris/opensolaris.cfg

19. If all is well, you should now be the proud owner of an OpenSolaris domU
20. Now, log in as the user you specified in the install, su – to root and find the IP address.

    pat@opensolaris:~$ su -
    Password:
    root@opensolaris:~# ifconfig xnf0
    xnf0: flags=1004843 mtu 1500 index 2
    inet 192.168.69.128 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.69.255
    ether 0:16:3e:5d:6:60

That’s the basic install done. You have a couple of options at this point depending on whether you want to be able to VNC in for the full OpenSolaris desktop experience, and whether you want a static IP address.

For the OpenSolaris desktop:

1. Set X11-server to listen to the tcp port

   root@opensolaris:~# svccfg -s x11-server
   svc:/application/x11/x11-server> setprop options/tcp_listen = boolean: true
   svc:/application/x11/x11-server> quit

2. I disabled idletimeout on the VNC server, so that I don’t lose the desktop over my lunch break!

   root@opensolaris:~# svccfg -s xvnc-inetd
   svc:/application/x11/xvnc-inetd> setprop inetd_start/exec = astring: "/usr/X11/bin/Xvnc -inetd -query localhost -once securitytypes=none -IdleTimeout 0"
   svc:/application/x11/xvnc-inetd> quit

3. Enable XDMCP for GDM

   root@opensolaris:~# printf '[xdmcp]\nEnable=true\n' >>/etc/X11/gdm/custom.conf
   root@opensolaris:~# svcadm restart gdm

4. Make sure GDM runs on startup

   root@opensolaris:~# svcadm enable -s gdm

5. Turn on xvnc-inetd services

   root@opensolaris:~# svcadm enable xvnc-inetd

6. Now just connect from dom0:

   pat-m6400:~ # vncviewer 192.168.69.128
   

   And you should be in GNOME desktop wonderland

7. If you want to continue to use DHCP, on subsequent boots, just run nmap on dom0 to find your IP address:

   pat-m6400:~ # nmap -sP 192.168.69.0/24

   Starting Nmap 5.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2010-02-05 23:15 PST
   Host 192.168.69.1 is up (0.00056s latency).
   [...]
   Host 192.168.69.128 is up (0.0017s latency).
   Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (9 hosts up) scanned in 2.48 seconds

As an alternative to getting a VNC session, you can do

ssh -X 182.168.69.128

(or whatever) and then (at the OpenSolaris prompt) you can do

pat@opensolaris:~$ some-gui-program &

to have the program run on the dom0 desktop. Cool

To configure OpenSolaris to use a static IP address:

root@opensolaris:~# svcadm disable network/physical:nwam
root@opensolaris:~# svcadm enable  network/physical:default
root@opensolaris:~# ifconfig xnf0 down
root@opensolaris:~# ifconfig xnf0 192.168.69.25 netmask 255.255.255.0
root@opensolaris:~# ifconfig xnf0 up
root@opensolaris:~# route add default 192.168.69.1
root@opensolaris:~# echo 192.168.69.25 netmask 255.255.255.0 > /etc/hostname.xnf0
root@opensolaris:~# echo 192.168.69.1 > /etc/defaultrouter

So there you have it – OpenSolaris 2009.06 happily running as a Xen domU. If you have any comments/corrections, please post them and I’ll update this entry as appropriate.

• Skype Emoticons & Flags Cheatsheet – Nice – text for all the Skype emoticons, including the secret ones [ (mooning) - who knew? ] and flags

One question that repeatedly comes up in any discussion of web single-sign on is “How do I get my desktop apps to play?”. Often, Enterprise Single Sign-on (ESSO) is the answer – deploying an agent to the client desktop to automatically populate the username/password popup for Outlook, or whatever desktop app you’re working with. This has always felt a bit clunky to me, particularly since you need a credential store somewhere in the system, but it works well enough for the username/password case.

The ESSO approach breaks, however, if you’ve moved to a federated identity model, perhaps outsourcing your email to Google Apps and using SAML for single sign-on so that, instead of end users logging in to the email system directly, they authenticate to an identity provider (IdP) within your enterprise, which sends a SAML assertion (a signed XML document containing the user’s identifier and possibly other information) to Google as part of the web single sign-on process. Now the problem becomes: how do you use a fat email client such as Outlook, when (by design) Google knows nothing about the end users’ passwords?

Last week at Internet Identity Workshop 9 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, Google presented an approach to this problem, leveraging OAuth as the glue between the web SSO world of SAML and the desktop view of Outlook. Well, they would have presented it, if the wifi had been more reliable; as it was, the Google engineers explained their solution to me

It works like this:

1. A Google plugin in Outlook intercepts the authentication process, obtains an (unauthorized) OAuth request token from Google’s OAuth service provider (SP) endpoint and invokes the browser with a SAML SP Google Auth URL, including the request token as a query parameter.
2. Google Auth invokes Google’s SAML SP, which redirects to the user’s enterprise IdP.
3. The user authenticates to the enterprise IdP (in the browser via whatever mechanism has been configured – typically username/password).
4. The enterprise IdP redirects to Google with a signed SAML assertion containing the user’s Google identifier.
5. Google returns a page for the user to give permission for Outlook to access their email; the user gives consent, submitting a form back to Google. This is the OAuth protocol step that authorizes the request token and permits an OAuth access token to be issued later.
6. Browser shows “Success” page.
7. Outlook plugin detects success (I guess it watches the window title), requests an OAuth access token from the Google OAuth SP (sending the, now authorized, request token), and uses the access token as the password in subsequent IMAP/SMTP/POP3 authentications with the Google mail server.

The OAuth consent page (step 5 above) seems a little clumsy, but, without it, if the user were already logged in to the enterprise identity provider, there would be no user interaction in the process, allowing a desktop app to obtain the OAuth tokens, and, thus, access to the user’s email account, without the user’s consent. Probably not a good thing

All of this is documented in the following articles at Google – many thanks to Eric Sachs for pointing me to the links:

• OAuth for Installed Applications – how to use OAuth to access Google Apps from a desktop app. The article doesn’t explicitly call out SAML, but, if you have enabled SAML on your Google Apps deployment, it gets used between steps 4 and 5 in the flow documented there.
• UX research on Desktop Apps using federated login and/or OAuth – an older article describing the approach taken by Google.

Note – I updated the flow above in light of more input from Eric at Google.

• Remus – Transparent High Availability for Xen – Remus provides transparent, comprehensive high availability to ordinary virtual machines running on the Xen virtual machine monitor. It does this by maintaining a completely up-to-date copy of a running VM on a backup server, which automatically activates if the primary server fails
• OpenSSL is written by monkeys – Marco Peereboom's rant on OpenSSL. To be honest, looking at the examples of OpenSSL code, it's difficult to disagree – sorry, Ben!

• 19 Ways to Build Physical Security into a Data Center – Quite old now (2005), but still very relevant. It doesn't matter how many layers of security you have in the cloud infrastructure software if you allow unauthorized access to the hardware!
• Cloud Cube Model: Selecting Cloud Formations for Secure Collaboration – From the Jericho Forum – a model for organizing cloud computing into four dimensions – so it really should be a hypercube
• Cloud Standards Wiki – Not sure who actually runs this, but it's a useful collection of links relating to cloud standards
• Daoli Project – Interesting – a project to leverage Trusted Computing in the Cloud – the hypervisor becomes part of the Trusted Computing Base (TCB).

• OpenCrowd – Cloud Computing > Cloud Taxonomy, Landscape, Evolution – Useful cloud taxonomy diagram
• Hey, You, Get Off of My Cloud: Exploring Information Leakage in Third-Party Compute Clouds – Mapping Amazon EC2's internals and instantiating co-resident machine instances with a view to mounting cross-VM side channel attacks.
• Cloud Security Alliance – Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing – Comprehensive overview of the cloud security landscape
• Keyboard Shortcuts for Gmail – Note – you'll have to enable keyboard shortcuts in Gmail Settings
• Keyboard Shortcuts for Google Reader – Great time-savers for Google's feed reader
• Cloud Computing Ecosystem Map v1.0: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants – Mega-map (by Troy Angrignon) of everything cloud related
• OpenCrowd – Cloud Computing > Cloud Taxonomy, Landscape, Evolution – Useful cloud taxonomy diagram
• Hey, You, Get Off of My Cloud: Exploring Information Leakage in Third-Party Compute Clouds – Mapping Amazon EC2's internals and instantiating co-resident machine instances with a view to mounting cross-VM side channel attacks.
• Cloud Security Alliance – Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing – Comprehensive overview of the cloud security landscape
• Keyboard Shortcuts for Gmail – Note – you'll have to enable keyboard shortcuts in Gmail Settings
• Keyboard Shortcuts for Google Reader – Great time-savers for Google's feed reader
• Cloud Computing Ecosystem Map v1.0: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants – Mega-map (by Troy Angrignon) of everything cloud related
• Brewer’s CAP Theorem – Nice article on Brewer's CAP (Consistency, Availability, Partition Tolerance – pick any two) theorem and its implications for distributed systems. Interesting to see the parallels with eventual consistency in directory services. Bonus reference to the Sex Pistols' seminal 4th June 1976 Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall gig in the intro!

• The OpenSSO REST Interfaces in Black / White – DocTeger gives a comprehensive explanation of OpenSSO's REST-like identity services, with the usual cool music video at the end
• Directory "Engineering" – Ludo’s sketches – Nice – an OpenDS engineer has built a hardware dashboard for Sun's open source directory server

I'm currently reading 'Programming Amazon Web Services'

It’s the end of my second week at Huawei, and things are looking good. I’ve done a LOT of reading, getting up to speed on the non-identity parts of cloud computing, and we’ve spent some quality time around the whiteboard. I’ve also booked my first trip to Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, which will be my first visit to mainland China (I went to a Liberty Alliance plenary meeting in Hong Kong a few years back).

One news item that caught my eye – Matt Bross (formerly BT’s CTO) has joined Huawei. BT has some very smart people, and it looks like Matt is no exception – I’m looking forward to meeting him when he visits the Huawei site in Santa Clara!

Talking of hiring, we’re still recruiting for the ‘virtual data center’ team – see Geoff’s blog entry – so, if you’re into large scale identity/security, storage, or systems and network management, drop me an email at  with your resume, the sooner the better!