Whoever thought that OpenSolaris was dead after the Oracle acquisition, might be wrong : OpenSolaris 2010.05 has been released with some important new features :

• ZFS deduplication : I've always predicted that this would once become a default feature of file systems, and ZFS is the first to implement this


• IPS : the new Image Packaging System : the reworked package manager for OpenSolaris, a big deal in bringing the legacy Solaris package management to a higher level


• USB support for VirtualBox guests


• Gnome 2.28

Update : seems that this was a link to a draft document.

In this Reuters.com article, Larry Ellison openhearted speaks about his view on the ex-Sun management decisions of the last years. It's quite a critical view :


"Their management made some very bad decisions that damaged their business and allowed us to buy them for a bargain price"


"The underlying engineering teams are so good, but the direction they got was so astonishingly bad that even they couldn't succeed"


Ellison shut down one of Schwartz's pet projects -- development of the "Rock" microprocessor for Sun's high-end SPARC server line, a semiconductor that had struggled in development for five years as engineers sought to overcome a string of technical problems. "This processor had two incredible virtues: It was incredibly slow and it consumed vast amounts of energy."


Ellison says he learned that Sun's pony-tailed chief executive, Jonathan Schwartz, ignored problems as they escalated, made poor strategic decisions and spent too much time working on his blog, which Sun translated into 11 languages.



At least you can't accuse Ellison of not being clear. Much is off course corporate chatter; IBMs Power7 chip runs pretty hot, and is equipped with impressive heat sinks too. The article continues to say that investment is boosting again in Sparc and OpenSolaris, but I'm afraid this will not be enough to restore faith in Solaris for many customers.

I spent the last week in Budapest, attending the IBM AIX Technical University. Hundreds of presentations about AIX, Power, Storage and Tape, spread over 4 days in Budapest. The most interesting talk was about the new stuff in TSM6.2, where one of the most markant features was client upgrades through the TSM ISC. Client packages are pushed from the ISC to the TSM server, where they reside on a diskpool, ready for shipment to the clients. Currently only a Windows feature, but Unix will probably follow in the 6.3 release. There was unfortunately no possibility for a TSM certification, which meant I could not renew (or upgrade) my 5.4 certification.


There wasn't that much time for city sightseeing, though we did manage to get a small visit to the castle on the Buda side of the Lanchid bridge. Pretty nice city, and a good idea for a next city trip...

Het heeft iets meer voeten in de aarde gehad dan initieel verwacht, maar sinds gisteren hebben we dan toch een nieuw familielid. Jitta is een Landseer pup die er momenteel uitziet als een schattige witte pluizige teddybeer. Landseer honden zijn verwant aan de Newfoundlanders, groeien uit tot honden van zo'n 50tal kilo, en zijn algemeen bekend om hun vriendelijk & zacht karakter.

The possibilities of software synthesizers can be endless, and the more possibilities a program offers, the more complex it appears to any newbie. The guys at Propellerhead realized this, and put up a 34-part tutorial covering all aspects of Reason, with off course a large part dedicated to the Thor analogue oscillator.

Everyone sure knows fractals, the beautiful mathematical organic drawings. Because they appear similar at all levels of magnification, fractals are often considered to be infinitely complex. Natural objects that are approximated by fractals to a degree include clouds, mountain ranges, lightning bolts, coastlines or snow flakes. The most famous one is the Mandelbrot set, named to the French mathematician.


Programs like Fractint or its successor Xaos make fractal exploring within everyones reach. However, knowing where to zoom in, makes the difference between boring and exciting fractals. Here's a visual guide to fractal exploring, making you feel like Alice in Wonderland.

I just finished a very interesting case of a coredumping TSM client on Solaris. After investigation of the core dump, it seemed that the TSM client barfed over an erroneous inode. Some more diagnosis revealed indeed filesystem corruption, unfortunately on the root file system. Normally, one would boot from CDROM or issue a netboot, to correct the corruption, but it turned out the Jumpstart config of the host was really foobarred. I neither did have the time to correct the Jumpstart server config, or walk over to the data center to insert a Solaris DVD.


At times like that, I resort to little tricks in the bootsequence of Solaris : if you boot with boot -a -s, you can specify the location of the startup files. If you enter a /dev/null for the /etc/system file, the host will continue to boot, but with a read-only filesystem :

Rebooting with command: boot -a -s

Boot device: /pci@8,600000/SUNW,qlc@4/fp@0,0/disk@0,0:b File and args: -a -s

Enter filename [kernel/sparcv9/unix]:

Enter default directory for modules [/platform/SUNW,Sun-Fire-280R/kernel /platform/sun4u/kernel /kernel /usr/kernel]:

=> Name of system file [etc/system]: /dev/null

SunOS Release 5.10 Version Generic_118833-24 64-bit

Copyright 1983-2006 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Use is subject to license terms.

root filesystem type [ufs]:

Enter physical name of root device

[/pci@8,600000/SUNW,qlc@4/fp@0,0/disk@w500000e0155145d1,0:b]:

Booting to milestone "milestone/single-user:default".

Hostname: qwerty

SUNW,eri0 : 100 Mbps full duplex link up

Requesting System Maintenance Mode

SINGLE USER MODE



Root password for system maintenance (control-d to bypass):

single-user privilege assigned to /dev/console.

Entering System Maintenance Mode

After a few rounds of fsck's, the root filesystem turned out to be corrected, and only 2 files seemed to be impacted by the file system check. As the TSM client worked again, I could easily restore those from the backup.

I had a few spare hours yesterday, so I decided to upgrade to (the beta version of) Ubuntu 10.4, called Lucid Lynx. The upgrade went quite smooth, but I can't say I was completely happy with the end result. As it's getting usual, a typical Ubuntu upgrade is becoming two steps backwards & 3 forward. There were quite some things broken after the upgrade :

• no framebuffer with the new kernel. Fixed by upgrading to Grub2


• Gnome 1 called and wants its GDM theme back. No, seriously, GDM looks so horrible that I'm wondering there's something wrong with my config


• Some users got XFCE as a default window manager


• The upgrade to Thunderbird 3 removed some of the SMTP server settings for all users.


• The window control button placement is stupid (I know about the many discussions and the Canonical reasoning behind it, but still). Here's a guide how to place these buttons to the right place again.


• There is no support any more for the NVidia drivers. I knew I would run into this, I had to downgrade the drivers already in Karmic, but this means bye-bye to Compiz.

Not all is teeth-gnashing :

• Boot times are faster


• Overall desktop feeling is faster and snappier


• Fonts are displayed way better

So, mixed emotions with the upgrade. Hopefully there are some GDM changes before the release hits the road.

It's now about 6 weeks that I have my keyboard, the Yamaha PSR-e413. The keyboard has some cool functions, like accompaniment features (called styles), which are actually MIDI files containing some instrumentation banks, so it feels like you're part of a playing band. If you do have a Yamaha PSR, you can find some additional styles for your keyboard here.


I have been following keyboard lessons since a week of 4, and I'm making quite some progress. 'Mull of Kintyre' does however stays difficult to play, even after several training sessions.


I have been searching to some ways to extend the possibilities of the keyboard, so I could have some more synthesizer features. Therefore, I've been testing some demos of software synthesizers and audio equalizers. Cubase and Cakewalk are big names in the music producing industry, but the first had troubles identifying my keyboard, while the latter experienced quite some audio lag and stutter. Both were quite too extended for my demand, however. It was only until I looked at Reason 4, till I really found what I was looking for : a true audio synth giving me the possibility of using my gear as a master keyboard, controlling the tracks with a sound of my liking. Reason has unlimited audio modification possibilities, truely an incredible program.

I spent some time last week in Bratislava to sort out some issues with the consolidated backup environment for our Slovakian colleagues. We had some successful meetings and I could finally place a face behind some names. Meeting people face-to-face is so much better than electronic conversations.


Bratislava is a nice little city, with some Austrian accents. Unfortunately we did not have a lot of time to do much sightseeing, but I did find an Irish bar in the old town center. As it was St-Patrick day, the place was however too crowded to even consider staying there for a long time. Luckily for me, the other pub had a fine array of single malts too :)