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Solaris 10 to be Released Late in 2004

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sunshine-lollipops-and-rainbows dept.

ptolemu writes "The Register has the scoop on Sun's latest iteration of Solaris. The article includes some details of the new and improved features that will be included in the OS. The OS is scheduled to be released in the second half of 2004."

106 of 418 comments (clear)

  1. SO????? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Will it be called SunOS 2.10 or SunOS 3.0?

    1. Re:SO????? by MrPerfekt · · Score: 4, Informative

      Will it be called SunOS 2.10 or SunOS 3.0?

      It's actually SunOS 5.10. (SunOS 4.x was Solaris 1.x, SunOS 5.x was Solaris 2.x up until 2.7, then they changed it to just Solaris 7 with the underworkings of SunOS 5.7... got that?)I can't imagine they're going to break into the next major version number. (i.e. SunOS 6) but you never know.

      --
      I just wasted your mod points! HA!
    2. Re:SO????? by cujo_1111 · · Score: 4, Funny

      So 1 = 4?
      And 2 = 5 if 2 And 2 = 7 if 2 > 2.7?

      I get it now...

      # Segmentation fault (core dumped)

      --
      If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
    3. Re:SO????? by g2racer · · Score: 4, Informative

      Wasn't the reason they went from v4 to v5 because they swapped the underpinnings of the OS from BSD (Solaris 1.x) to SVR4 (Solaris 2+)? That being said, I can only see them going to v6 when they change over to Linux ;)

  2. Sub roots by AmVidia+HQ · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Sun has also added a new security tool with Solaris Privileges. This lets the root user create sub roots that can have permission, for example, to patch applications but not to touch hardware components.

    When will I see it in Debian stable? =b

    --
    VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.
    1. Re:Sub roots by theantipode · · Score: 3, Funny

      Considering Debian stable, last I checked, still has the 2.2 kernel as default, I'd say you have at least a ten year wait.

      --
      When I am king, you will be first against the wall
      With your opinion which is of no consequence at all
    2. Re:sub roots by Russ+Steffen · · Score: 5, Informative

      This feature sounds like the privilege model from Trusted Solaris is being mainlined into the plain ol' Solaris tree. In which case, yes, someone is working to bring that into Linux. That's one of things SELinux is doing.

    3. Re:Sub roots by KrispyKringle · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Sounds vaguely similar to sudo.

    4. Re:Sub roots by Frymaster · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Sounds vaguely similar to sudo

      you can easily roll your own one of these with a combo of sudo and acls.

      but of course if you let sun do it for you a) you save yourself some work b) management feels more comfortable about it.

      --

      2 1337 4 u!

    5. Re:sub roots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      In linux you can set up SELinux.

      this is Security Enhanced Linux.

      It basicly isolates every thing from everything else in linux right down to the kernel level.

      For example if you have a Apache webserver and it gets comprimised, a hacker can't use Apache's security level to give him elevated permissions to control another part of the OS. In a regular OS you have to allow the Apache some root control over the computer to have it work properly and a hacker can use this to violate your computer.

      In SELinux even if a hacker gained root access their is a limited amount of damage he can do, depending on how you set it up.

      You could if you wanted to use this to set up roles for users, like a apache admin or a sendmail admin, or a filesystem admin or a /dev/ file admin.

      SeLinux is brought to us by our freinds and future government overloads: the NSA.

    6. Re:sub roots by ryanw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Interesting... Everyone has the debate of Linux GPL vs putting Linux out there with a BSD license. Would would be the problem of letting an older linux kernel tree off and call it something else and go with a BSD license? If it dies a horrible death, so be it, the main GPL linux tree will continue... But that way it could give the debate a run for it's money.

    7. Re:sub roots by 0xfc · · Score: 2, Interesting

      > For example if you have a Apache webserver and it gets comprimised, a hacker can't use Apache's security level to give him elevated permissions to control another part of the OS. In a regular OS you have to allow the Apache some root control over the computer to have it work properly and a hacker can use this to violate your computer.

      If one hacks apache remotely the permits you will gain is uid nobody. I am not quite sure how you leaped to uid 0 access from that alone. No one i knows run apache as root except irix admins. :P

      > In SELinux even if a hacker gained root access their is a limited amount of damage he can do, depending on how you set it up.

      Reminds me of FreeBSD jails I have been using. FreeBSD's killer app, one of many.

      > You could if you wanted to use this to set up roles for users, like a apache admin or a sendmail admin, or a filesystem admin or a /dev/ file admin.

      Last time i checked in the /etc/passwd file, we have users such as bin, operator, smmsp, man, etc... Some of them are used, some have gone the way of a green pasture.. but just because they are out of style with some people does not mean they never existed. I know you get fine grained controls from SEL, but one can do a lot without it.

      > SeLinux is brought to us by our freinds and future government overloads: the NSA.

      **** them and use trustedbsd. their mascot is cooler anyways.
      http://www.trustedbsd.org/beastie.html

    8. Re:Sub roots by Imperator · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It would be more than that, at least from what the description suggests. The problem with sudo is that you're often giving suid access to programs that aren't designed to be suid, so someone who was the right entries in the sudoers file can root the machine with ease. Proper privilege separation in the admin tools would mean being able to give someone access to run apt-get dist-upgrade (or whatever it is) without his being able to install his own packages. It would mean letting someone add non-root users but not root users, or resetting passwords but only for users in a certain group. It requires planning when creating admin tools, not a "slap it on" solution like sudo.

      Of course, given that it's Solaris, it may end up just being sudo after all.

      --

      Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
  3. N1 Grid Containers Look Interesting by TravisWatkins · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It should be interesting to see how the N1 Grid Containers work. It would be great to setup a shared server with this so scripts can't eat all the CPU and crash the entire server.

    --

    "But I'm still right here, giving blood and keeping faith. And I'm still right here."
    1. Re:N1 Grid Containers Look Interesting by SpamSlapper · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If N1 Grid Containers work well it will be a major improvement on the competition. In HP-UX if you want to set up V-Pars you need to dedicate at least one CPU, physical disks and a network interface to every partition, and resource allocation is at the whole CPU level. With an 8 CPU machine that doesn't give you much leeway if you want to have 3 or 4 test environments.

      With N1 Grid Containers OS instances sit on top of a "master" OS, so resources can be divided at a much finer level. You could presumably have a production partition with 80% of the cpu power allocated to it, and a bunch of test partitions sharing the rest, and dynamically increase the CPU power of the test partitions when it was prudent to do so.

    2. Re:N1 Grid Containers Look Interesting by Imperator · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Posix has had resource limits for a long time now. See setrlimit(2), for example. PAM has had a module to support this for quite a while. I'm sure Solaris has resource limits. Virtualization (what the N1 system seems to be) is a whole different beast, with different uses. If all you want is to stop a script from eating all the CPU, any Unix will do that for you.

      --

      Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
    3. Re:N1 Grid Containers Look Interesting by jsavit · · Score: 2, Informative

      The resource management part has been in Solaris for quite a while, letting you control how much CPU (and other resources) an application can get. What the containers add is the ability to provide isolated environments (namespace, filesystems, process list, security and fault containment contexts) so each container thinks it has its own instance of Solaris.

  4. Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris? by 0xfc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    > i always wondered why nobody ever writes articles that include solaris.

    1. not open source
    2. costs money
    3. runs on overpriced hardware
    4. bsd and linux can do everything it can cept maybe scale to extremes
    5. solaris is not the only stable OS anymore
    6. way too many people were burned by sun back in the day and said enough is enough, they never went back

  5. Is Unix Unix? by ObviousGuy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've wondered for a while now, is one Unix like another Unix? I've used Linux in the past and am trying out FreeBSD now. Frankly, I don't notice the difference from an end-user perspective.

    Linux has SMP support, so does FreeBSD, and so does Solaris. They all have process management functionality (which is what Solaris is introducing with N1 Containers in this release). What would possess me to use Solaris (which costs) instead of Linux or FreeBSD (which are free)?

    Is any one of them more robust than another?

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
    1. Re:Is Unix Unix? by Frymaster · · Score: 5, Informative
      What would possess me to use Solaris

      one word: support.

      i have worked in two shops in the last four years. one is a red hat shop. we use rhel es with paid support. the other was a full-meal-deal sparc/solaris shop.

      in the solaris shop we had a dramatic failure of a storedge sena array. i called the sun support line and a guy in tweed jacket was at my door in 40 minutes with a grocery bag full of spare parts (gbic cards, if you care). the problem was solved in a total time of one hour.

      in the linux shop i made a web support request for a very simple question (that being: is stronghold bundled with rhel es like the marketing material says? it doesn't seem to be... anyone know?). i logged that request twelve days ago and it's still listed as "awaiting technician". twelve days! and every time i go to check the status the web page throws a NullPointerException. and i got an email for resolution on a support request i didn't even make. i informed red hat that i'd received someone elses support mail and they replied that it would be rerouted, but the erroneous issue still shows up on my incident tracker a week later.

      so... sun costs a bundle. but if you need tech support from a team that makes the justice league of america look like a quilting bee, they're your guys.

      --

      2 1337 4 u!

    2. Re:Is Unix Unix? by deek · · Score: 5, Insightful
      • I've wondered for a while now, is one Unix like another Unix? I've used Linux in the past and am trying out FreeBSD now. Frankly, I don't notice the difference from an end-user perspective.

      Well, from a basic end-users perspective, there isn't much different at all. Especially if you install a bash shell on solaris, or whatever unix you're using.

      From the administrators perspective, there can be a world of difference. Many admin tasks can be very similar, but many are also pretty different.

      As for why you'd want to use Solaris over Linux, nobody does NFS better than Sun. I'm not sure what the current status of NFS is under Linux, but I've heard some stories that don't look favourably on Linux and NFS.

      Also, Solaris performs and scales very well on multi-cpu machines, compared to Linux (although with Linux 2.6, this may not be such an advantage anymore).

      Then you've got the added advantages of Solaris being a full 64 bit OS (ignoring the Intel version), with large max file sizes and RAM without any special hacks (again, Linux 2.6 has gone some way to fixing this, with 64 bit file support).

      Basically, for the enterprise, Linux wasn't really an option until 2.6. With 2.6 only in its infancy, Linux still isn't an option. Solaris is though, 'cause it's got the features, the performance, the reliability, and it has been thoroughly tested on the anvil of time.
    3. Re:Is Unix Unix? by 0xfc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I will bite.

      > If you care at all about programmer's jobs, you would support closed-source Unix.

      This does not seem very logical. It almost seems like you are "scared" of OSS. You, as a programmer can now harness all this free software to create some amazing products. With skill you can add value and sell it. Imagine working from scratch on everything, reinventing the wheel at every step, buggy beta code OR you can build on a well written, free, BSD licensed piece of software AND not share your source while making money. You can be even more revolutionary and picking GPL licensed software and sharing your value added source with everyone while making money (support + modest price of software).

      I am more a customer, and I cant imagine not having source to compile from now days. I am way to used to it, it is assumed.

    4. Re:Is Unix Unix? by whereiswaldo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      in the solaris shop we had a dramatic failure of a storedge sena array. i called the sun support line and a guy in tweed jacket was at my door in 40 minutes ...

      in the linux shop i made a web support request for a very simple question ... i logged that request twelve days ago and it's still listed as "awaiting technician".

      You must admit that these two issues are *very* different in severity. Try logging a failure of a similar magnitude with Red Hat and report your results back for an apples to apples comparison.

    5. Re:Is Unix Unix? by Veridium · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I have to agree with you. Sun support kicks butt, second to none. At the one company I worked at as a Solaris admin, the few times I did call Sun, I was never on hold more than a few minutes, and whatever parts were needed were delivered to us within hours.

      Though I always saw that as one of the advantages of having the OS & hardware coming from the same vendor. It seems to keep them from playing the "it must be your hardware" game that so many software vendor support people play whenever the answer isn't easy. Though that doesn't explain your experience with RH.

      Anyone out there have experience with their X86 support?

      --
      Think for yourself, destroy your television.
    6. Re:Is Unix Unix? by ajagci · · Score: 2, Troll

      in the solaris shop we had a dramatic failure of a storedge sena array. i called the sun support line and a guy in tweed jacket was at my door in 40 minutes with a grocery bag full of spare parts (gbic cards, if you care). the problem was solved in a total time of one hour.

      And if you had bought Linux machines for the same amount of money, you could have bought so many extra machines that you could have just pulled that machine, dumped it in the trash, and gone on merrily with your work.

      in the linux shop i made a web support request for a very simple question (that being: is stronghold bundled with rhel es like the marketing material says? it doesn't seem to be... anyone know?).

      Well, how much money are you paying RedHat? Anywhere near what you are paying Sun? Even within two decimal orders of magnitude? I suspect not. For what you are paying Sun, you could get stellar Linux support if you wanted to. But somehow, you have concluded that it's OK to pay a lot of money to Sun for service, but that it's not OK to pay a lot of money for Linux service.

      Also consider yourself lucky that you have not experienced Sun at their worst yet: yes, they, too, sometimes have less than stellar service even though you pay them a bundle.

    7. Re:Is Unix Unix? by stevens · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Also consider yourself lucky that you have not experienced Sun at their worst yet: yes, they, too, sometimes have less than stellar service even though you pay them a bundle.

      Like diagnosing a memory card failure, replacing it to have the OS panic in a few hours? And then they changed out all the RAM again. And did it again three days later.

      After a few calls the replaced everything but the chassis. But that was several failures in a week!

      Or when our CPUs started blowing, but they wouldn't give a new batch for all the identical severs we bought. They told us to call them as the blew. We ended up getting about 60% replaced, as they blew and caused downtime.

      But they're always there in an hour to be unhelpful.

    8. Re:Is Unix Unix? by silence535 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      one word: support.

      Hmm, I vaguely remember ideling around for a couple of days with a bunch of other expensive developers because Sun Gold(!) support was not able to quickly fix a hardware failure.

      And worse, it turned out that the failure was due to a combination of a hardware raid controller and a mainboard that was known to fail under circumstances and was forbidden for (from|to) sale by a Sun directive and no one knew why the f*ck they had sold us this combo.

      And this fine machine came with a big bucks (tm) 3d OpenGL accelerator card and a 21" Monitor to sit in the server cabinet and watch the console on. Stupid. But then again this might have been the mistake of our materials buying department.

      -silence

      --
      Dyslectics of the world, untie!
    9. Re:Is Unix Unix? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I have to agree. Support is the big difference. We are migrating some of our Sparcs running Solaris 7 to Dell 2650s running RH Linux ES. Whats funny is where I putting these was in a large govt contractor whose mainly a windows shop at the branch I am located at.

      Suns support was amazing, if we had any problem I either had someone on the phone in under an hour or onsite in under 6 hours.

      With RedHat I get better support using the newsgroups. RH support is a big joke. When we got the 2 systems in the lab and loaded them up, the first problem we had was getting rhn_register to work (i had already updated the rpms for the new keys). A day passed as RH could not find our product ID and referred us to Dell. So I call Dell, I get support immediately and they conference call in RH9 Support.

      Get this the cluemonkey at RH said I need to downgrade the kernel to make it work....huh? I cant even upgrade it yet.

      Anyhow while Dell is trying to get RH to answer I find the solution in an old RH mailling list post (rhn_register wont work if theres no host entry for the system and no forward dns). I added the hostname and ip in /etc/hosts and rhn_register worked.

      New Problem the Product ID key doesnt work. Guess what it has been A WEEK and Dell finally gave up with RH and is sending us (at their cost I would guess) a new product key SO WE CAN PATH RH ES shit.

      I loved RH until I bought their enterprise line. Heck I still use Fedora at home and get better mailling list support.

      RH Enterprise my ass.

    10. Re:Is Unix Unix? by TheLink · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Nonono, you'd support Windows. There's always PLENTY of work to go around if you use windows.

      I personally like OSS because 1) life is too short to keep rewriting code, 2) it's free - life is too short to have to keep saving up to not do everything yourself. Why rewrite code that a whole bunch of people have spent many many years of their life writing and have managed to do a decent job of it. The worst is having to rewrite your OWN code, just coz the license belongs to someone else.

      Might as well spend years of your life doing something that hasn't already been done 10 times already.

      Sure GNU/Linux is basically a reimplementation of Unix, however the difference is, if this OSS stuff continues, you don't have to do all that shit again.

      People can keep moving forwards without having to ask for permission/licenses from hundreds or thousands of other people at each step.

      Similarly patents don't scale well either.

      --
    11. Re:Is Unix Unix? by Servo · · Score: 2, Informative

      And if you had bought Linux machines for the same amount of money, you could have bought so many extra machines that you could have just pulled that machine, dumped it in the trash, and gone on merrily with your work.

      You obviously aren't used to working in a mission critical environment where downtime costs money. It isn't about the hardware, its about the service that system provides. You can't just throw out a production server.

      The only place that makes any sense at all is in a dumby web farm where they are all serving the exact content. But since most companies aren't dot coms, they need their systems to keep running.

      --
      A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
    12. Re:Is Unix Unix? by christophersaul · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sun's actually a lot, lot less expensive now. Check out the V440, which can come in much cheaper than an equivalent 4 way Xeon.

    13. Re:Is Unix Unix? by v01d · · Score: 2

      Try logging a failure of a similar magnitude with Red Hat and report your results back for an apples to apples comparison.

      My company has a active cluster running RH AS2.1. We pay for their best support contract. Getting RedHat to do anything is difficult and time consuming. I've called for support and been transfered to voice mail with a full mailbox on multiple occasions. I can't call RedHat and get an answer about their offerings.

      I can personally call Sun (no business relationship) and get questions answered for any of their products.

    14. Re:Is Unix Unix? by frission · · Score: 2, Funny

      also, with as much as the company probably paid for the sparc machines and solaris and support, you could have had a couple of backups or redundancy with the linux machines :)

    15. Re:Is Unix Unix? by whereiswaldo · · Score: 3, Funny

      How you do anything is how you do everything

      Do you wipe your ass as fervently as you make love to your wife?

    16. Re:Is Unix Unix? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      And if you had bought Linux machines for the same amount of money, you could have bought so many extra machines that you could have just pulled that machine, dumped it in the trash, and gone on merrily with your work.

      No really. What level do you want to do a comparison on, and do you want to compare no-name, white box systems with no enterprise features or would you like to use something reasonable like HP ProLiant DL servers? If you take the support costs out of the mix, a similarly configured DL380 and a V240 is about a 25% cost differential (about 2950 versus 4200). So, how many extra machines can you buy with a 25% cost differential? About 1/4 of a machine.

      Well, how much money are you paying RedHat? Anywhere near what you are paying Sun? Even within two decimal orders of magnitude?

      Again, if you want to compare apples to apples. HP 3y 24x7x365 4h support for the hardware is $949, plus $4997 to RH for 3 yr 24x7x365 4h support for RHAS 3.0 standard support subscription (total $5946). Or, I can get 3y 24x7x365 4h Gold+ support from Sun for $4400 for both HW and software.

      So, let's see... 2950+5950 = 8900. 4200+4400 = 8600. Wow, my Sun is 300 cheaper.

  6. A simple question by SoIosoft · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Can we expect Solaris 10 to be released to run on the x86 as well as Sparc hardware?

    It's nice to have a real UNIX (Linux and BSD aren't really UNIX) that is relatively cheap will run on inexpensive x86 hardware.

    --
    Help me. I've been modbombed by a few people with entirely too much time on their hands.
    1. Re:A simple question by Brandybuck · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Linux and BSD aren't really UNIX

      In all but name, BSD is every bit as much UNIX as Solaris. In fact, Solaris's precessor, SunOS, was directly derived from BSD. If you're hung up on names and trademarks, than BSD is not UNIX. But in every other sense it is.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    2. Re:A simple question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Only in the strictest sense of not being able to use the trademark.

      Linux and BSD both do a pretty good job of being standards compliant despite not having been put through certification to use the trademark.

      Some real (trademark using) Unixes are (or at least were) based on the BSD code base more than the SysV code base.

      And if you look too much into standards...well, I'd say that in many cases, it's sad that POSIX chose the SysV rather than BSD ways of doing things (e.g. times is standard rather than getrusage; in practice all modern systems provide both interfaces, but SysV derivatives don't provide as accurate information as BSD derivatives).

    3. Re:A simple question by Znork · · Score: 3, Funny

      "It means rock-solid 64-bit UNIX on commodity x86 hardware. Very cool..."

      Not really. It means a rock-solid 64-bit unix that you should be running on SPARC. And by the way, it's gonna be discontinued next month. Or wait... no, we're gonna support it. Maybe. Or maybe not. You should be running Solaris on SPARC. But wait, you can run it on x86-64. Or SPARC. But we're going to discontinue Solaris on anything but SPARC next month. Or not. Well, hey, run x86 Solaris! No, it's not supported. Yes it is. Etc. Etc. Etc.

      The fact is, until Sun can get their story straight for 6 consecutive months I wont ever consider running Solaris on anything but SPARC. As long as they cant commit for more than the attention span of a stoned gnat with split personality syndrome I have serious doubts about both the stability and the level of support one will recieve for non-SPARC platforms.

    4. Re:A simple question by ogre57 · · Score: 3, Informative
      Okay, tell me why SunOS is "real UNIX" but BSD isn't...

      On the off chance this is a serious inquiry, SunOS is officially "branded", *BSD and Linux are not. Said brand is required to be a "real UNIX", costs $$$ to obtain. Vaguely recall reading that some Linux distro was going to try for this. Haven't heard of them in quite a while now (iirc it was with kernel 1.2!).

    5. Re:A simple question by MosesJones · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Can we expect Solaris 10 to be released to run on the x86 as well as Sparc hardware?

      Quick answer: yes
      Long answer: YES

      NB The above only works in proportional fonts.

      But to add more. Sun are supporting Solaris x86 as standard going forwards and they have a strong alliance with AMD. Probably the best way to thing of Solaris x86 is as Solaris AMD, sure it might work on the old stuff... but it will fly on the AMD stuff.

      One interesting enterprise question about N1, Solaris 10 etc is this.... right now all of the software vendors charge per-CPU. With N1/Solaris 10 you can move to capacity based SLAs.

      How will Oracle charge for the DB when you can't say how many CPUs its running on ?

      --
      An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
  7. sub roots by gokulpod · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sun has also added a new security tool with Solaris Privileges. This lets the root user create sub roots that can have permission, for example, to patch applications but not to touch hardware components.

    This is a very interesting feature. Except for using sudo, does anyone know of any effort going on in linux to provide a similar feature ? Maybe Sun can port it to linux just to prove how OSS friendly they are ;)

    --
    My mom never taught me to sign.
  8. Solaris vs. Linux by bazik · · Score: 4, Informative

    Solaris is great for the big Sun (Ultra)Sparc servers, but for the "smaller" machines with less than 32 CPU, Linux works so much better and faster. Not to mention the bigger choice of more current Software.

    But then again, I might be a bit biased in my opinion :)

    --


    --
    One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
  9. Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris? by SpaceCadetTrav · · Score: 4, Funny

    7. Uses that funny keyboard.

    --
    Life in Orange County
  10. That rocks .... by jobbleberry · · Score: 5, Funny

    I loved the first movie, I hope they recast George Cloony, but I didn't like the other 8 ....

    Uh wait this isn't about the movie Solaris is it?

    1. Re:That rocks .... by cujo_1111 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How do you pronounce 'solar'? 'So-lah'? If so, then wouldn't 'Solaris' be pronounced 'So-lah-riss'?

      If the OS is to be pronounced 'So-lare-iss', shouldn't it be spelt 'Solairis'?

      --
      If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
  11. Solaris 10????!!!!??!?!? by _ph1ux_ · · Score: 4, Funny

    I just recently saw Solaris. Not even a sequel out yet... how could they be coming out with a 10th version?

    It was good I guess, but good enough for 9 sequels in 3 years??

    1. Re:Solaris 10????!!!!??!?!? by evn · · Score: 5, Funny

      They're numbering in binary.

  12. Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris? by wwwillem · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Linux runs a 512 CPU supercomputer at NASA

    Are you talking here 512 CPU SMP or more a Beowulf or similar. Two rather different animals....

    --
    Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
  13. Slow Solaris Upgrades by theguywhosaid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    sure, some people are running solaris 8 still, by the cs dept here is running five .8

    1. Re:Slow Solaris Upgrades by ogre57 · · Score: 4, Informative
      sure, some people are running solaris 8 still, by the cs dept here is running .. SunOS 5.8

      Solaris 8 is SunOS 5.8, 9 is 5.9, 7 is 5.7, 2.6 is 5.6, etc. Guessing Solaris 10 will be SunOS 5.10. Part of why, pre-Solaris was 4.x so Solaris became 5.x, for eg version testing by scripts.

      Other, have noticed that for whatever reason several companies deployed the even numbered Solaris versions, mostly skipped the odd ones. Meaning they were on 2.6, played with 7 a little, upgraded to 8 soon after it came out, have only played with 9. Seems they are treating it as if it were the Linux even/odd release/devel scheme.

  14. Re:Hardware? by trentblase · · Score: 2, Funny

    Haven't you ever opened your CD tray from your audio program?

  15. selinux by Vic · · Score: 5, Informative

    SE Linux is being included in upcoming releases of Fedora Core, and eventually Red Hat.
    Link

  16. Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris? by BiggerIsBetter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1. Yup.
    2. Yup, but it's cheaper than RedHat/SuSE Linux for a single CPU *professional* version.
    3. There's an x86 version (Sun harware fanboys can STFU about how crappy it is on non-SPARC hardware), and low-end Sun hardware starts at around 1000 USD.
    4. Yup.
    5. Fair enough.

    --
    Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
  17. Arrgghh! by jaguarxse · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just when I finally decided to get certified in 9.....at least the upgrades aren't as prolific as with MS!

  18. Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris? by PacoTaco · · Score: 2, Funny

    Uses funny everything.

  19. I've been running the beta for a while.... by Desmoden · · Score: 4, Informative


    Has some cool features. Once apps (oracle etc) get "blessed" it will be nice to have a new core OS to go to since no one will support 5.9.

    If for no other reason than getting away from a 101.5MB recommended patch cluster.

    There are a lot of cool new commands for kernel info. There is also a performance increase depending on which cpus you are running.

    1. Re:I've been running the beta for a while.... by Bitmanhome · · Score: 4, Funny

      What's so scary about 102MB? That's like 3 Windows updates, or half a Debian update.

      --
      Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
    2. Re:I've been running the beta for a while.... by lewp · · Score: 4, Funny

      Making fun of Windows and Debian in the same post should be every man's goal.

      --
      Game... blouses.
  20. Re:"Solyaris" by Tartovsky by jay-be-em · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Solaris is so far off the radarscope of present computing these days"
    You obviously have nothing to do with present computing these days. At least outside of your basement. Oh, by the way, mom called, dinner is ready.

    --
    "Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
  21. Will they charge for x86 Solaris 10 by rueben · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And then change their minds a few months later, like Solaris 9?

  22. So is this version going to by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So is this version going to include the feature of it not being *fricking painful* to compile nearly anything not specifically targetted at Solaris?

    No, I'm not trolling. Anyone who's worked with previous Solaris versions knows what I'm talking about. Anyone who's tried to compile GNOME as a non-root user on Solaris 9 is rolling on the floor crying from the memories right now. It seems like Solaris has everything just *barely* different enough that absolutely everything is a slightly different kind of complete pain to compile.

    Yes I realize that at least part of this is that apps are targetted for Linux, so of course it isn't Sun's fault when shit doesn't compile. And yes, I'm exaggerating, the compilation problems only happen occationally, it's just that when they do happen it's really bad. But through the shit-colored glasses of memory, it seems like every time you try to compile some large free software package in solaris you uncover some new and painful oddity about the OS.

    1. Re:So is this version going to by Phibz · · Score: 5, Informative

      I maintain packages for 300 or so programs for Solaris. I've compiled all of them using Sun's compiler, Forte from SunONE Studio 7. Although I agree that some programs are more difficult than others to compile under sSolaris, I've been able compile nearly anything I've attempted using forte 7. I used to use gcc but the speed improvements that forte adds make it very attractive.

      I compiled GNOME and KDE and although I wouldn't say they were easy to compile I did get them working. And no I didn't compile any of it as the root user. I even was able to compile libavcodec something that supposedly runs on Solaris but is coded in a very very gcc specific way.

      So I'm not really sure what difficulties you're refering to. So long as you have a sane build environment, gnu make, autoconf, automake, m4, a good compiler, gcc or forte, and know your compiler well you shouldn't have any problems.

      Phibz

    2. Re:So is this version going to by plankers · · Score: 5, Interesting

      IBM has gone so far as to build a number of GCCisms into their native compilers, just to deal with this sort of thing on AIX. It's actually really nice -- most everything Open Source builds on AIX 5.2 now.

    3. Re:So is this version going to by javiercero · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Yes I realize that at least part of this is that apps are targetted for Linux, so of course it isn't Sun's fault when shit doesn't compile. "

      That is the understatement of the year. Us BSD users have feel the pain of shitty code for years, as well as most other non Linux/GNU userland dependant Nixes out there.

      I guess you have to take the good with the bad of OSS, the bad being the amount of shitty coders outthere that do not have a clue. And I have had my love/hate relationship with gcc for over a decade, sometimes I wonder why they still try to pretend to be a C-compiler :) and at least be honest enough and call it "new and improved C" or whatever but not C. And yes even with the strict ansi c flags I have had trouble with gcc. But I do not complain too much because I have gotten good things out of gcc too.

      I just wish portability was real sometimes :(.

    4. Re:So is this version going to by aanantha · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, the thing that always pissed me of is the gettext incompatibility. Unless I disable internationalization most GNOME packages will fail in configure. GNU added extra functions to their own gettext with GNOME requires. I wasn't able to upgrade to Solaris 8 when I did this so I couldn't try out Sun's new gettext library. I heard that the GNOME programs will still demand the GNU one installed.

      The other thing is I can never get the Jade stuff to work. The Openjade people didn't bother to mention that trying to build openjade as a shared C++ library causes core dumps on linkage. And even after getting that stuff installed it still doesn't work.

      I'm amazed that you managed to zip past those without "any problems".

    5. Re:So is this version going to by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Intel of course has done the same thing; ICC can now be used to compile a Linux kernel. A lot of the stuff in C99 came from GCC extensions originally, too. One might suspect that GCC is fast becoming the defacto standard in C compilers..

    6. Re:So is this version going to by aanantha · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm still trying to compile GNOME on Solaris *as* a root user. It's been a year now. Not done yet. Seriously. I wasted a lot of time trying to get that OpenJade crap working. I couldn't figure out why OpenJade would crash every time I ran it. It was only months later that I found out that a shared library version of OpenSP doesn't work on Solaris. The Openjade people didn't think it important enough to mention. But even after getting that stuff built and figuring out how to install DTDs by looking at my Linux system, it still wouldn't work. So then there was no choice but to disable all gnome doc building.

      And then there's that goddamn gettext/libintl stuff. I don't have the option of overriding the Sun version of libintl across the board by placing the GNU libintl in /usr/local. Our Solaris software that uses Sun's libintl will break. You think the GNU people could have at least made it possible to use a different library name (libgintl maybe) for their incompatible version of libintl and have their configure scripts search for that.

      Now all my stuff is out of date so I have to start over from the beginning again. Building GNOME has just become a great way to procrastinate. I wonder if I'll ever get to KDE.

      Sun tries to solve this problem by giving you a prepackaged version of GNOME. But 2 problems with their approach: 1) it's never up to date, and 2) it's only good if you have Sun's C compiler. I don't know how, but somehow Sun's GTK+ C library is incompatible with GCC's. Same with their Zlib. So I can't use Sun's GNOME distribution to write software. I though that kind of stuff was only supposed to happen with C++. I'd much rather like Sun to promote a /usr/ports like thing for Solaris. Whatever they did to get GNOME to compile they need to stick those patches in a /usr/ports. The community would help out. Then eventually we can have full "distributions" that we can install onto a Solaris system. Life would be a lot easier if there was something like "fink" in place for Solaris.

      And while they're at it, Sun needs to stop ignoring GCC. Make the C and C++ ABI compatible. There are a lot of Solaris software houses that only use GCC because they need to build their code on other unices. They're not going to be able to use Sun's GNOME environment if it's not GCC compatible.

    7. Re:So is this version going to by dglo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So is this version going to include the feature of it not being *fricking painful* to compile nearly anything not specifically targetted at Solaris?

      I'm old enough to remember back when Sun was the top dog and all non-SunOS users complained about Unix software being written specifically for Suns.

      And before that, the problem was people writing Unix software specifically for the VAX.

      This says more about the quality of the people writing OSS than it does about the quality of Solaris. Actually quality is the wrong word, because it's likely that many of these programmers only know or have access to Linux.

      Making an effort to port your software to non-Linux dialects of Unix is a really good thing, because other OSes will expose bugs in your software which would not otherwise turn up until, for example, a bug in the current glibc is fixed.

    8. Re:So is this version going to by Wolf+Eyelash · · Score: 2, Insightful

      People need to be aware that Sun tries very, very hard to keep their ABI's stable. Certainly they are going to be careful with the libc ABI. Note, to help folks out Sun provides a Freeware CD with most of the tools (gcc, gnu libc, etc...) needed to build freeware source. So you really have the best of both worlds (a stable ABI and a evolving ABI).

  23. Re:hmmm... by javiercero · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, only 64bit kernels are provided now. So that means Ultra 2 and up type of machines are supported, Ultra 1 and the Sun4c/m/et al are now dropped.

    Therefore Solaris 9 is the last stop for the sun4m machines.

  24. never do anything with the odd release of solaris. by Desmoden · · Score: 4, Interesting


    think of it like odd linux kernels.

    5.6 stable we all used it.
    5.7 we played with, tested
    5.8 we all upgraded to, used, liked.
    5.9 play with and test
    5.10 upgrade and enjoy.

    most oracle products for example will never be certified on 5.9. It's too much work to requalify and upgrade to a new solaris version. So the odds introduce new features and work out the bugs, and the evens is what we use.

  25. Re:Solaris vs. Linux - mod parent up by javiercero · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not really, actually I have had the opposite experience with Solaris running much better on desktop sparc machines than linux.

    Also most of the software out there that can be compiled in linux can also be ported over Solaris with minimal grief.

    And I do not particularly feel like spending 2 days compiling in order to have a stable machine. A solaris install with the extra software CD provides most of the functionality than a linux install. But if you like linux by all means go and use it. Saying that linux is somehow better or makes more sense than solaris just because is just plain dumb.

  26. there's an old saying... by SuperBanana · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's an old legal saying- never ask a question you don't already know the answer to.

    The company is so confident about Solaris' speed that officials repeatedly offered to challenge Linux on benchmarks in the coming months.

    Now, usually companies don't make such bets unless they're well hedged. So, perhaps running some benchmarks against the preview versions of 10(the article mentions most of 10 is available already to update subscribers) might be a nice idea, to see what's got Sun so cocky, instead of just saying "oh. Solaris is crap"(which is at least partially wrong anyway).

    --
    Please help metamoderate.
    1. Re:there's an old saying... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
      the article mentions most of 10 is available already to update subscribers

      Actually, Solaris 10 is available to everybody through the Solaris Express program. And it's free (for non-commercial use).

    2. Re:there's an old saying... by jcupitt65 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I found this other article linked on the reg, talking about the new TCP/IP stack:

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/61/33440.html

      The relevant quote is (near the bottom):

      We worked hard on efficiency, and we now measure, at a given network workload on identical x86 hardware, we use 30 percent less CPU than Linux.

      So I guess that should give them a fair performance advantage under very heavy static loads. Although he doesn't say which linux.

    3. Re:there's an old saying... by jrockway · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Umm, microsoft claims that XP/2003 is more secure than Linux. In the wake of the last eight virus attacks and source code leak, I think M$ is wrong. Maybe I'm wrong, though? :)

      --
      My other car is first.
    4. Re:there's an old saying... by kshcsuf · · Score: 3, Informative

      There's a reason why they are piping up the rhetoric... very recent recommended patchkits include a kernel patch (dated around Christmas eve) that have very specific "fixes" which include massive performance improvements in over a dozen system calls. Each fix/report states that those system calls were slower when tested against Linux 2.4/2.6. The fixes have been back-ported to Solaris 9 and are included in Solaris 10. Hope this helps.

  27. Why all the bad comments? by KidSock · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Excuse me but this actually sounds pretty good. This "containers" thing permits running hundreds of virtual machines on one host (and not a moment too late as that idea is becoming a very popular -- I have a VPS runing UML and it's very snappy). The DTrace utility sounds nice although I probably shouldn't say that considering I've never tried it. And they're going to run Opteron and claim that they can beat the Linux benchmarks. I don't know about you but I wouldn't mind having an Opteron box running Solaris 10.

    [disclaimer: I have 50 shares of SUNW]

  28. Re:You're late to this scene by Bastian · · Score: 3, Funny

    Solaris came out in 1972. There's been plenty of time for 9 sequels in 30-odd years. Actually, the crappy Solaris that just made the theatres in the USA is Solaris 9, but was released in the USA as Solaris 1. (It's kind of a Final Fantasy 3/6 thing) Solaris 11 is already in the process of being shot, just like Darl.

  29. Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    1. not open source
    2. costs money
    3. runs on overpriced hardware
    4. bsd and linux can do everything it can cept maybe scale to extremes
    5. solaris is not the only stable OS anymore
    6. way too many people were burned by sun back in the day and said enough is enough, they never went back


    Lets flesh that out a bit...

    1. You can get the source to Solaris.
    2. You can download Solaris for free.
    3. Solaris runs on good hardware which is a good thing if you are trying to get serious work done. (Not everyone working with *nix is building web servers, internet hosting, or using samba to replace a few Windows PCs.) If you are only trying to recycle crap hardware, any OS will do. FreeDOS or DR DOS will recycle hardware that Linux is too fat to run on.
    4. BSD and Linux lack the thousands of mature, commerical applications Solaris has, but they are catching up.
    5. Solaris is not only stable, it is one of the best. Linux is still in catch up mode in terms of standards and features. Linux still has a tendency to cheat, or only partially implement a standard. It is getting better. Standards are a good thing if you are trying to get equipment from multiple vendors to work together.
    6. Sun's support has been plenty good for the companies I've worked for, and PCs won't be getting the work done that we do anytime soon. Maybe if the Opterons work out well we could use them in a couple of years.
    7. A standard Sun keyboard has the control key where it should be.
    8. Documentation. Solaris has it. The documentation is good, and correct. Linux, ha.
    9. Solaris can have a System V Unix personality, a BSD personality, a GNU personality, or traditional Sun personality, depending upon your path.
    10. Linux pretty much provides a subset of what Solaris can do.

    I could go on, but you should get the point by now.
  30. Dtrace? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
    The comments about DTrace are clearly ludicrous:

    DTrace sends the probes through a server looking for hardware errors and anything that might be slowing application performance.

    DTrace is a sweet tool for anyone who's had the chance to run Solaris Express, but a much better description can be found at the source.

  31. Re:Not just Solaris by Bastian · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've run into the same problem on Mac OS X. Usually you're fine, but when you aren't, you're in a world of pain. I think this is a lot of why fink just creates a separate file tree rather than trying to merge itself in with the main one.

    I've actually been considering dual-booting GNU/Linux on my mac for just this reason.

  32. timezones & reboot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    with this release will i be able to change the timezone without requiring a reboot?

    1. Re:timezones & reboot by twoslice · · Score: 2, Funny
      with this release will i be able to change the timezone without requiring a reboot?

      Yes, I do this all the time when I fly from Chicago to LA with my laptop.

      --

      From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
  33. Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris? by fferreres · · Score: 4, Informative

    512 cpus, single image. It's clustered at 64 cpus per node, but they share memory and the same kernel. I am quoting by memory, so may be wrong.

    --
    unfinished: (adj.)
  34. Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris? by 0xfc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    > 1. You can get the source to Solaris.

    google showed this link for seach "solaris source". From this link it reads:
    The Solaris 8 Foundation Source Program has concluded. Source code for the Solaris Operating System is available for qualified educational institutions and partners; please contact your Sun sales team for details. Maybe this info is old...

    > 2. You can download Solaris for free.

    I just tried, it seemed you were right, they made me jump through hoops. I ended up at a page that appeared to allow me to download solaris, but the link was not a link and they wanted me to register. could have told me that at the start... i am too lazy to do it, i will assume you are right.

    > 3. Solaris runs on good hardware which is a good thing if you are trying to get serious work done. (Not everyone working with *nix is building web servers, internet hosting, or using samba to replace a few Windows PCs.) If you are only trying to recycle crap hardware, any OS will do. FreeDOS or DR DOS will recycle hardware that Linux is too fat to run on.

    You make it sound like ibm,hp,compaq did not make high end x86 servers. Himilaya non stop servers come to mind. Heck even proliants are nice.

    > 4. BSD and Linux lack the thousands of mature, commerical applications Solaris has, but they are catching up.

    I agree.

    > 5. Solaris is not only stable, it is one of the best. Linux is still in catch up mode in terms of standards and features. Linux still has a tendency to cheat, or only partially implement a standard. It is getting better. Standards are a good thing if you are trying to get equipment from multiple vendors to work together.

    FreeBSD is amazingly stable. Uptimes of a year are taken for granted. I dont know enough to comment on the rest of your statement.

    > 6. Sun's support has been plenty good for the companies I've worked for, and PCs won't be getting the work done that we do anytime soon. Maybe if the Opterons work out well we could use them in a couple of years.

    Support? I dont need no stinkin support. You telling me your head admins cannot troubleshoot hardware?
    You dont have a backup system ready so a hardware failure just is an inconvienence? Software is a whole different issue.

    > 7. A standard Sun keyboard has the control key where it should be. ...

    > 8. Documentation. Solaris has it. The documentation is good, and correct. Linux, ha.

    I agree. Sun probably employs a crap load of technical writers. Its a good thing. I often find answers to problems from sun docs...

    > 9. Solaris can have a System V Unix personality, a BSD personality, a GNU personality, or traditional Sun personality, depending upon your path.

    I guess.

    > 10. Linux pretty much provides a subset of what Solaris can do.

    I wont argue that. Solaris is time tested and powerful.

  35. Re:Hardware? by Trejkaz · · Score: 4, Funny

    So _that's_ how the free drink holder works. Oohhhhhh...

    --
    Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
  36. Re:Hardware? by lewp · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yes, by delivering a mild electrical shock to your face. Difficulties in perfecting this process are why Longhorn's ship date keeps slipping.

    --
    Game... blouses.
  37. Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris? by hdparm · · Score: 2, Interesting
    4. BSD and Linux lack the thousands of mature, commerical applications Solaris has, but they are catching up.

    Care to explain this bit, please? I am not arguing the number since I don't know Solaris too well but 'thousands' makes me really curious.

  38. Re:2.2 in Debian stable? by phrasebook · · Score: 3, Informative

    But it does have 2.2 by default doesn't it? If I press Enter at the boot prompt of my woody CD, I get the 2.2 idepci kernel. So I would say that is the default.

    But you can type 'bf24' to get 2.4 of course.

  39. Re: stronghold by phr1 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Stronghold basically doesn't exist any more. It's just regular Apache with mod_ssl now. There stopped being any reason to maintain the old Stronghold module. And mod_ssl is included with Apache 2.0 by default. So yeah, RHEL comes with an SSL web server; whether they bother still labelling it "Stronghold" is not terribly relevant.

  40. Linux Business Week says Solaris 10 has.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...600 new features

  41. SELinux gives you this by Oestergaard · · Score: 4, Informative

    Solaris 10 contains the Trusted Solaris security features (labeled security, mandatory access controls (MAC)) which is what allows such flexible administration without the almighty root user.

    I haven't run the prerelease of solaris 10 myself yet - but from what I've read, they have really taken the trusted solaris features and put them in solaris 10 - this is not just the RBAC features from solaris 9 (which would actually allow the described sub-root concepts, but not all the other goodies that come with real MAC).

    This is what SELinux brings to Linux. You can run Debian stable with SELinux if you really want to. Otherwise, look for RH AS 3.0, or get to work on testing SELinux in debian unstable so that we can all get this functionality in the next debian stable.

    Google around for selinux on debian and you should be able to find out how to do this.

  42. advocatus diaboli by Imperator · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Isn't this the sort of thing that we'd be up in arms about if it were MS compiler quirks other compilers were emulating? The GCC compilers should make strict conformance to modern standards the default, and make you turn on the extensions manually.

    Why, for example, does GNU C++ include binary <? and >? operators for min and max? I could see the attraction in C, where preprocessor macros and their issues with side effects are a pain in the ass. But in C++, inline templated functions can do it just as well and are much more portable. This is the sort of irresponsible "extend the language by default" approach that the GCC compilers are full of.

    Don't get me wrong; I love the GCC suite and for all the supposed performance issues, I wouldn't trade GCC for any other toolchain I've ever used. But free software should set an example by encouraging portable code.

    </rant>

    --

    Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
  43. Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris? by shin0r · · Score: 3, Insightful

    >Support? I dont need no stinkin support. You telling me your head admins cannot troubleshoot hardware?
    >You dont have a backup system ready so a hardware failure just is an inconvienence? Software is a whole different issue.

    We aren't talking about a few PC's in the basement, or your home ftp server here. For those of us that admin hundreds of machines in production environments, support is absolutely essential - and Sun do it well.

    --
    Super Awesome Broadband
  44. Re:ibm,hp,compaq *don't* make high end x86 servers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    You make it sound like ibm,hp,compaq did not make high end x86 servers. Himilaya non stop servers come to mind. Heck even proliants are nice.

    They don't.

    Not when compared to this beast. Each of those 72 UltraSPARC IV CPU chips is actually two 64-bit CPUs on die.

    144 CPUs, 1/2 a terabyte of RAM, near linear scalability.

    In fact, the Intel architecture pretty much can't scale well beyond 4-6 CPUs because of problems like cache coherency - i.e., when CPU a modifies a memory value any CPU that has the memory value in cache needs to know that cached value is now invalid.

  45. all my replies in one go by chegosaurus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wow some of the comments on here are uninformed. Especially those modded informative or interesting.

    "Hey, Solaris sucks! Linux is way better and it's free as in speech!" +5 interesting

    "Hey Linux does everything Solaris does and it's free as in beer" +5 informative

    "Hey there was a film called Solaris! OMG LOL!!!" +5 funny

    Do you *never* get bored of pointing out that x86 chips have higher clock speeds than SPARCs?

    Don't you think we *know* by now that Linux is free?

    If you know how to handle Solaris, you will know that: it has some features that linux does not. It's no harder to build software for than linux. Trusted Solaris privileges are not the same as sudo. dtrace is not the same as cat /proc/whatever. Solaris is not so slow it's unusable on 32 CPUs. Version 5.8 is not four versions older than 9. There are smarter ways of patching than downloading the recommended cluster every day. But hey, post uninformed crap and up your karma. That's what matters.

    If you don't know what you're talking about, shut up and leave the discussion to people with some interest and background in the subject. And stop complaining that "no one uses Solaris, so who cares there's a new major release", when you've probably been up all night bitching on IRC that the mods here rejected the 2.6.3-rc3 release story you submitted.

  46. pkgsrc may be what you're searching for by cquark · · Score: 3, Informative
    Only a few years ago, SPARC/Solaris was the most standard platform for open source software and IA32/Linux was the nonstandard, difficult one to build on. It's amazing how fast times have changed.

    As for libraries compiled with a different C compiler than you're using to link with, that's a common problem between gcc and vendor UNIX C compilers. However, the vendor C compiler suites shouldn't be disregarded as they offer many advantages over gcc (take a look at some of the Solaris bugs in gcc and gdb.)

    However, if you want something like /usr/ports on Solaris, check out pkgsrc. It's NetBSD's ports collection, and it has been ported to Solaris 8 and 9.

  47. Re:never do anything with the odd release of solar by maitas · · Score: 3, Informative



    http://sdc.sun.com/solaris_list/s9supported_prod _a lphaO.html

    List of ORACLE releases supported on Solaris 9....

  48. The main answer is three simple letters. by devphil · · Score: 2, Insightful


    And they are: R. M. S.

    This is the sort of irresponsible "extend the language by default" approach that the GCC compilers are full of.

    So, you'll be submitting a patch, then. What's that? You say you haven't tried it? Ah.

    We've tried getting rid of some of the extensions that were not well thought out. He's just dead-set on keeping them.

    Also -- unfortunately -- many of them are actually being used. Pulling the rug out from under your users is not a keen move.

    It's a slow battle. Many were removed for 3.4. More are being removed for 3.5.

    But free software should set an example by encouraging portable code.

    Heh. The FSF view on this is that GCC is far more portable than any of your code is likely to be, so just install GCC instead and make use of its features. Not a position that I agree with necessarily, but it is the same argument that I make when installing bash on all the non-GNU systems I use. :-)

    --
    You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
  49. a bit of detail, and what they dont tell you by RouterSlayer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    first a correction.
    the numbering scheme, what people here have said is a bit off.

    from SunOS 4, it went to 5, 6, 7, 8 and finally 9, but these are not actually v8, v9, etc as such. You see, v8 is actually 2.8, and v9 is actually 2.9
    so the old question still begs, will it be 2.10 or will it be 3 ? inquiring minds want to know. (just a bit of fun here really).

    and on other news, the stuff that Sun isn't saying (at least, not publically), and this is just somewhat rumor based on what I know from the inside...

    Supposedly Solaris10 will be using a totally new kernel, which will be (as far as I've been told by very high ups at Sun) something of a mish-mash of Linux kernel, BSD, and Solaris.

    Sun thinks it can finally "level" the playing field, and make "Unix" a standard, one flavor. All for one and Sun for all! (heh)

    Many admins I've talked to say this is a great idea. Finally one standardized "flavor" of Unix, one set that consolidates everything. It could work, but is Sun the one to pull it off, and is the timing right?

    We all know Sparc is dead, Sun said so themselves. So, now that they are going AMD, their direct "competitor" (I don't like using that word, because it's really not true) is Linux (and BSD of course). And we all have been hearing that BSD is dead. From a CLI point of view Solaris most resembles BSD, but from an actual operations point of view, kernel, threading, etc Solaris most resemebles Linux, after all, it already uses Linux's threading model (and much, much more!).

    Word on the street from inside Sun VPs is that Solaris 10 will have (primarily) the Linux kernel. This could be amusing. I sure hope it works out, I actually like Solaris as an OS an aweful lot, it doesn't have the zealot, uptight, holier-than-thou BSD attitude... which is a good thing...

    1. Re:a bit of detail, and what they dont tell you by cpghost · · Score: 2, Informative

      Supposedly Solaris10 will be using a totally new kernel [...] something of a mish-mash of Linux kernel, BSD, and Solaris.

      While BSD folks won't object if Solaris 10 contained BSD code (all previous Solaris and SunOS releases did), Linux folks will have to enforce compliance to the GPL if Solaris used parts of the Linux kernel. If the rumors were true, Solaris kernel will be GPLed, and we'll soon be able to look at their sources! Great!

      --
      cpghost at Cordula's Web.
  50. Re:so what's better, bsd, linux or solaris? by Gilesx · · Score: 2, Funny

    > I could go on, but you should get the point by now.

    That you're a Solaris fan-boy?

    --
    Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
  51. Re:Yet another Solaris distribution... by haggisman · · Score: 2, Informative

    Unless they removed it after Solaris 9, I think Volume Manager (ex Disksuite) does this. Yes, it does soft partitions too, in case you're about to ask :)

  52. Re:GNU/Linux as a High-End competitor... by TheLinuxWarrior · · Score: 2, Informative
    You obviously don't have any sort of relationship with Sun.

    I work for a global pharma company as a Solaris admin and we have a dedicated Sun account team. From my discussions with our reps, I can tell you that Sun takes Linux quite seriously.

    We were actually considering buying an HPC cluster of Linux X86 blade servers from Sun that their own Professional Services group would support.

    If that doesn't say they take Linux seriously, I don't know what would.

    I think the perception that Sun has it out for Linux comes primarily from McNeely's big mouth, which has gotten Sun in trouble for years. If they could silence McNeely, they'd be a lot better off all around.