Gentoo Announces OpenSolaris Port

A reader writes:"According to this week's Gentoo Weekly Newsletter, Gentoo is planning a port to Sun's partially-announced OpenSolaris. Something interesting to look out for, or just more hype from a developer often criticized even by Gentoo people for not looking before he leaps?"

Comments

Why back Sun? Why back Solaris?

[UnderScan]

I use Gentoo. I have even donated money toward Gentoo? Why should I be interested in Sun/Solaris? Is Sun's execs still slamming Linux in their blogs? Is today "We sell Linux." or is today "Linux is no good, Solaris is better."

Re:Why back Sun? Why back Solaris?

[koi88]

GNU's not UNIX. Solaris is.

Re:Why back Sun? Why back Solaris?

[I confirm I'm not a]

I sympathise, but I can think of a couple of reasons:

• legacy machines (say running Solaris 2.6, 7) can be updated using "Portaris" and standard GNU tools more easily than, say, "pkg-get"
• cheap Sparcs on eBay!

Another good thing to come from Portaris and Gentoo on Sparc is that Jonathon Schwarz will evenetually have to acknowledge the contribution Linux has made to Solaris... ;)

Re:Why back Sun? Why back Solaris?

[I confirm I'm not a]

(and for the record, I don't see portage as being a large benefit to Solaris over pkgadd for the typical server, either)

I prefer pkg-get, which seemed to be quite like Gentoo's "emerge". I last deployed a Solaris box before I first installed Gentoo, so I can't recall how similar they are. Does pkg-get resolve dependencies? Reason I ask is, I'm gradually falling in love with "emerge" - it's a superb tool.

Then again, I had no end of trouble convincing the owners of the last Solaris box I touched that I should be allowed to install various GNU tools, so I don't know how much of an advantage Portaris will really bring - unless it becomes accepted as "part" of Solaris.

Re:Why back Sun? Why back Solaris?

[tomstdenis]

" Gentoo's not the kind of thing you run on production servers, Solaris is."

Why not? Or is this yet another empty "marketting-statement?"

Tom

Re:Why back Sun? Why back Solaris?

[noblesse oblige]

Gentoo's not the kind of thing you run on production servers, Solaris is.

You knew such a statement would be countered with real life people. Allow me to be the first (if I post this fast enough).

Our company runs Gentoo on our domain controllers, which handle everything from Directory Services to Email. For a while our file servers ran Gentoo kernels, until Marcello added XFS and a few other items to the main 2.4 kernel.

In that example you have a very crafted and complex server, running some of the latest features Open Source has materialized. I go to a promotional lunch at a Sun vendor occasionaly, and the fellow moochers are constantly amazed at not only what services we provide, but the volume we provide them at.

If that is not enough big iron experience with Solaris, I happen to know that Sony's online game division does not run Solaris -- they run RedHat. Even compared to deep-pocket heavy hardware, they get better Oracle performance on Linux with Dell servers.

While there are many things I like about Solaris, (I still administer our legacy Solaris *workstations*) I have to say that the "Solaris is for production" mantra is not something this decade will say very much at all. Though I admit pkg-add is good, it is only as good as a binary package manager can be.

Re:Why back Sun? Why back Solaris?

[JFitzsimmons]

Okay, for a second, pretend you are a PHB (I know, it is hard). Do you want Gentoo (Huh? What's that? It is free you say? What?), or do you want Solaris (The incredibly stable, highly secure, Unix made by our good friends and reputable Internet Citizens Sun Microsystems, the genius creators of Java, the best programming langauge ever).

It is hard to step into the PHB shoes isn't it? But anyway that's your answer. If you don't have a PHB then maybe gentoo could be a viable server platform, but IMO that would still be pushing it. I use gentoo for a desktop and server at home, but I know that I wouldn't entertain the idea of such at work. Compiling from source is something I have the luxury to wait for at home, but work is a different story. I suppose there are those nifty new binary package servers, but I haven't investigated how they fit in with the rest of portage (mainly because I am satisfied with compiling from source at this point).

Re:Why back Sun? Why back Solaris?

[Wiz]

No, it doesn't resolve dependicies. I'll refuse to use any OS at home that doesn't have a ports system of some sorts as it just makes life so much easier.

And yes, you can compile them manually under Solaris no problem. Sun also supply them on a bonus CD. The problem is, they don't update them. Vuln in libpng? Update it yourself. :(

Portage is a superb tool. I'd really like to have a good ports system on normal Solaris, let alone OpenSolaris!

Re:Why back Sun? Why back Solaris?

[tomstdenis]

...setup....your....own...mirrors....

e.g. you have a dozen "Comp-u-matic 1000s" in your server room. You take one and build binary packages on it, even optimized and USE flaged for your environment.

then you...get this... this part is the kicker

MAKE THE OTHER BOXES USE IT AS A PACKAGE SOURCE.

Tom

Re:Why back Sun? Why back Solaris?

[tomstdenis]

Well as someone who does a lot of development I don't have any problems with high loads.

I've seen nessus scans eat up tons of cpu time on even my AMD64 but the machine is still responsive and operating just fine. Mind you that was a different story with earlier 2.4.xx back when I had my Barton.

So maybe you were using an old kernel (2.6.10 works great ... so did 2.6.7 through 2.6.9) or you're just making stuff up for the sake of posting.

Also that "pre-emptible kernel" checkbox in menuconfig... make sure that's checked eh ;-)

Tom

Re:Why back Sun? Why back Solaris?

[vegetasaiyajin]

No, it doesn't resolve dependicies.

pkg-get does resolve dependencies.
I installed KDE on solaris using the command:
pkg-get install kde

Of course, pkg-get is not the package manager that comes bundled with solaris, but it builds on it. I downloaded it from blastwave.org.

I was playing with Solaris 10 X86 (version Oct 04) a few days ago, but I went back to slackware for serious work because it couldn't access the USB ports (it supossedly has USB support, but it didn't work on my PC).

I found solaris was very fast (in contrast to its fame as slowlaris). I found it much much faster than Suse 9.0. I didn't run any real benchmarks, but, for example, the "Konsole" program started much faster in solaris X86 (I have to admit it starts fast on other linux distributions too). The general feel I had was that it's a fast OS. Too bad it wasn't able to use the USB ports.

If they improve their hardware support they could be a very good alternative to Linux for desktops.

Re:Why back Sun? Why back Solaris?

[fox8118]

how do you deal with the slowdown from emerge compilation? Do you compile binary packages off production servers? Is this at all a hassle? I'm curious.

I know that there are several options to reduce the overhead on the production platform. Here are two of them that I can think of off the top of my head:

• Using distc to utilize multiple computers during the compiling process
• Setting up a stage platform that is identical to the production platform and then compiling the sources as packages for later deployment

Re:Why back Sun? Why back Solaris?

[vrai]

Setting up a stage platform that is identical to the production platform and then compiling the sources as packages for later deployment

This isn't just an option, it's a necessity. You should never install new software, or a new version of currently installed software, without first testing it on a machine that mirrors the production setup. Only after testing has shown it's stable and doesn't adversly affect other software should it be rolled out on the production machine.

In the case of a source based distribution you should be rolling out the binaries you know work - i.e. the ones you built and tested for your test system.

No problem with a little competition.

[barryman_5000]

Isn't it all about being free and open anyhow? Solaris will be a great addition and we can try out yet another *nix. Some people cry that solaris is nothing good at all but I'd say its a step up from freebsd on the server side of things. It was the "best" commericial unix anyhow. Idea swapping will be the best thing about the 2 platforms. If only we did the same with bsd's.

[OT] Re:Portage in Solaris?

[RangerRick98]

You can always run `emerge depclean` to remove packages that aren't in your world file and aren't required by any packages that are. And there's `revdep-rebuild` in the gentoolkit which will rebuild any packages that might end up broken after a depclean. With those two commands, I've never had any problems keeping only the packages I want and need on the system with no extra cruft.

Overambitious Developer?

[EvilGrin666]

Something interesting to look out for, or just more hype from a developer often criticized even by Gentoo people for not looking before he leaps?

No, I don't think so. There's been a installer for Solaris avalible from this self same developer for some time. As this is just an incremental update rather than inventing a whole new wheel I don't think anyone can be seriously worried about him pulling this off.

Re:Overambitious Developer?

[PornMaster]

I don't think anyone can be seriously worried about him pulling this off

I hesitate to ask, but what would there be to be worried about?

Re:Portage in Solaris?

[halivar]

revdep-rebuild -pv is what you want. Run it before you go uninstalling packages.

Re:Portage dependency check

[mtenhagen]

You should change /dev/ROOT to you root partition, in my case that's /dev/hda3

Read the documentation: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml

Not vaporware

[sysadmn]

Well, if it's been running for months on Sol 9 and 10, it's more than vaporware. Whether anyone uses it remains to be seen. If it replaces/augments the pre-built packages at Sunfreeware, it'll be a great addition to the OpenSolaris community.

Gentoo people

[Anonymous Coward]

Are "gentoo people" ones that resequence their DNA every night to get 1% performance gains?

opensolaris slashdotted?

[casualgeek]

Can't access http://www.opensolaris.org Connection times out....

Emerge?

[Zemplar]

Can Sun run 'emerge from debt'?

Perhaps even cron 'profitability'??

Irrelevant links?

[Laurentiu]

Something interesting to look out for, or just more hype from a [developer] often [criticized] even by Gentoo people for not looking before he leaps?"

Both the above links are irrelevant. The "developer" link is currently redirected to the Gentoo distribution, while the "criticized" to a web interface to the gentoo-dev mailing list. I've scanned said mailing list and it looks like a normal discussion to me, the so-called "criticism" is just a difference of viewpoints. I am unwilling to read the whole gentoo-dev and/or learn about the finer points of gentoo's portage just to validate the poster's point of view.

IMHO, only the first sentence looks like news; second is just fingerpointing.

Re:Why waste the time?

[DrunkenPenguin]

Well, I'm not using Gentoo, but it's not just %10. I get _huge_ performance gains on my 3.2GHz Northwood if I use proper compiler optimizations. I'm using this workstation for audio related tasks. Ardour (Digital Audio Workstation software) and several plugin effects / audio encoders are 30-40% faster compared to precompiled i386 binaries.

A reading from the Book of Linux

[Hognoxious]

But then, I may be completely and stupid-ly wrong, as linux is completely new to me [or vice-versa]

10. And the LORD spake unto the newbies. And he spake thus:
11. First shalt thou try the Knoppix, for verily, it is a piece of cake to install, yea, even that thou intalleth it not.
12. Then shall thou try the RedHat, for it is eay to install, and it is said "In the site of the Amazon, in the city of Linux, are there books without end, and they mostly covereth the Redhat."
13. Or the SuSe, though it is the Devil's very own bugger to get the isos, but that thou payest.
14. Or Mandrake, if thou art French.
16: And the LORD spoke more saying: what happened to 15? Oh, never mind.
17. And when thou hast three score days uptime upone thine Redhat
18. Or SuSE.
19. Or Mandrake, if thou art French
20. Then canst thou try the Gentoo.
21. Or Debian.

Here endeth the lesson.

Re:Sun's Record

[njcoder]

"With Sun's record on "opening" products I would have to say that it may be a waste of the Gentoo community's time since it is a source-based distro and requires that it's platform be open..."

Please, you could at least try to add some substance to your trollish post. Sun has a pretty good record with opening their products overall. Look at nfs, openoffice.org, netbeans, gridengine, plus the work they do with other projects like gnome, mozilla, various apache projects.

They're the first company taking their commercial unix os and making it opensource.

The only problem they've had opening up their products has been with java. And most real java developers don't wannt an open source java.

Bashdot?

[Andy Dodd]

I've been willing to forgive a lot of editorial inconsistencies on the part of the /. editors (dupes, etc)... Overall they've done a good job, it's hard to manage such a large site with so much traffic.

But please, stop posting all this unsubstantiated slander and bashing in the stories. First there was the bashing of Six Apart when they were purchasing LiveJournal, without ANY evidence WHY Six Apart was bad or even why the author didn't like them. (Which directly conflicts with everything I've heard from personal friends on LJ's staff, who were all extremely happy about the buyout - Many of them who were contractors with LJ were promoted to full time when SA purchased LJ.)

Now there is a story directly bashing a person, not just a company, with no real evidence as to why that person would deserve such bashing. The mailing list looks to ME like the developer in question politely handling complaints from a rather whiny user.

Really, it's getting out of hand...

Overambitious developer?

[pvdabeel]

I wrote a response to this article in my blog