OpenSolaris Code Released

njcoder writes "C|net's news.com.com has reported that Sun Microsystems is releasing parts of the OpenSolaris code today licensed under the OSI-approved CDDL . The release consistes of over 5 million lines of code for the base system OS/Net (kernel and networking). OpenSolaris is based on Solaris 10, the current version of Sun's Unix Operating System. Back in January, Sun released the code for DTrace, a dynamic tracing tool for analyzing and debugging kernel and userland events. DTrace is one of the big features in Solaris 10. Some other highlights include the GRUB bootloader, SMF (Service Management Facility) which replaces init.d scripts, it starts up processes in parallel for faster boots (7 second boot on a dual opteron workstation I think that was the setup) as well as providing features for automatically restarting. OpenSolaris provides support for x86/x86-64 processors as well as Sparc. The Blastware guys are working on Polaris which is an OpenSolaris port to PowerPC. Sun has been working on opening Solaris for over a year now. The OpenSolaris project started with a pilot group of Sun and non-Sun users. During the pilot program a lot of info including screenshots could be found on various OpenSolaris member blogs. (My favorite is Ben Rockwood's blog). Teamware is the source code management system Sun uses for Solaris and OpenSolaris. Which was designed by Larry McVoy (now of BitKeeper) while he was at sun. No word yet on if Teamware will be available for OpenSolaris developers or not. Sun also uses CollabNet for it's Open Source project websites so that might be a possibility as well."

Comments

Rock on!

[AKAImBatman]

YES! This completely rocks! Check it out:

• Free Sun Compiler Tools!
  
• Torrent Downloads for Solaris (I've been wanting this for a LONG time.)
  
• Complete CVS Access
  
• Public Bug Database

Combined with an Open Source/Forkable license, what more could a Solaris Geek want? Get out the party hats people, because this has got to be THE most awesome thing Sun has ever done!

(I'm excited, can you tell? *Happy Dance* *Happy Dance*) :-P

Now for the bad news. Sun has taken the tack of encouraging users to build their own system. That is a good thing. Unfortuntely, all builds require a system to bootstrap the build. At the moment, the only option is Solaris Community Edition, a non-Torrented download. (Boo!) That being said, I don't think we'll have to wait too long for the OSS community to fix that little issue. :-D

let the driver flood gates open!

[emptybody]

now maybe we will see some driver development for all the cool hardware that is out there?

Re:let the driver flood gates open!

[zzqzzq_zzq]

When things like the 'dad' & 'uata' (IDE drivers), and 'todsg' drivers are still in the closed source tarballs, I'm not hopeful for the 'open'ness of 'opensolaris' (Come on, they can't release drivers for their own hardware clocks?! (todsg))

Zfs?

[astrashe]

Is zfs included?

I'm unfamiliar

[udderly]

Since I'm mostly unfamiliar with Solaris, what are the main advantages it has over Linux, BSD and Windows? Just curious.

Re:I'm unfamiliar

[ahl_at_sun]

Yes! That was true, but not as of Solaris 10. The reason core files needed to be on the same machine that produced them was because they didn't include all the necessary information. In particular, they didn't include read-only data. Their genesis was around debugging on a given machine and in that case, dumping the read-only sections is kind of pointless. This was a frustration that affected every application developer who cared about post-mortem analysis; we in Solaris really care about debugging from first failure.

In Solaris 10, I did some work to make the content of core files adjustable and added text (aka code) to the default. Now when you get a core file, you can debug it on any other system regardless of the patch level, libraries installed or the version of your application that was running. Using coreadm(1M) you can adjust the content to, say, add the symbol table to the core dump or omit the gigantic ISM segment that you don't care about for.

So, yes, mdb(1) had some limitations in the past -- we've tried to address them in Solaris 10. If you have other issues preventing you from using mdb(1), post a comment on the OpenSolaris site.

I thought I was going to have to find a shill to ask that question... "Sir, we've never met before, have we?"

SMF vs InitNG?

[yerdaddie]

I'm curious about how the SMF boot parallelization code stacks up against the InitNG project, which does the same for Linux. Anyone had experience with both?

Re:Parallel boot scripts

[Chyeld]

One. Big one comes to mind.

Don't know about the rest.

Re:Parallel boot scripts

[chegosaurus]

They aren't exactly parallel boot scripts. It's a part of something called the Service Management Facility. You write XML manifests describing how services should be started, stopped, restarted, refreshed, and what the SMF should do in the event of failure events. It intruduces the concept of dependencies between services, and makes a lot of things more coherent and logical. It also means you have to learn a lot of new stuff.

The SMF has a concept of milestones, which groups of scripts "belong" to. This is not unlike the principle of run levels, and when moving between milestones the SMF can fire off a whole bunch of services in parallel. It usually does this through scripts akin to the old init scripts, but doesn't have to.

That's not a very good description, but it might give someone who can't be bothered to RTFM some idea of one of the big new features.

Solaris 10 is great. IMHO there's no Unix (or clone) to touch it. That's just my opinion, and I CAN NOT be bothered to argue about it, so don't start!

Re:Finally!

[elmegil]

rc.d? I see those on my Solaris system too. Don't you mean "rc.boot" and "rc.local"?? The "init.d" method has a master that runs subscripts from rc*.d directories too, so I fail to see how that's any different.

SMF is going to be a head check for a lot of people who LIKE init.d/rc.d (though backward compatability with that has been retained so far). Myself, I like the fact that it's more robust and faster, and I don't like the fact that it's managed with a handful of different commands depending on what you want to do. And I'm not terribly thrilled that the backend is XML, but you'll have that.

Re:It is MS and Sun vs. Linux

[starfishsystems]

This is simply another trap being laid by Sun and MS against Linux.

It may be. I know a very bright Microsoft zealot who thinks it is, and couldn't be more delighted at the prospect.

I don't think it is, myself. For one thing, the internal cultures of these two organizations, and the personalities they attract to senior positions, could not be more different. You just have to look at their past conduct to see this. Microsoft does lay traps, systematically, all the time. Sun is a corporate player too, thus in the game for profit, but its strategies are much more symbiotic in their essential character.

When Sun puts someone on a standards committee, it's to make the standard more valuable for everyone, on the express theory that it's better to share a growing market than have all of a stagnant one. When Microsoft puts someone on the same committee, it's to "embrace and extend" the standard so as to exclude competition, and the expressed goal is to eliminate all competition.

Another thing worth remembering is that an organization as big as Sun has substantial internal struggles from time to time. Such was the case with Solaris on X86. The project took off energetically at first, but it was a risky venture which happened to fall out of political favor just at the point when driver support was becoming most critical. The result was not a strategic withdrawl, it was a conspicuous fumble which cost Sun a lot of internal morale, hurt its reputation, and lost it a golden opportunity whose extent has only become more apparent in recent years.

So yes, it could all happen again, but not because of some nefarious strategy on the part of Sun Microsystems. Sun does not have a history of executing that way.

Re:It is MS and Sun vs. Linux

[justins]

What is funny is how little ppl seem to remember from just 7 years ago. Sun actually ported to X86 once before AND "opened" their source code. Then when they thought that things were going well, they dropped it. If Sun ever feels like things are going in their favor, it is almost certain that they will do it again.

I won't be the only one, but I just thought I'd point out that the license they are using this time around is quite different, and they literally cannot take away your right to use the code once you've got it. You might read the (OSI-approved) license before spouting off, although I know that is asking a lot.

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/licensing/