Hmm. I can't help but wonder if the real issue isn't the gratuitous use of bold type. Turning bold on and off in their editor of choice must cut down on their productivity by several lines a year.
Why not use something like TWiki? It can store those things plus it has decent enough access control. We've moved almost our entire business unit (around 600 users) web content and migrated a lot of processes to one centralized TWiki installation running on a Solaris box and couldn't be happier.
What if/usr is down or needs a low-level fsck? I've always been told that that would mean you are totally screwed, unless you have static binaries in/.
Lots of things to cover...:)
By default, all UFS slices have logging enabled in S9+patches and up. The chances of requiring to do a low-level fsck are fairly remote.
If you do lose/usr, chances are good you're going to want to recover it from backup anyway just to be on the safe side.
In most cases, / and/usr are on the same disk. If you lose one due to hardware failure, you're probably going to lose the other one too.
As I mentioned in another post, all of the vital bits that were in/usr/lib are now in/lib.
Another option is to utilize and plan for using LiveUpgrade. That allows you to 'clone' your running OS onto other slices, perform upgrades on them, patch them, etc, while the system is running... your only downtime is the time it takes to reboot. If for some reason/usr fails, you can reboot onto your alternate root copy and then do repairs.
Re:Wishlist: more pkg-get and flexible install
on
OpenSolaris One Year On
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· Score: 3, Informative
if usr is not mounted,
Don't make/usr a separate partition. Seriously. You gain nothing by doing it anymore.
the libs would have to be available somewhere in /
They already are. Most of the vital libraries in/usr/lib are softlinks back into/lib.
Re:Wishlist: more pkg-get and flexible install
on
OpenSolaris One Year On
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Make then entire system available as a pkg-get repository, not just the blastwave contributed programs. I don't want to download 4 cds of nonsense. Let me have one CD for a base install and ftp just the parts I want with pkg-get.
You're basically looking for how to setup a jumpstart server. You dump the CD contents onto an NFS server. From there, you can pkgadd till your hearts content.
pkgadd, BTW, also supports quite a few URL constructs (e.g., pkgadd http://blah/blah). In this form, the other end of the pkgadd has to be a package stream, however, so that limits its usefulness with the DVD contents.
I haven't done any X-based installs, but my main bitch with the console install is that it is fairly inflexible. You get four options for package selection 1)really stripped down 2)stripped down 3)everything, 4)everthing plus OEM drivers. Finer grained control in package selection would be nice. Also nice would be a task-based pre-canned install set a la tasksel in debian or like what anaconda gives you in RH. Example: selecting a DNS task would install BIND but not X.
It's been a while since I've done the text install, but finer grain control has been there in the past. I'd be surprised if it was removed. That said, using Jumpstart combined with a profile will also get you finer grained control without having to do it manually for each install. Information on network-based installs and the like is available here and here.
Please add some polish and make the default paths sane. Yes, I know this is a minor thing, but why do I have to spend several minutes adding/opt/sfw/bin:/usr/bin/:/usr/local/bin to my skel and.profile
... except I don't have/usr/local/bin or/opt/sfw/bin on my machines.:) Also,/bin==/usr/bin on Solaris. That said,/usr/ucb really needs to get removed and/usr/sfw/bin and/usr/sbin added. (or perhaps that is what you meant?)
Would somebody please statically compile bash already? I've scoured google and I can't find one. Yes, I know sh and ksh, but I prefer bash and think it to be more capable and easier to use. It would be nice to have it available in single user mode.
Solaris 10 and up doesn't come bundled with *any* statically built binaries anymore. The/sbin/sh and friends are all dynamically linked. Building your own statically linked bash puts you at risk from a security perspective unless you rebuild it after every patch installation. This is because the static binary won't be getting fixes that were in the library fix.
Why can't it read the raw ISO files without having to do a loop back mount? Why can't I specify a port for the http method? Why isn't there any really good documentation on how to actually set it up, especially if you're trying to boot it from a non-SuSE or *gasp* a non-Linux box? Telling Joe Admin to run yast2 instserver doesn't do much good if you don't actually have a place to run it from.
I'd love to find a way to make the default console show up in monochrome as well. The color one is s-l-o-w over a serial connection.
I'm not much of a fan of Kickstart, but I'll take it any day of the week over AutoYAST. It has some serious flaws that really need to be taken a look at.
Most of the experiences I've had with wikis inside our corporate environment have been mixed. A lof of folks (techie or otherwise) treat it more like a generic CMS rather than a hyperactive hyperlinking system. When they create a page, they make the assumption that it is their private page... so we end with page names like "Status". A lot of time is spent cleaning these up or the wiki becomes full of potholes.
Sure, user education would help here, but there is only so much one can do... especially in a company of 30,000+ users.
While wikis certainly lower the bar for producing web content, there really needs to be some sort of way to prevent users from doing things that they don't particularly realize are (overall) harmful. Or at least much better training tools.
We're in the tens of thousands arena, so I completely understand what you're talking about. We finally broke down and wrote a custom database app with a web interface that hooks into icecast for playing.
After you get so big, nothing but a real DB seems to really cut it. Even apps like SlimServer start to really slow down (even with the SQLite backend).
One of these days I'll clean up the code, update to icecast 2, etc, and release it out on sourceforge so that we can have yet another mostly dead project out there.:) [Actually, up until I decided to do some upgrades, it hasn't really needed much maintenance since it mostly "just worked".]
Most vendors that I have experience with fix bugs in the current development release and then backport those changes, including security changes. In theory, that would mean beta is more secure than what has been released.
Of course, those development releases generally don't see the light of day outside of their local dev group until after the backport/patch has already been completed though. So he's still (likely) wrong in this particular instance.:)
It's greating being able to pop open a laptop in the airport, on the plane, etc, and have a nice relaxing game of whatever. Especially when you are stuck in some hick town with no social scene at all. If I have to take my laptop anyway, I might as well get some use out of it other than doing a presentation or whatever.
[My biggest complaint are the games that require the CD/DVD to be present when they don't actually pull anything off of the media or require it for the audio track that I turned off anyway. Sure, there are lots of tools to get around this, but it is still annoying to have to do those extra steps.]
NFS (as shipped by Sun) has supported Kerberos for NFS security for quite some time. Unfortunately, not many other vendors or even open source operating systems implemented this. Luckily, this is now required to for full NFSv4 compliance.
Don't blame NFS (or Sun) for poor implementations.
... and will be opened as well. I can't help but think that RH rushed this out the door to counter Sun.
But does anyone really want an older version that's likely been untouched for years?
Re:what about b-sides, bootlegs, and back catalogs
on
The Chumbawamba Factor
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· Score: 1
... because they need that material to produce a few hundred more box sets with 'unreleased songs'. Spread out over a few years, the collectors more than make up for any profit loss.
I think the coverage for the BSDs is great. Really.
I think it will help them in the corporate mindset.
But, Dan Lyons, the person who has the byline, really should have had someone technical proofread his article. Only three open source BSDs? When did Solaris switch back to using a BSD kernel? That last one is particularly embarrassing given the amount of coverage Sun is getting with the whole opensolaris thing.
Why on earth would someone want to use a system in 2005 that lacks multiple users (if only for the security aspects) and network file systems? This looks great for an embedded appliance that doesn't need to talk to anything else.
What strikes me as odd is that the threads continually say "We aren't asking for support from Adaptec". But documentation is a massive form of support. Almost all of the 'big boys' in the computer world dedicate entire websites for the sole purpose of documentation ( Apple, Sun, etc).
Plus, it is likely a more expensive one for Adaptec (vs. binaries) over the long-haul as they need to make sure that whatever they release for the public's eyes are relatively "clean".
The end result of this could very well be Adaptec throwing something over the fence that is only guaranteed to work with a certain generation of cards with only a certain generation of firmware. Is that really better for their customers than a set of binary drivers?
Better yet, make it ANSI C so that the compiler doesn't particularly matter. Standards compliant code has a better chance of getting adopted beyond just those stuck with gcc and all of its -ism's.
According to StarOffice Volume Pricing, Sun will do support for $25 per user for StarOffice 7 for 10,000+ users.... and that's before any other negotiation has happened.
Probably not because Solaris itself doesn't officially support usernames or groupnames over 8 characters. This is a historical (read: backward compatibility) limit.
At home, we've got SunONE Directory Server feeding several clients via LDAP. It all works fairly seemlessly, except for one thing: automounts.
The problem is that each flavor/vendor uses its own brand of automount schema. OS X uses that awful 'mounts' mapping with its equally awful automounter. Solaris has its own brand. Then there is amd. Etc. Until someone RFCs a decent LDAP schema for automounting and everyone follows along, I suspect this is going to remain a dream.
In the meantime, if you work in a heterogeneous environment, expect to do some work (and in some cases, quite a bit) to build shims between flavors.... and thats before you get to things like Kerberized NFS and/or NFSv4.
In most other respects, everything else is fairly standard. RFC2307b gets you almost all the way via LDAP and Kerberos lets you do it all in an SSO'd environment.
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Hmm. I can't help but wonder if the real issue isn't the gratuitous use of bold type. Turning bold on and off in their editor of choice must cut down on their productivity by several lines a year.
Why not use something like TWiki? It can store those things plus it has decent enough access control. We've moved almost our entire business unit (around 600 users) web content and migrated a lot of processes to one centralized TWiki installation running on a Solaris box and couldn't be happier.
Another option is to utilize and plan for using LiveUpgrade. That allows you to 'clone' your running OS onto other slices, perform upgrades on them, patch them, etc, while the system is running... your only downtime is the time it takes to reboot. If for some reason /usr fails, you can reboot onto your alternate root copy and then do repairs.
They already are. Most of the vital libraries in /usr/lib are softlinks back into /lib.
pkgadd, BTW, also supports quite a few URL constructs (e.g., pkgadd http://blah/blah). In this form, the other end of the pkgadd has to be a package stream, however, so that limits its usefulness with the DVD contents.
It's been a while since I've done the text install, but finer grain control has been there in the past. I'd be surprised if it was removed. That said, using Jumpstart combined with a profile will also get you finer grained control without having to do it manually for each install. Information on network-based installs and the like is available here and here.Will it also sense Future Bible Heroes? Gothic Archies? The 6ths?
Why can't it read the raw ISO files without having to do a loop back mount? Why can't I specify a port for the http method? Why isn't there any really good documentation on how to actually set it up, especially if you're trying to boot it from a non-SuSE or *gasp* a non-Linux box? Telling Joe Admin to run yast2 instserver doesn't do much good if you don't actually have a place to run it from.
I'd love to find a way to make the default console show up in monochrome as well. The color one is s-l-o-w over a serial connection.
I'm not much of a fan of Kickstart, but I'll take it any day of the week over AutoYAST. It has some serious flaws that really need to be taken a look at.
Sure, user education would help here, but there is only so much one can do... especially in a company of 30,000+ users.
While wikis certainly lower the bar for producing web content, there really needs to be some sort of way to prevent users from doing things that they don't particularly realize are (overall) harmful. Or at least much better training tools.
After you get so big, nothing but a real DB seems to really cut it. Even apps like SlimServer start to really slow down (even with the SQLite backend).
One of these days I'll clean up the code, update to icecast 2, etc, and release it out on sourceforge so that we can have yet another mostly dead project out there. :) [Actually, up until I decided to do some upgrades, it hasn't really needed much maintenance since it mostly "just worked".]
Of course, those development releases generally don't see the light of day outside of their local dev group until after the backport/patch has already been completed though. So he's still (likely) wrong in this particular instance. :)
... or import it from Europe which is what I did.
It's greating being able to pop open a laptop in the airport, on the plane, etc, and have a nice relaxing game of whatever. Especially when you are stuck in some hick town with no social scene at all. If I have to take my laptop anyway, I might as well get some use out of it other than doing a presentation or whatever.
[My biggest complaint are the games that require the CD/DVD to be present when they don't actually pull anything off of the media or require it for the audio track that I turned off anyway. Sure, there are lots of tools to get around this, but it is still annoying to have to do those extra steps.]
Don't blame NFS (or Sun) for poor implementations.
But does anyone really want an older version that's likely been untouched for years?
... because they need that material to produce a few hundred more box sets with 'unreleased songs'. Spread out over a few years, the collectors more than make up for any profit loss.
Repeat after me:
Sun does not own all of the code in Solaris.
Sun does not own all of the code in Solaris.
Sun does not own all of the code in Solaris.
Maybe, eventually, it will stick. Maybe, eventually, folks will realize why the CDDL was pretty much the only license Sun could legally use.
The first Sun laptop that I know of was the Voyager. It was a sun4m-class machine.
I think the coverage for the BSDs is great. Really. I think it will help them in the corporate mindset. But, Dan Lyons, the person who has the byline, really should have had someone technical proofread his article. Only three open source BSDs? When did Solaris switch back to using a BSD kernel? That last one is particularly embarrassing given the amount of coverage Sun is getting with the whole opensolaris thing.
Yes, the Acer Ferrari being at least one.
Why on earth would someone want to use a system in 2005 that lacks multiple users (if only for the security aspects) and network file systems? This looks great for an embedded appliance that doesn't need to talk to anything else.
Plus, it is likely a more expensive one for Adaptec (vs. binaries) over the long-haul as they need to make sure that whatever they release for the public's eyes are relatively "clean".
The end result of this could very well be Adaptec throwing something over the fence that is only guaranteed to work with a certain generation of cards with only a certain generation of firmware. Is that really better for their customers than a set of binary drivers?
That seems pretty darn cheap.
Probably not because Solaris itself doesn't officially support usernames or groupnames over 8 characters. This is a historical (read: backward compatibility) limit.
The problem is that each flavor/vendor uses its own brand of automount schema. OS X uses that awful 'mounts' mapping with its equally awful automounter. Solaris has its own brand. Then there is amd. Etc. Until someone RFCs a decent LDAP schema for automounting and everyone follows along, I suspect this is going to remain a dream.
In the meantime, if you work in a heterogeneous environment, expect to do some work (and in some cases, quite a bit) to build shims between flavors.... and thats before you get to things like Kerberized NFS and/or NFSv4.
In most other respects, everything else is fairly standard. RFC2307b gets you almost all the way via LDAP and Kerberos lets you do it all in an SSO'd environment.