The Java Enterprise System _does_ have something to do with Java, doesn't it?
Yes, the Java Enterprise System does indeed have something to do with Java, namely the App Server, but it includes other things, as shown by the quote from the datasheet
The core set of the enterprise network services that the Java Enterprise System delivers are: Network Identity, Web and Application, Portal, Communications and Collaboration, Availability, and Security services.
So, namely the JES (for short) is the collection of server services that used to be called SunONE, and before that was iPlanet and so on. The cool thing is that this is integrating the software stack and simplifying Sun's software offerings.
Now, JDS (Jave Desktop System) also has something to do with Java, namely the JRE. It also has several Java apps integrated into it, as well as a consistent look & feel with GNOME, Evolution, Mozilla, and the Java apps. Otherwise JDS is simply Linux with "some tweaks" as others have stated here on/..
It doesn't surprise me much. I mean honestly most people who were good at science and math went into fields like engineering, computer science, or research. I can't even think of an example where someone with that background would involve themselves in politics.
On a sidenote, my little sister is nearly finished with her MBA, and she hates math, science and computers. There have been times I wanted to give her an Etch-A-Sketch as a laptop...especially when she calls me on my vacation all upset because she caught the latest windows virus. What could I do? Nothing... Why? 1) I'm a UNIX engineer 2) I was driving into the Rockies in Colorado for a nice quiet peaceful weekend in a mountain cabin, and of course she's in Ohio. Anyway to the point... My little sis would go out of her way to make sure she didn't have to take science or math courses in college. She wanted to be a marketing major for her undergraduate degree, but chose public relations instead since it didn't have a requirement for Calc I.
In 2000, I would have agreed with you that most sites would just throw a slew of linux boxes running apache to host the website. At my old job that's what me and a couple of others were proposing--we so wanted to get rid of the boss installed M$ IIS server--for many many reasons.
In 2001, I got a job with Sun. I went to a customer site to monitor an E10k, and I asked them what they were running on it, when they said their website, I was shocked. The usual answer is a ERP system with a database of some sorts. I have heard of clustered E10k's hosting websites, but I haven't heard of F15k's running websites.
So, since an E10k can only scale to 64 UltraSPARC II processors, you're right....as far as I personally know that no one is running a website on a 100 cpu system (which would imply a F15k).
Did you install the qfe patches? How about the snoop patches? I know the initial release of Solaris 8 had some problems, but they have been ironed out. I highly suggest Solaris 8 2/02 release for SPARC. It runs great on every machine I have installed it on.
BTW, there is now a patch that gives Solaris a real/dev/random device. It was backported from Solaris 9. 9 is going to be really nice.
The ethernet card in question is found here. If you notice, you get a 10/100 UTP port as well as an MII port. So it's different than your average pci nic you'd stuff into your x86 box. Granted yes the price tag is higher than the commodity stuff you'd get for your pc, but so is Apple stuff for an Apple. Kinda basic economics, IMHO. *shrug*
'94 I transferred to the University of Toledo, majored in Computer Science and Engineering. Met a guy in my CS class who was deep into unix. Got accounts on SunOS 4.1.3 servers, learned the zen of reading man pages and weaning myself off of DOS/Windoze.
'95 Unix loving friend helps me install RedHat on my home PC (he got sick of hearing about my failed attempts with slackware). Got a job in a unix (solaris) lab with the math department as a monitor.
'96 got a fulltime 2nd shift job to pay for way through school. It was a night operator job. Basically backup the novell box and run printouts and crap like that.
'97 starting playing with HP/UX at said job.
'98 realized I knew more about unix than the current admin. Current Admin left for much better job. I took over said admin's job.
'99 dealt with y2k stress. Installed several linux boxes at job.
'00 got Sun Ultras in the door to handle new e-commerce project.
'01 got job with Sun Microsystems...no longer an admin, but life is much better.:)
Well I'd say since you have a semester left, suffer through it, and get the CS degree. Unfortunatley for myself I gave up on CS far sooner. It also didn't help that I had to stop going fulltime and work fulltime to pay for school. I wound up switching my major into interdisciplinary stuides. I found philosophy and msth courses more fun and stimulating, and a nice diversion from my day job as a sysadmin.
Eventually I'll get a grad degree in CS or Astronomy. I'd imagine the CS one will come first. But overall I enjoy what I do for a living, and it makes it easier to work. If you hate what you do, then doing that every day gets old quick. Since I left my old job, I have found myself with free time. And I've found myself playing with my computers at home again. And I've also found myself learning much more than I was 7 months ago.
Basically I just got fed up with the cirriculm at the university, went my own route. But wound up in the field that I wanted to be in. (My other career option was Astronomy, although I'm not as qualified for it).
Every programmer, sys-admin, developer, designer, de-bugger, support-desk jockey, etc. that I know DESPISES their job and can't wait to get home.
Well I have to disagree with you here. My previous job I was a UNIX sysadmin and a Sybase DBA. I hated being a DBA--mainly 'cause I didn't get SQL very well, and had enough UNIX fires to deal with--the former sysadmin wasn't too terribly great, imho. I worked weekends, late into evenings. I would get called in on my vacations and holidays. Sadly I liked what I did (minus the DBA stuff), but I really disliked some of the people that I had to deal with.
So you better understand my meaning, having totally non-technical people telling me how I should do my job, and my boss not really understanding what I did or listening to my suggestions of how to improve efficiency and reduce downtime.
But I also switched jobs a few months ago, and I really enjoy my new job. It definatley helps that the people are much cooler.:)
But more to the point...throughout all of this I have enjoyed reading UserFriendly.
Re:Little content, little meaning...
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MS DOS: A Eulogy
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Furthermore, I'd imagine everyone who's been working in computers for awhile has watched the Windows GUI break, and then need the command prompt to fix it.
This was true with Windows 3.1. With newer versions of Windows, the standard response is 1) reboot, 2) re-install app, 3) re-install everything. So unfortunatley in that broken OS, there is little need for a command line. Besides re-installing windows seems to be the best fix. Personally I prefer the upgrade pack called Linux, or *BSD...
No offense taken. The first guy I spoke with had led me to believe that the cardbus slots were hosed, and that they had prior faults with the slots, and not the cards. It seemed reasonable, so I went with it. Then the other ship backs were cause they broke the machine after they "fixed it."
"Yeah, I can fix it for you..." guy sez while holding sledgehammer and giving a wild grin.
I know how crappy it is to be the support guy, especially front line. I'd rather not piss on them unless I have to. That and it was my first and only experience with non-unix aware vendors. Man was that a shock to my system. Even some of the worst front line engineers I spoke with at the unix vendors knew more than the bunch I spoke with at Dell. At least most of the less clued in unix front liners knew when a problem was over their head and would pass it up the chain.
At my old job I had a Dell Inspirion 7000. It was a decent laptop. Then one day the ethernet card refused to work after rebooting. It did that both under winblows and linux. Typically in those cases I have found that the hardware is hosed. So began my month of dealing with Dell's "award winning" tech support. Personally whoever gave them that award totally overlooked the unix vendors. I've had far less headache dealing with either HP or Sun for support. HP was a hassle since they refused to believe their hardware was at fault, so you always had to open the call as software, then get the software guy to agree with you, get transferred to the hardware guy, who wanted the part's serial number before sending the field guy out for support. Sun on the other hand, sent the guy with the part without the hassle. Soooo needless to say I was expecting this sort of support out of Dell.
Wow was I mistaken. Each time I called them it was at least a 4 hour session, with vast stretches of time being placed on hold, or sitting in some call queue. Nevermind I have already determined it was the ethernet card that was having trouble. The tech I spoke with insisted on following his script in front of him. "Have you re-installed windows?" He about went nuts when I mentioned the system was a dual boot system. Pretty much his answer was reinstall with windows only and call back. *click* Nice.
Called back, waited in phone queues some more, got another guy who went through same script. This time I didn't mention Linux. He arranged to have the laptop shipped to them to be fixed. But I was to keep all peripherals, HD, ethernet card and so on. Humm, why is the laptop going back and not the broken ethernet? *shrug* Back it went. Two weeks later I got it back. This time the LCD wouldn't work. Swell. Back in the phone queues, and another 4 hours blown. Shipped laptop back again.
Two weeks later, got the laptop back...this time the keyboard didn't fully work, and other wacky problems. 4 more hours on the phone and shipped it back again.
Another two weeks, laptop arrives, finally works again. But original problem still exists. Called Dell again. Waited in phone queue for a few more hours, got a guy, who pretty much was telling me to ship the laptop back to them again. *sigh* I told him that wasn't the problem, it was the bloody ethernet card--ship me a new one. Put me on hold. Came back and said he couldn't do that. Told him I'm sure he can swap the ethernet card. Back on hold. Came back and wanted *my* credit card number to charge me for the card, and then refund *my* credit card when they recieved the old one. Told him that was unacceptiable, as this was *work's* laptop. Back on hold. Came back and said that's all he could do. Asked for his boss. Back on hold. Came back and said sure, we'll send you the card, as long as you ship back the old one. Like I wanted to keep a broken ethernet card....right.
Needless to say, because of their lousy tech support, I will not buy a Dell system for myself, let alone recommend it to anyone. That and I also saw the two other Inspirion 7000's that work bought at the same time as mine have many many more problems than mine ever did. I was lucky in that I got the good one of the batch.
Well to answer your subject, my answer would be "it depends..." What are you running today that you may need the new features of Solaris 9? If you're getting a Sun Fire 15k (Starcat), then running Solaris 9 would be in your interest. Solaris 9 has better support for the 15k, and other features:
(taken from http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/programs/solar is9ea/)
Solaris 9 Early Access features of great interest to our developers:
* Multiple Page Size Support in the kernel for better memory management
* Improved threading library for better scaling and performance
* Linux APIs, commands, and utilties enabling most Linux applications to easily be recompiled and run Solaris 9 Operating Environment
* Linux compatibility mode which allows Linux Intel applications to run unchanged (no recompilation) on Solaris 9, Intel Platform Edition
* New Reconfiguration Coordination Manager API allows applications to react to Dynamic Reconfiguration events
Of course that's not an exhaustive list of what's new in Solaris 9, but it's still in beta, and unlike Microsoft, Sun tends not to preannounce features of their Operating Systems. Also Sun has set a roadmap of future releases of Solaris. Sun doesn't force you to upgrade the version of the OS. I know quite a few who are running 2.6 and some who are still running 2.5.1. Of course quite a few are updating to Solaris 8. Most of the reason people upgrade their OS version is to use new hardware or new app versions that are only supported on a newer release of Solaris.
I don't really understand why Sun didn't just make a "Solaris 7.1, Solaris 7.5, and Solaris 7.6" before going to 8. Maybe it's because I've never been much of a numbers game fan.
Well the main reason Sun chose to drop the 2.x in naming of Solaris was for the PHB's benefit. They look at HP/UX that's at 11i now, and Solaris 2.8 doesn't sound as mature to a PHB. Hence Sun just dropped the preceeding 2. Hence Solaris 8, which still equals SunOS 5.8. There is a good discussion of this in the Solaris Internals Book, chapter 1, I believe. Also there are sub-releases under each main version. ie Solaris 8 10/00, Solaris 8 01/01, Solaris 8 04/01, Solaris 8 07/01. Each of these are still Solaris 8...the differences is the updates of the supporting software or new features, or new hardware support.
Don't get me wrong the HP is server class hardware in that workstation, a better product in every way, but OMFG do you pay for it. The Suns are 'commodity' class hardware but great bang for the buck if you need a mature 64bit platform and O/S.
Yeah, at my old job we had older HP boxes (K-class, D-class, G-class and a 712/60 workstation.) I liked the design of the workstation, but it was *slow*...but I have a feeling that it's problem was only having 32 megs of memory. I still remember the consultants we had were trying to load a web server on that box. They weren't successful...mainly 'cause it didn't have enough memory or disk space. Mainly that fell to whoever's fault that when they ordered it, they didn't config it right. I'd imagine with a decent sized disk and at least 128megs of memory, that workstation would still be in use. But instead of upgrading it, it was replaced with a linux workstation.
Also at my old job I had to do an analysis at the time between Sun and HP's products. And I was hard pressed to get a fair comparision between the two. In order to get fairly equal expanability with same number of processors and memory, I wound up comparing the V-class HP box and a Sun Ultra Enterprise 3500. As we all know pricewise these boxes are in different leagues. (No, the N class wasn't available at the time I did the comparision.)
We eneded up buying a Sun 3500...but not for the reason I was told to do my comparision...we needed something to run Solaris for the web application server that the development team picked out.
I also remember getting a quote from HP for a 4.3gig hot swappable Hard Drive to go into a Model 30 disk array. When the quote came in at $1,200US per disk, I was shocked. I wound up going with a reseller and buying the disk *used* for about $600US. At least with the Sun boxes I could just buy a scsi disk, but the rails on it, and dump it in far cheaper.
...it's not surprising that he should take this as an opportunity to sell Solaris.
It's not like I'm suppressing the fact that, yes I do work for Sun. But honestly, I have always liked Solaris over most other unicies. And when I got the chance to work for Sun, I jumped on it.
Please, let me know when I can compile Linux native apps on Solaris and when Solaris supports some kind of better packaging system (RPM? Apt-get?) and maybe then you'll have a right to bash IBM.
Humm, which Linux native apps? If it's GNU,./configure;make;make install..and it works for 99% of the apps that I have tried. Yes, Sun does have a package management system, closer in functionality to rpm than apt. I'd love it if Solaris had apt-get functionality. But in the meantime I'll deal with pkgadd/pkdrm and patchadd/patchrm.
No I wasn't bashing IBM, I was just saying the comparision between the p690 and the F15k was off. I have respect for IBM, their microdrives, and their huge tape libraries are examples of what I respect them for. No, this list isn't inclusive or complete, it is just a couple of examples.
Re:Don't compare with Solaris... compare with Linu
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IBM Launches p690
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AIX 5L is designed to run Linux apps with a recompile, or AIX apps without. Find me a Linux box that I can stuff 32 dual-core processors into.
Humm, recompile, eh? Yeah, if you're going to recompile, most things that I have run under Linux also work under Solaris...except for some things that expects certain things in the kernel, or so other Linux specific quirk. Yeah, I've compiled tons of GNU apps on a Solaris machine../confiugre;make;make install done.
But if you don't want to recompile and are running on Solaris x86, then you can use lxrun.
Yeah, I'd venture to say there are more Solaris apps than Linux apps. How often do you see commerical support for Linux? Yes, it's increasing, and now when you talk with a commerical vendor, most have at least heard of Linux. Some even have software to sell you. If you're talking GNU or Open Source (i.e. gpl, lgpl, artistic, bsd licenses), then sure there's more...but ya know, typically those apps aren't Linux specific.
This doesn't mean I dislike Linux, or am bashing it. I have used Linux for years, and knowing it got my foot in the door as a sys admin, and helped me figure out how to admin HP/UX and Solaris. Yes, Linux is far more useful today than it was a few years ago, supports more hardware, but internally it hasn't fully stepped into the big leagues...it's getting closer thanks to the larger memory support and journaling filesystems.
So, unless I'm insane, could you please prove me wrong in this?
IBM's comparing their new server against the wrong Sun server. Here's why:
For unmatched UNIX system performance, the pSeries 690 can scale to a 32-way symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) helping to provide the scalability required to drive a UNIX datacenter.
A Sun Fire 15k contains up to 106 processors (72 with max i/o), a Sun Enterprise 10k contains up to 64 processors, and a Sun Fire 6800 contains 24 processors. Honestly this IBM server should be compared with either the 10k or 6800. It just can't scale as high as either the 10k or the 15k.
LPAR support for up to 16 UNIX or Linux partitions
Humm, first generation unix partitioning from IBM, or 5th generation partitioning from Sun (with help from Cray early on). BTW, a 10k can be in 16 partitions. No it doesn't require a domain to contain 4 processors--that's the max. A single board domain can have 1 i/o card, 1 cpu and some memory--typically a gig. The 15k and 6800 are similar, although the cpu/memory cards are typically maxed. It is *very* rare to find a company who would buy these sorts of systems to not max them out.
AIX 5L offers support for systems with up to 32 processors and 256 GB memory.
Wow, Solaris scales to 106 procesors in a single domain, with at least 1/2TB of memory. Besides, I'd bet there are more apps for Solaris than AIX.
*Note all of the quotes are from IBM's web page regarding the p690.
I'm done with windoze entirely. The only place I'm still stuck using it is at a customer site that I work at. Of course I have the option of using my laptop and dialing up the net at 28.8k or suffering with windoze and using their T1 to the net.
But at home, I have built all but two of my systems from scratch. The first one was a complete 486 system that was my first computer that I bought, and the other is a sun ultra 10 that I just picked up.
If I had to pay a "tax" on an OS, I'd rather pay it to anyone other than Micro$oft.
But the point is that the terrorist aren't supposed to know they are on the 'known' list. Otherwise they can just select their operatives by seeing who's NOT on the FBI list.
Humm, you're right...I should have said it should be downloadable to the airlines. Or like the "deadbeat dad's" senario...cd's are shipped to companies in the industry, and each company sends a cd back with any matches. The reason I was thinking downloadable is since this information is possibly more dynamic and with airlines selling tickets everyday, a monthly cd just wouldn't hack it.
I don't imagine this list can be too long, it wouldn't be very hard to set up a database for the airlines to query.
I'd like to see the fbi make the full list available for downloading. Then let the airlines take that list and compare it against their ticketed passengers. Then any matches are spit out and handed over to the feds. That way the government isn't tracking you and at least then your information remains with the company you gave it to. That would be a better form of security than some of these other half-baked ideas. IMHO. Besides in the banking industry this sort of process is already done for "deadbeat dads."
That way you can arrest the known terrorists when they arrive for their ticketed flght. Simple, effective and little to no impact on my civil liberities.
Something in the back of my mind said I should have turned my cable on last night and watched CBC from Windsor. But I'll just suffer and catch UPN out of Detroit. *shrug*
The E10K also has Dynamic Reconfiguration, where you can remove system boards from a running domain, but unless your platform is set up in a certain, specific way, this doesn't work as well as advertised. I've personally never used it.
Well actually the Ex500's also have DR, and of course the newer Ex800's. DR is a great idea, works great in lab environment. Honestly it's cool to see the running kernel jump from one system board to the other. But it's a product that I have never seen in the wild.
Though I wonder if Sun's gotten around to fixing that nasty ecache parity error problem with their processors... Having a domain randomly crash because the parity bit on a processor got flipped is no fun when you're dealing with a large production database. I have a feeling that problem will continue to plague them in the 15K.
Remember the 15k uses UltraSPARC III's rather than the UltraSPARC II's. And the newer UltraSPARC II's have mirrored ecache to take care of that problem. I do believe the UltraSPARC III's also have that same set up. But when the chips are down, I'd rather have the box crash to maintain data intregrity rather than spew garbage (can we say the floating point bug in the Intel Pentium?). But I think you summed it up best by saying "These are workhorse processors, not sports-car style processors."
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The day a Sun Fire 25K runs winblows is the day I quit working for Sun. Especially if I'm told I have to support winblows.
Yes, the Java Enterprise System does indeed have something to do with Java, namely the App Server, but it includes other things, as shown by the quote from the datasheet
So, namely the JES (for short) is the collection of server services that used to be called SunONE, and before that was iPlanet and so on. The cool thing is that this is integrating the software stack and simplifying Sun's software offerings.
Now, JDS (Jave Desktop System) also has something to do with Java, namely the JRE. It also has several Java apps integrated into it, as well as a consistent look & feel with GNOME, Evolution, Mozilla, and the Java apps. Otherwise JDS is simply Linux with "some tweaks" as others have stated here on
As far as the naming goes--blame marketing.
Disclaimer: Yes, I work for Sun.
It doesn't surprise me much. I mean honestly most people who were good at science and math went into fields like engineering, computer science, or research. I can't even think of an example where someone with that background would involve themselves in politics.
On a sidenote, my little sister is nearly finished with her MBA, and she hates math, science and computers. There have been times I wanted to give her an Etch-A-Sketch as a laptop...especially when she calls me on my vacation all upset because she caught the latest windows virus. What could I do? Nothing... Why? 1) I'm a UNIX engineer 2) I was driving into the Rockies in Colorado for a nice quiet peaceful weekend in a mountain cabin, and of course she's in Ohio. Anyway to the point... My little sis would go out of her way to make sure she didn't have to take science or math courses in college. She wanted to be a marketing major for her undergraduate degree, but chose public relations instead since it didn't have a requirement for Calc I.
In 2000, I would have agreed with you that most sites would just throw a slew of linux boxes running apache to host the website. At my old job that's what me and a couple of others were proposing--we so wanted to get rid of the boss installed M$ IIS server--for many many reasons.
In 2001, I got a job with Sun. I went to a customer site to monitor an E10k, and I asked them what they were running on it, when they said their website, I was shocked. The usual answer is a ERP system with a database of some sorts. I have heard of clustered E10k's hosting websites, but I haven't heard of F15k's running websites.
So, since an E10k can only scale to 64 UltraSPARC II processors, you're right....as far as I personally know that no one is running a website on a 100 cpu system (which would imply a F15k).
Did you install the qfe patches? How about the snoop patches? I know the initial release of Solaris 8 had some problems, but they have been ironed out. I highly suggest Solaris 8 2/02 release for SPARC. It runs great on every machine I have installed it on.
/dev/random device. It was backported from Solaris 9. 9 is going to be really nice.
BTW, there is now a patch that gives Solaris a real
*Disclaimer, yes I work for Sun*
Ummmm...Kung Pow Chicken.... Now ya went and made me hungry...
Each Sun system has at least one network port.
The ethernet card in question is found here. If you notice, you get a 10/100 UTP port as well as an MII port. So it's different than your average pci nic you'd stuff into your x86 box. Granted yes the price tag is higher than the commodity stuff you'd get for your pc, but so is Apple stuff for an Apple. Kinda basic economics, IMHO. *shrug*
--Disclaimer, yes I work for Sun--
The quick story: I lucked into it
:)
The long story:
'94 I transferred to the University of Toledo, majored in Computer Science and Engineering. Met a guy in my CS class who was deep into unix. Got accounts on SunOS 4.1.3 servers, learned the zen of reading man pages and weaning myself off of DOS/Windoze.
'95 Unix loving friend helps me install RedHat on my home PC (he got sick of hearing about my failed attempts with slackware). Got a job in a unix (solaris) lab with the math department as a monitor.
'96 got a fulltime 2nd shift job to pay for way through school. It was a night operator job. Basically backup the novell box and run printouts and crap like that.
'97 starting playing with HP/UX at said job.
'98 realized I knew more about unix than the current admin. Current Admin left for much better job. I took over said admin's job.
'99 dealt with y2k stress. Installed several linux boxes at job.
'00 got Sun Ultras in the door to handle new e-commerce project.
'01 got job with Sun Microsystems...no longer an admin, but life is much better.
Well I'd say since you have a semester left, suffer through it, and get the CS degree. Unfortunatley for myself I gave up on CS far sooner. It also didn't help that I had to stop going fulltime and work fulltime to pay for school. I wound up switching my major into interdisciplinary stuides. I found philosophy and msth courses more fun and stimulating, and a nice diversion from my day job as a sysadmin.
Eventually I'll get a grad degree in CS or Astronomy. I'd imagine the CS one will come first. But overall I enjoy what I do for a living, and it makes it easier to work. If you hate what you do, then doing that every day gets old quick. Since I left my old job, I have found myself with free time. And I've found myself playing with my computers at home again. And I've also found myself learning much more than I was 7 months ago.
Basically I just got fed up with the cirriculm at the university, went my own route. But wound up in the field that I wanted to be in. (My other career option was Astronomy, although I'm not as qualified for it).
Every programmer, sys-admin, developer, designer, de-bugger, support-desk jockey, etc. that I know DESPISES their job and can't wait to get home.
:)
Well I have to disagree with you here. My previous job I was a UNIX sysadmin and a Sybase DBA. I hated being a DBA--mainly 'cause I didn't get SQL very well, and had enough UNIX fires to deal with--the former sysadmin wasn't too terribly great, imho. I worked weekends, late into evenings. I would get called in on my vacations and holidays. Sadly I liked what I did (minus the DBA stuff), but I really disliked some of the people that I had to deal with.
So you better understand my meaning, having totally non-technical people telling me how I should do my job, and my boss not really understanding what I did or listening to my suggestions of how to improve efficiency and reduce downtime.
But I also switched jobs a few months ago, and I really enjoy my new job. It definatley helps that the people are much cooler.
But more to the point...throughout all of this I have enjoyed reading UserFriendly.
Furthermore, I'd imagine everyone who's been working in computers for awhile has watched the Windows GUI break, and then need the command prompt to fix it.
This was true with Windows 3.1. With newer versions of Windows, the standard response is 1) reboot, 2) re-install app, 3) re-install everything. So unfortunatley in that broken OS, there is little need for a command line. Besides re-installing windows seems to be the best fix. Personally I prefer the upgrade pack called Linux, or *BSD...
No offense taken. The first guy I spoke with had led me to believe that the cardbus slots were hosed, and that they had prior faults with the slots, and not the cards. It seemed reasonable, so I went with it. Then the other ship backs were cause they broke the machine after they "fixed it."
"Yeah, I can fix it for you..." guy sez while holding sledgehammer and giving a wild grin.
I know how crappy it is to be the support guy, especially front line. I'd rather not piss on them unless I have to. That and it was my first and only experience with non-unix aware vendors. Man was that a shock to my system. Even some of the worst front line engineers I spoke with at the unix vendors knew more than the bunch I spoke with at Dell. At least most of the less clued in unix front liners knew when a problem was over their head and would pass it up the chain.
At my old job I had a Dell Inspirion 7000. It was a decent laptop. Then one day the ethernet card refused to work after rebooting. It did that both under winblows and linux. Typically in those cases I have found that the hardware is hosed. So began my month of dealing with Dell's "award winning" tech support. Personally whoever gave them that award totally overlooked the unix vendors. I've had far less headache dealing with either HP or Sun for support. HP was a hassle since they refused to believe their hardware was at fault, so you always had to open the call as software, then get the software guy to agree with you, get transferred to the hardware guy, who wanted the part's serial number before sending the field guy out for support. Sun on the other hand, sent the guy with the part without the hassle. Soooo needless to say I was expecting this sort of support out of Dell.
Wow was I mistaken. Each time I called them it was at least a 4 hour session, with vast stretches of time being placed on hold, or sitting in some call queue. Nevermind I have already determined it was the ethernet card that was having trouble. The tech I spoke with insisted on following his script in front of him. "Have you re-installed windows?" He about went nuts when I mentioned the system was a dual boot system. Pretty much his answer was reinstall with windows only and call back. *click* Nice.
Called back, waited in phone queues some more, got another guy who went through same script. This time I didn't mention Linux. He arranged to have the laptop shipped to them to be fixed. But I was to keep all peripherals, HD, ethernet card and so on. Humm, why is the laptop going back and not the broken ethernet? *shrug* Back it went. Two weeks later I got it back. This time the LCD wouldn't work. Swell. Back in the phone queues, and another 4 hours blown. Shipped laptop back again.
Two weeks later, got the laptop back...this time the keyboard didn't fully work, and other wacky problems. 4 more hours on the phone and shipped it back again.
Another two weeks, laptop arrives, finally works again. But original problem still exists. Called Dell again. Waited in phone queue for a few more hours, got a guy, who pretty much was telling me to ship the laptop back to them again. *sigh* I told him that wasn't the problem, it was the bloody ethernet card--ship me a new one. Put me on hold. Came back and said he couldn't do that. Told him I'm sure he can swap the ethernet card. Back on hold. Came back and wanted *my* credit card number to charge me for the card, and then refund *my* credit card when they recieved the old one. Told him that was unacceptiable, as this was *work's* laptop. Back on hold. Came back and said that's all he could do. Asked for his boss. Back on hold. Came back and said sure, we'll send you the card, as long as you ship back the old one. Like I wanted to keep a broken ethernet card....right.
Needless to say, because of their lousy tech support, I will not buy a Dell system for myself, let alone recommend it to anyone. That and I also saw the two other Inspirion 7000's that work bought at the same time as mine have many many more problems than mine ever did. I was lucky in that I got the good one of the batch.
(taken from http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/programs/sola
Of course that's not an exhaustive list of what's new in Solaris 9, but it's still in beta, and unlike Microsoft, Sun tends not to preannounce features of their Operating Systems. Also Sun has set a roadmap of future releases of Solaris. Sun doesn't force you to upgrade the version of the OS. I know quite a few who are running 2.6 and some who are still running 2.5.1. Of course quite a few are updating to Solaris 8. Most of the reason people upgrade their OS version is to use new hardware or new app versions that are only supported on a newer release of Solaris.
I don't really understand why Sun didn't just make a "Solaris 7.1, Solaris 7.5, and Solaris 7.6" before going to 8. Maybe it's because I've never been much of a numbers game fan.
Well the main reason Sun chose to drop the 2.x in naming of Solaris was for the PHB's benefit. They look at HP/UX that's at 11i now, and Solaris 2.8 doesn't sound as mature to a PHB. Hence Sun just dropped the preceeding 2. Hence Solaris 8, which still equals SunOS 5.8. There is a good discussion of this in the Solaris Internals Book, chapter 1, I believe. Also there are sub-releases under each main version. ie Solaris 8 10/00, Solaris 8 01/01, Solaris 8 04/01, Solaris 8 07/01. Each of these are still Solaris 8...the differences is the updates of the supporting software or new features, or new hardware support.
Don't get me wrong the HP is server class hardware in that workstation, a better product in every way, but OMFG do you pay for it. The Suns are 'commodity' class hardware but great bang for the buck if you need a mature 64bit platform and O/S.
Yeah, at my old job we had older HP boxes (K-class, D-class, G-class and a 712/60 workstation.) I liked the design of the workstation, but it was *slow*...but I have a feeling that it's problem was only having 32 megs of memory. I still remember the consultants we had were trying to load a web server on that box. They weren't successful...mainly 'cause it didn't have enough memory or disk space. Mainly that fell to whoever's fault that when they ordered it, they didn't config it right. I'd imagine with a decent sized disk and at least 128megs of memory, that workstation would still be in use. But instead of upgrading it, it was replaced with a linux workstation.
Also at my old job I had to do an analysis at the time between Sun and HP's products. And I was hard pressed to get a fair comparision between the two. In order to get fairly equal expanability with same number of processors and memory, I wound up comparing the V-class HP box and a Sun Ultra Enterprise 3500. As we all know pricewise these boxes are in different leagues. (No, the N class wasn't available at the time I did the comparision.)
We eneded up buying a Sun 3500...but not for the reason I was told to do my comparision...we needed something to run Solaris for the web application server that the development team picked out.
I also remember getting a quote from HP for a 4.3gig hot swappable Hard Drive to go into a Model 30 disk array. When the quote came in at $1,200US per disk, I was shocked. I wound up going with a reseller and buying the disk *used* for about $600US. At least with the Sun boxes I could just buy a scsi disk, but the rails on it, and dump it in far cheaper.
...it's not surprising that he should take this as an opportunity to sell Solaris.
./configure;make;make install..and it works for 99% of the apps that I have tried. Yes, Sun does have a package management system, closer in functionality to rpm than apt. I'd love it if Solaris had apt-get functionality. But in the meantime I'll deal with pkgadd/pkdrm and patchadd/patchrm.
It's not like I'm suppressing the fact that, yes I do work for Sun. But honestly, I have always liked Solaris over most other unicies. And when I got the chance to work for Sun, I jumped on it.
Please, let me know when I can compile Linux native apps on Solaris and when Solaris supports some kind of better packaging system (RPM? Apt-get?) and maybe then you'll have a right to bash IBM.
Humm, which Linux native apps? If it's GNU,
No I wasn't bashing IBM, I was just saying the comparision between the p690 and the F15k was off. I have respect for IBM, their microdrives, and their huge tape libraries are examples of what I respect them for. No, this list isn't inclusive or complete, it is just a couple of examples.
AIX 5L is designed to run Linux apps with a recompile, or AIX apps without. Find me a Linux box that I can stuff 32 dual-core processors into.
./confiugre;make;make install done.
Humm, recompile, eh? Yeah, if you're going to recompile, most things that I have run under Linux also work under Solaris...except for some things that expects certain things in the kernel, or so other Linux specific quirk. Yeah, I've compiled tons of GNU apps on a Solaris machine.
But if you don't want to recompile and are running on Solaris x86, then you can use lxrun.
Yeah, I'd venture to say there are more Solaris apps than Linux apps. How often do you see commerical support for Linux? Yes, it's increasing, and now when you talk with a commerical vendor, most have at least heard of Linux. Some even have software to sell you. If you're talking GNU or Open Source (i.e. gpl, lgpl, artistic, bsd licenses), then sure there's more...but ya know, typically those apps aren't Linux specific.
This doesn't mean I dislike Linux, or am bashing it. I have used Linux for years, and knowing it got my foot in the door as a sys admin, and helped me figure out how to admin HP/UX and Solaris. Yes, Linux is far more useful today than it was a few years ago, supports more hardware, but internally it hasn't fully stepped into the big leagues...it's getting closer thanks to the larger memory support and journaling filesystems.
So, unless I'm insane, could you please prove me wrong in this?
IBM's comparing their new server against the wrong Sun server. Here's why:
For unmatched UNIX system performance, the pSeries 690 can scale to a 32-way symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) helping to provide the scalability required to drive a UNIX datacenter.
A Sun Fire 15k contains up to 106 processors (72 with max i/o), a Sun Enterprise 10k contains up to 64 processors, and a Sun Fire 6800 contains 24 processors. Honestly this IBM server should be compared with either the 10k or 6800. It just can't scale as high as either the 10k or the 15k.
LPAR support for up to 16 UNIX or Linux partitions
Humm, first generation unix partitioning from IBM, or 5th generation partitioning from Sun (with help from Cray early on). BTW, a 10k can be in 16 partitions. No it doesn't require a domain to contain 4 processors--that's the max. A single board domain can have 1 i/o card, 1 cpu and some memory--typically a gig. The 15k and 6800 are similar, although the cpu/memory cards are typically maxed. It is *very* rare to find a company who would buy these sorts of systems to not max them out.
AIX 5L offers support for systems with up to 32 processors and 256 GB memory.
Wow, Solaris scales to 106 procesors in a single domain, with at least 1/2TB of memory. Besides, I'd bet there are more apps for Solaris than AIX.
*Note all of the quotes are from IBM's web page regarding the p690.
I'm done with windoze entirely. The only place I'm still stuck using it is at a customer site that I work at. Of course I have the option of using my laptop and dialing up the net at 28.8k or suffering with windoze and using their T1 to the net.
But at home, I have built all but two of my systems from scratch. The first one was a complete 486 system that was my first computer that I bought, and the other is a sun ultra 10 that I just picked up.
If I had to pay a "tax" on an OS, I'd rather pay it to anyone other than Micro$oft.
But the point is that the terrorist aren't supposed to know they are on the 'known' list. Otherwise they can just select their operatives by seeing who's NOT on the FBI list.
Humm, you're right...I should have said it should be downloadable to the airlines. Or like the "deadbeat dad's" senario...cd's are shipped to companies in the industry, and each company sends a cd back with any matches. The reason I was thinking downloadable is since this information is possibly more dynamic and with airlines selling tickets everyday, a monthly cd just wouldn't hack it.
I don't imagine this list can be too long, it wouldn't be very hard to set up a database for the airlines to query.
I'd like to see the fbi make the full list available for downloading. Then let the airlines take that list and compare it against their ticketed passengers. Then any matches are spit out and handed over to the feds. That way the government isn't tracking you and at least then your information remains with the company you gave it to. That would be a better form of security than some of these other half-baked ideas. IMHO. Besides in the banking industry this sort of process is already done for "deadbeat dads."
That way you can arrest the known terrorists when they arrive for their ticketed flght. Simple, effective and little to no impact on my civil liberities.
Heh, and then once MSGP is implemented, people could set their routers to drop all packets from MSGP sites, and eliminate the M$/IIS viruses/worms.
Something in the back of my mind said I should have turned my cable on last night and watched CBC from Windsor. But I'll just suffer and catch UPN out of Detroit. *shrug*
The E10K also has Dynamic Reconfiguration, where you can remove system boards from a running domain, but unless your platform is set up in a certain, specific way, this doesn't work as well as advertised. I've personally never used it.
Well actually the Ex500's also have DR, and of course the newer Ex800's. DR is a great idea, works great in lab environment. Honestly it's cool to see the running kernel jump from one system board to the other. But it's a product that I have never seen in the wild.
Though I wonder if Sun's gotten around to fixing that nasty ecache parity error problem with their processors... Having a domain randomly crash because the parity bit on a processor got flipped is no fun when you're dealing with a large production database. I have a feeling that problem will continue to plague them in the 15K.
Remember the 15k uses UltraSPARC III's rather than the UltraSPARC II's. And the newer UltraSPARC II's have mirrored ecache to take care of that problem. I do believe the UltraSPARC III's also have that same set up. But when the chips are down, I'd rather have the box crash to maintain data intregrity rather than spew garbage (can we say the floating point bug in the Intel Pentium?). But I think you summed it up best by saying "These are workhorse processors, not sports-car style processors."
Far cheaper than the time spent waiting for the Sun tech who comes, and then bends the fucking pins on a CPU trying to install it.
Humm, on all UltraSPARC's that I've seen it's either a slot or pressure fit contacts, hence no pins to bend.