According to the specs each processor board holds 4 processors and 32 gigs of memory.
Now, if the starcat treats domains (partitions) the same as the E10k (I haven't been to training yet on it), then each domain at minimum will consist of 4 processors and 32 gigs of ram, ie 1 processor board. Basicaly these doamins are treated as seperate boxes as far as Solaris is concerned. You configure a domain to say contain 2 system boards, and then when you load Solaris, it then sees 8 processors and 64 gigs of memory. This way you can allocate resources as the need fits. But this means it doesn't look like the virtual processor that mainframes present.
The starcat may deal with processors above 72 in a different way, but I honestly don't know at this time how it deals with them.
You've got to take your return on investment into account. Which would you rather have, an entire row in the datacenter filled with NT servers, or entire row filled with other *NIX boxes. Or just have a few of these in your datacenter and the rest filled with storage? If you look at it, having one of these and a wad of storage makes sense. Especially if you're running a worldwide corporation and maintaining their SAP and Oracle on the box.
Before I started working for Sun I drooled over the E10k, but thought I'd never see more than one in a computer room. How wrong I've been. I've since walked into datacenters and seen rows of 10k's all humming along. And I'd imagine I'll see the same thing with the 15k's in a few years.
I've been submitting this story since 10:30 (Eastern Time) this morning when information became available from sun.com about the starcat. Three submissions and all three rejected, and then after my third rejection, this finally gets posted.
</rant>
Yeah, it bothers me that lawmakers and policymakers are going bonkers with "security measures." I'm honestly questioning the motivations of these measures. I mean, the "heightened security" that we've had at the airports since the WTC bombing where at the airports asked those three stupid questions. Honestly who in their right mind would say yes? Honest citizens won't simply because it's not true. Criminals with no iq whatsoever would say yes, but if they are wanting to bring a bomb on board an aircraft, you simply wouldn't say yes to the questions.
It seems to me in this hysteria people are looking for a good scapegoat, wheter it be flight training schools, MS's Flight Simulator, contruction at Logan Airport, some middle eastern terrorist (that the US supported at one time), strong encryption, Quake, or whatever. Unfortunatley many people here in the US will say "There needs to be a law for <blank>" and then go back to downing a six pack and watching TV.
Re:Transmits "other information" as well...
on
Remote Breathalyzer
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· Score: 2
I can agree with that. I really hate driving anywhere in Ohio. You have people going slow because of all of the cops and construction zones. Hell I remember I came back from having spent july 4th in jersey, and I had passed 21 cops on my way back to Toledo. Bleh. And it seems if you have an out of state license plate you're more apt to get stopped.
I like driving in MA, CO and MI much better than anywhere in Ohio.
Re:Transmits "other information" as well...
on
Remote Breathalyzer
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· Score: 2
What's to stop them from transmitting your speed and license plate number as well? Automated speeding ticket robots anyone?
At this rate, pretty much nothing. Hell here in little ole Toledo, Ohio, they have cameras at several intersections to dole out tickets for running red lights. What's a few more bucks to install recievers at these same intersections to record and automate tickets for speeding or having "too much" ethanol vapors floating around your car. Before long they'll fine more and clever ways of fattening the localities's cash box from all of the fines.
I wouldn't mind seeing a game-like UI for stuff like Office and crap like that. I would turn the option on for most users. Of course myself, I'd rather have everything there, so it exists when I need it.
Of course I can see people doing stuff along the lines of Final Fantasy.. Click there, open this pop-up box, type that, twist this and belch and volia you have the ultimate resume wizzard. But you can only get this after 90 hours of churing out presentations, databases (wannabe), spreadsheets and documents. I can almost see the spam that would create in an office environment.
I guess what I'm getting at, there are users that know enough to use some of the advanced features, but don't need them for everything. How can you enable these features without running a typical M$ gauntlet. (i.e. trying to update IE2.0 on a fresh NT install, yet the new version of IE requires a new service pack, but you can't get the new service pack 'cause the page to download it won't open in IE2.0)
I'm just waiting for them to market their parts by some generic part number. Say like how Sun tracks their part numbers... Take a 501-5838 for example...that's an 400MHz UltraSPARC II processor with 8 megs of cache.
It will be about as funny as people comparing their letters and numbers of their cars with each other. My I300 is better than your 328i. Whatever...
I'm not sure what the solution would be either. I miss having my own desk with a mountain dew stash, or something like that. One of the few things I miss about my old job is not having the window view of the city and the outside world. I miss being able to just zone out and stare at the world passing me by. I love my current job quite a bit more, but being a "free spirit" can take it's toll.
I could apply and make my home my office. I always wanted a job like that...but later in life. Like when I have kids and stuff, and then I can stay home and spend time with them. But now, I still need a level of human interaction.
How much of 'big-iron management' can you learn on an Intel box, without the right hardware?
Personally I was say near to none. There is no way that I'm aware of to sim an Enterprise 10000 (E10k), how it interacts with the SSP (System Service Processor), post and booting of the domains, DR and AP (or MPxIO). These are things that you really only need to learn if you have an E10k laying around. Granted the single box multiple domains are pretty much supported in the new SunFire line and of course the E10k. Yes, this "big-iron management" can't be had in Solaris x86, or for that matter any other x86 OS. The main point is that you can learn how Solaris deals with patches and so on without having to have a SPARC at home to play with. For example I'd love to try IRIX or AIX, but I won't unless I get my hands on an SGI or IBM machine to play with them, unlike with Solaris...I just need to have a machine that fits the Hardware Compatiability List.
Hardware support is still better for Linux, I think (wasn't this the point, that now Solaris users can use all graphic cards supported by XFree86? This mean they couldn't). And original poster point was "I'm using Solaris on Laptop because it would look bad to use Windows".
Yes, this was precisely my original point. XFree86 has more PC hardware support than most other Xservers out there, and if Sun's X server can use the drivers, all the better for those people.
You mean, using PC hardware and still paying big bucks for each small piece of software? (like compilers, debuggers, development environnments, whatever).
To me, it looks like getting the worst of both worlds.
There are some companies that "free software" is specifically banned from use. I remember interviewing at one company for a UNIX admin job and they told me, "We don't use any of that free stuff here!" Needless to say with my convictions towards gnu utilities and my personal support of Open Source I couldn't accept a position there. Yes, I agree that not having access to gnu stuff would be a downfall and personally a hinderance to getting a lot of stuff accomplished. But there are compiled binaries of most gnu utilities available on sunfreeware.com, so if you wanted access to that stuff, you could.
You have heard of Linus and FreeBSD, I assume. What can you run on a Solaris laptop that cannot be run on a Linux laptop? (aside from SUN proprietary software, of course ).
Yes, of course I have. In fact I run Debian at home for everything (minus the OpenBSD firewall I'm building). My only copy of Windows that I have is 3.1, and it lives on my old 486. The utilities and tools that I need under Solaris x86 are Sun internal applications. And besides most of the stuff that Linux would offer me I can compile under Solaris. I'm not saying this to start a UNIX holy war, I'm just stating my reality.
A good reason. But only for people deeply involved in Solaris. Solaris is still a Unix, and anyone comfortable with Unix should not have big problems with 90% of Solaris, including many system administration tasks. I personally was able to tackle some non-complex admin task (setting DNS, starting custom programs as daemons, installing Apache, GNU compiler, SUN C++ compiler, SUN firewall), supported only by my previous Linux experience.
Yeah, having knowledge of Linux is a great start. In fact running Linux for a few years helped me get my foot in the door as a UNIX admin. I started out with HP/UX then picked up Solaris (even though I cut my teeth in UNIX under Solaris and SUNOS as a user). The thing that I've noticed most is that each flavor of *nix has it's own way of dealing with things. Things that a user might not notice or care about. If you are a person who wants somethig to play with and learn for the sake of learning it, then it works. If you want to learn it for the certificaiton exam, then it works. If you want to set up an environment where the users are greeted with the exact same experience, then it works. If you want it to do the same stuff as Linux, why bother?
I yearn for a desk (or even a cube!) where I could actually feel at home, and not like some sort of transient drifting soul through the sea of employment.
Yeah, that's the one thing I dislke about my "flexible field office (FFO)." When I'm actually there I really don't have a place to call my own. But in a way that's prefectly fine, considering I'm hardly ever in the office, and typially at a customer site. At my main customer site I have my own desk, yeah, it's in a tiny cube, but I honestly don't mind considering I don't have management breathing down my back, I can deal with it.. And if I ever need a breather, I disappear into the server room...
But if I had to deal with the FFO on a daily basis, it would get old real quick.
I'm sure from some of the postings that I've read thus far for this article, is that people wonder why Sun bothers with Solaris x86.
Well from my experience there seems to be a few answers....
1) Some large customers want to run Solaris on cheaper hardware (ie PC's), but want the power of Solaris and leverage their other Sun investments.
2) Works great for Sun Field Employees who are given laptops. I'm one of those. I despise the idea of trying to work at a customer site and having my hands tied by Windows. Yeah, I'm one of the lucky field guys who happens to have an older (supported video) laptop, which can run Solaris x86. Then I can download applications and tools to my laptop and use them at a customer site. These tools and apps just frankly don't exist for Linux.
Besides, when I walk into a customer site, I'm representing Sun, and I open a laptop running windows? What kind of message does that send? I'd prefer to send a message like this: "Look, I like Solaris enough that I run it on my laptop."
3) Students or people who want to learn Solaris need something to tinker with. Solaris x86 is a cheap way to tinker around. Personally I'm happy because then I can finally run Solaris on my home desktop that runs perfectly happy under Linux, but didn't have a Solaris supported video card. (Of course I'll be getting my hands on a used SPARC, so it's a moot point anyway.)
106542-12 Solaris 7 x86 kernel patch
102534-06 Solaris 2.4 syslog patch
104234-04 Solaris 2.5 routed patch
107555-10 Solaris 7 ldap patch
102432-02 Obsolete Solaris 2.4 Sparc Storage Array patch
103423-08 Invalid patch id....
It would have been immensly funny if the patch id's were all for Solaris 8.... IMHO.
ahh the financial industry...
on
NYSE Goes To Linux
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I used to work at a small mutual fund company where the network admin got to deal with SIAC for a project. It seemed as if they were a big mainframe shop and the network admin ended up creating a translation dictionary between industry terms and SIAC terms. Let's say (not accurate for obvious NDA reasons), they would say something like street and ths would mean to us ethernet cable.
It was fun working with them. Once we had that translation dictionary sorted out we fully understood what they were telling us.
But more to my main point, is that I'm happy to hear they're going to use Linux, but most financial institutions would run linux anyway. Mainly due to admins with tiny budgets. Like I was given 6 grand to put up a development database server. No way I could afford licenses of Sybase for a Sun box that would cost me that much (even though I would have preferred Solaris), I wound up getting a dual processor VA Linux Systems box and then downloaded Sybase Adaptive Server for Linux (license is free for development use). So I got a pretty nice performance development database box and didn't go over budget.
Needless to say when I left working at the mutual fund company they had more linux systems than HP 9000's or Sun Ultra Enterprise's put together. Granted I met with a ton of resistance to put the first linux box into place, but then management got used to being able to do stuff on the cheap, so more low budget projects kept creeping up, which meant more linux boxes to do the work.
Quick boot time for embedded devices is a nice thing. The last thing you want is to have your microwave take 15 minutes to boot.
Of course on stuff that matters, boot time is quite longer. Let's take for example a Sun Enterprise 10000, it takes at minimum of 20 minutes and up to a few hours just to run POST. This still doesn't include time to boot the operating system. But once that system is up and running, it stays there until either something bad happens or the admin shuts it down.
For obvious reasons you wouldn't install this BIOS in your home PC or linux server, where checking memory, detecting SCSI and drives and so on are pretty much necessary.
Is 2% (or even 8%) really that significant? It may seem huge, but it really depends on the survey size and how the questions are asked. Does anyone know more about how these surveys are done, their margins of error on average, etc?
I agree with you on this. The margins of error could totally muck with the results. Let's say there was a 15% margin of error, then all conclusions drawn that AOL is less trusted than Microsoft is totally a moot point. Also if they surveyed 10 people, or some small sample, that also isn't indiciative of the general populace.
Also jumping on the "let's hate AOL" bandwagon isn't necessarily a bad thing. Personally I feel they are too big and involved in too much for my personal level of trust. But I'd have to rank it this way:
on-line brokerages
....
AOL (second to bottom)
Microsoft (bottom)
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
Have you ever tried to order a laptop with linux installed? You had to have a certain config...you couldn't add a larger hard drive or add any other option to it. And if you just got one of their other laptops and installed linux on it, and *if* you had a problem with the laptop (even a dual boot system) and called their tech support for an obvious hardware problem, they claimed the problem was because Linux was installed. Basically they wouldn't talk to you until you only had windows on it.
It doesn't surprise me one bit that they had low demand for their linux pre-installed systems. Personally I feel they did it to be a part of the linux bandwagon, never really wanting to have much part of it.
As far as building applications for the Ultra Enterprise 10000, I don't believe you need to do much special, other than ensuring your program is multi-thread safe, or at least multi-processor safe (safe from deadlocks, and so on...) You can check http://docs.sun.com/ for information.
To answer your question about the kernel. From what I've read thus far, there is a single kernel running on the domain, and since the kernel itself is multi-threaded, it can run on all of the processors in the domain. There is a much better description in the book, and I can't serve it justice here. (That and I don't have it with me at the moment.)
While at my former employer I got to interview people for a jr. sysadmin (under myself) and also for a night operator.
I was handed a big pile of resume's by HR. I then sifted through those looking for glimmers of intelligence. I of course had to throw out resume's from people claiming knowledge of operating a microwave oven to a girl wanting an IT job, yet putting her measurements on there.
Finally after a couple hours of sifting, I had already narrowed the pool down to about 4 people worth interviewing. Two additional people were added by my boss...mainly because they were getting MBA's. One of the MBA students couldn't describe to me typical top level directories of a unix file system. (ie/,/usr,/var,/tmp). *sigh* Nevermind this guy had a salary demand that was higher than I was making--umm yeah...
My typical questions are as follows:
What technology do you find interesting?
Why do you want to be a sysadmin?
What are your experiences with Unix?
What unicies have you used? Solaris, HP/UX, OSF/1, OpenBSD, Linux?
Describe something that you have done.
How many users were on your system?
Was your system ever hacked?
What are some typical top level directories?
Have you ever patched your system?
If so, how often?
If not, why?
What is your favorite OS and why?
What are your outside interests?
and my personal favorite...yanking a hot swappable hard drive out of a disk array (a hot spare--I had two of them in that array), and watch their expression. If they looked like they just soiled themselves, that was the end of it. If they were like "cool!", then I knew they actually were somewhat interested in technology and would be willing to learn.
Yeah, I'd have to admit most of my questions are pretty basic and almost have no substance. But it was amazing how few people actually managed to make it through just those. Most of the people were clueless and lost with those questions. *sigh*
Wow, sounds like the same people I interviewed at my old job. One of the first things I'd do is check the dummy lights, then the link status (up/down wtih ifconfig). Granted with some of the people who are looking for IT jobs are totally clueless, yet want tons of cash. *sigh*
I don't see telco's ever offering this service. Look how long they've drug their feet with DSL and the like. Hell ISDN has been out since the mid 80's, and telco's still can't seem to get it installed right. (At least Ameritech can't) DSL? Hell my ex back in 97 was beta testing ADSL from Ameritech in Ann Arbor, and yet years later, Ameritech has yet to fully roll it out. Honestly, how hard is it to support? Just add a few boards into the telco switch and volia, you have support.
If this was something that was available and at a reasonable price, it's something that I can see many many people picking up. I'd of course be in line for that much bandwidth. (Voice over IP comes to mind). But knowing how slow and lethargic telcos are, it will be at least 2010 before you start seeing anyone in the US with this service and much much longer before it's available nationwide as well as globally.
</rant>
--
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
Slashdot Mirror
That name isn't mentioned on Sun's page - or does their search engine show such a product?
Pretty simple, StarCat was it's codename in development. Just like Serengti was for the E3800, E48x0 and E6800.
According to the specs each processor board holds 4 processors and 32 gigs of memory.
Now, if the starcat treats domains (partitions) the same as the E10k (I haven't been to training yet on it), then each domain at minimum will consist of 4 processors and 32 gigs of ram, ie 1 processor board. Basicaly these doamins are treated as seperate boxes as far as Solaris is concerned. You configure a domain to say contain 2 system boards, and then when you load Solaris, it then sees 8 processors and 64 gigs of memory. This way you can allocate resources as the need fits. But this means it doesn't look like the virtual processor that mainframes present.
The starcat may deal with processors above 72 in a different way, but I honestly don't know at this time how it deals with them.
Hope this helps answer your question.
You've got to take your return on investment into account. Which would you rather have, an entire row in the datacenter filled with NT servers, or entire row filled with other *NIX boxes. Or just have a few of these in your datacenter and the rest filled with storage? If you look at it, having one of these and a wad of storage makes sense. Especially if you're running a worldwide corporation and maintaining their SAP and Oracle on the box.
Before I started working for Sun I drooled over the E10k, but thought I'd never see more than one in a computer room. How wrong I've been. I've since walked into datacenters and seen rows of 10k's all humming along. And I'd imagine I'll see the same thing with the 15k's in a few years.
I've been submitting this story since 10:30 (Eastern Time) this morning when information became available from sun.com about the starcat. Three submissions and all three rejected, and then after my third rejection, this finally gets posted.
</rant>
Yeah, it bothers me that lawmakers and policymakers are going bonkers with "security measures." I'm honestly questioning the motivations of these measures. I mean, the "heightened security" that we've had at the airports since the WTC bombing where at the airports asked those three stupid questions. Honestly who in their right mind would say yes? Honest citizens won't simply because it's not true. Criminals with no iq whatsoever would say yes, but if they are wanting to bring a bomb on board an aircraft, you simply wouldn't say yes to the questions.
It seems to me in this hysteria people are looking for a good scapegoat, wheter it be flight training schools, MS's Flight Simulator, contruction at Logan Airport, some middle eastern terrorist (that the US supported at one time), strong encryption, Quake, or whatever. Unfortunatley many people here in the US will say "There needs to be a law for <blank>" and then go back to downing a six pack and watching TV.
I can agree with that. I really hate driving anywhere in Ohio. You have people going slow because of all of the cops and construction zones. Hell I remember I came back from having spent july 4th in jersey, and I had passed 21 cops on my way back to Toledo. Bleh. And it seems if you have an out of state license plate you're more apt to get stopped.
I like driving in MA, CO and MI much better than anywhere in Ohio.
What's to stop them from transmitting your speed and license plate number as well? Automated speeding ticket robots anyone?
At this rate, pretty much nothing. Hell here in little ole Toledo, Ohio, they have cameras at several intersections to dole out tickets for running red lights. What's a few more bucks to install recievers at these same intersections to record and automate tickets for speeding or having "too much" ethanol vapors floating around your car. Before long they'll fine more and clever ways of fattening the localities's cash box from all of the fines.
I wouldn't mind seeing a game-like UI for stuff like Office and crap like that. I would turn the option on for most users. Of course myself, I'd rather have everything there, so it exists when I need it.
Of course I can see people doing stuff along the lines of Final Fantasy.. Click there, open this pop-up box, type that, twist this and belch and volia you have the ultimate resume wizzard. But you can only get this after 90 hours of churing out presentations, databases (wannabe), spreadsheets and documents. I can almost see the spam that would create in an office environment.
I guess what I'm getting at, there are users that know enough to use some of the advanced features, but don't need them for everything. How can you enable these features without running a typical M$ gauntlet. (i.e. trying to update IE2.0 on a fresh NT install, yet the new version of IE requires a new service pack, but you can't get the new service pack 'cause the page to download it won't open in IE2.0)
heh, I remember HP having part number for everything, including letters, boxes, and envelopes. So yeah, you could very well be right... :)
I'm just waiting for them to market their parts by some generic part number. Say like how Sun tracks their part numbers... Take a 501-5838 for example...that's an 400MHz UltraSPARC II processor with 8 megs of cache.
It will be about as funny as people comparing their letters and numbers of their cars with each other. My I300 is better than your 328i. Whatever...
I'm not sure what the solution would be either. I miss having my own desk with a mountain dew stash, or something like that. One of the few things I miss about my old job is not having the window view of the city and the outside world. I miss being able to just zone out and stare at the world passing me by. I love my current job quite a bit more, but being a "free spirit" can take it's toll.
I could apply and make my home my office. I always wanted a job like that...but later in life. Like when I have kids and stuff, and then I can stay home and spend time with them. But now, I still need a level of human interaction.
How much of 'big-iron management' can you learn on an Intel box, without the right hardware?
Personally I was say near to none. There is no way that I'm aware of to sim an Enterprise 10000 (E10k), how it interacts with the SSP (System Service Processor), post and booting of the domains, DR and AP (or MPxIO). These are things that you really only need to learn if you have an E10k laying around. Granted the single box multiple domains are pretty much supported in the new SunFire line and of course the E10k. Yes, this "big-iron management" can't be had in Solaris x86, or for that matter any other x86 OS. The main point is that you can learn how Solaris deals with patches and so on without having to have a SPARC at home to play with. For example I'd love to try IRIX or AIX, but I won't unless I get my hands on an SGI or IBM machine to play with them, unlike with Solaris...I just need to have a machine that fits the Hardware Compatiability List.
Hardware support is still better for Linux, I think (wasn't this the point, that now Solaris users can use all graphic cards supported by XFree86? This mean they couldn't). And original poster point was "I'm using Solaris on Laptop because it would look bad to use Windows".
Yes, this was precisely my original point. XFree86 has more PC hardware support than most other Xservers out there, and if Sun's X server can use the drivers, all the better for those people.
There are some companies that "free software" is specifically banned from use. I remember interviewing at one company for a UNIX admin job and they told me, "We don't use any of that free stuff here!" Needless to say with my convictions towards gnu utilities and my personal support of Open Source I couldn't accept a position there. Yes, I agree that not having access to gnu stuff would be a downfall and personally a hinderance to getting a lot of stuff accomplished. But there are compiled binaries of most gnu utilities available on sunfreeware.com, so if you wanted access to that stuff, you could.
Yes, of course I have. In fact I run Debian at home for everything (minus the OpenBSD firewall I'm building). My only copy of Windows that I have is 3.1, and it lives on my old 486. The utilities and tools that I need under Solaris x86 are Sun internal applications. And besides most of the stuff that Linux would offer me I can compile under Solaris. I'm not saying this to start a UNIX holy war, I'm just stating my reality.
Yeah, having knowledge of Linux is a great start. In fact running Linux for a few years helped me get my foot in the door as a UNIX admin. I started out with HP/UX then picked up Solaris (even though I cut my teeth in UNIX under Solaris and SUNOS as a user). The thing that I've noticed most is that each flavor of *nix has it's own way of dealing with things. Things that a user might not notice or care about. If you are a person who wants somethig to play with and learn for the sake of learning it, then it works. If you want to learn it for the certificaiton exam, then it works. If you want to set up an environment where the users are greeted with the exact same experience, then it works. If you want it to do the same stuff as Linux, why bother?
I yearn for a desk (or even a cube!) where I could actually feel at home, and not like some sort of transient drifting soul through the sea of employment.
Yeah, that's the one thing I dislke about my "flexible field office (FFO)." When I'm actually there I really don't have a place to call my own. But in a way that's prefectly fine, considering I'm hardly ever in the office, and typially at a customer site. At my main customer site I have my own desk, yeah, it's in a tiny cube, but I honestly don't mind considering I don't have management breathing down my back, I can deal with it.. And if I ever need a breather, I disappear into the server room...
But if I had to deal with the FFO on a daily basis, it would get old real quick.
I'm sure from some of the postings that I've read thus far for this article, is that people wonder why Sun bothers with Solaris x86.
Well from my experience there seems to be a few answers....
1) Some large customers want to run Solaris on cheaper hardware (ie PC's), but want the power of Solaris and leverage their other Sun investments.
2) Works great for Sun Field Employees who are given laptops. I'm one of those. I despise the idea of trying to work at a customer site and having my hands tied by Windows. Yeah, I'm one of the lucky field guys who happens to have an older (supported video) laptop, which can run Solaris x86. Then I can download applications and tools to my laptop and use them at a customer site. These tools and apps just frankly don't exist for Linux.
Besides, when I walk into a customer site, I'm representing Sun, and I open a laptop running windows? What kind of message does that send? I'd prefer to send a message like this: "Look, I like Solaris enough that I run it on my laptop."
3) Students or people who want to learn Solaris need something to tinker with. Solaris x86 is a cheap way to tinker around. Personally I'm happy because then I can finally run Solaris on my home desktop that runs perfectly happy under Linux, but didn't have a Solaris supported video card. (Of course I'll be getting my hands on a used SPARC, so it's a moot point anyway.)
106542-12 Solaris 7 x86 kernel patch
102534-06 Solaris 2.4 syslog patch
104234-04 Solaris 2.5 routed patch
107555-10 Solaris 7 ldap patch
102432-02 Obsolete Solaris 2.4 Sparc Storage Array patch
103423-08 Invalid patch id....
It would have been immensly funny if the patch id's were all for Solaris 8.... IMHO.
I used to work at a small mutual fund company where the network admin got to deal with SIAC for a project. It seemed as if they were a big mainframe shop and the network admin ended up creating a translation dictionary between industry terms and SIAC terms. Let's say (not accurate for obvious NDA reasons), they would say something like street and ths would mean to us ethernet cable.
It was fun working with them. Once we had that translation dictionary sorted out we fully understood what they were telling us.
But more to my main point, is that I'm happy to hear they're going to use Linux, but most financial institutions would run linux anyway. Mainly due to admins with tiny budgets. Like I was given 6 grand to put up a development database server. No way I could afford licenses of Sybase for a Sun box that would cost me that much (even though I would have preferred Solaris), I wound up getting a dual processor VA Linux Systems box and then downloaded Sybase Adaptive Server for Linux (license is free for development use). So I got a pretty nice performance development database box and didn't go over budget.
Needless to say when I left working at the mutual fund company they had more linux systems than HP 9000's or Sun Ultra Enterprise's put together. Granted I met with a ton of resistance to put the first linux box into place, but then management got used to being able to do stuff on the cheap, so more low budget projects kept creeping up, which meant more linux boxes to do the work.
Quick boot time for embedded devices is a nice thing. The last thing you want is to have your microwave take 15 minutes to boot.
Of course on stuff that matters, boot time is quite longer. Let's take for example a Sun Enterprise 10000, it takes at minimum of 20 minutes and up to a few hours just to run POST. This still doesn't include time to boot the operating system. But once that system is up and running, it stays there until either something bad happens or the admin shuts it down.
For obvious reasons you wouldn't install this BIOS in your home PC or linux server, where checking memory, detecting SCSI and drives and so on are pretty much necessary.
Is 2% (or even 8%) really that significant? It may seem huge, but it really depends on the survey size and how the questions are asked. Does anyone know more about how these surveys are done, their margins of error on average, etc?
I agree with you on this. The margins of error could totally muck with the results. Let's say there was a 15% margin of error, then all conclusions drawn that AOL is less trusted than Microsoft is totally a moot point. Also if they surveyed 10 people, or some small sample, that also isn't indiciative of the general populace.
Also jumping on the "let's hate AOL" bandwagon isn't necessarily a bad thing. Personally I feel they are too big and involved in too much for my personal level of trust. But I'd have to rank it this way:
on-line brokerages
....
AOL (second to bottom)
Microsoft (bottom)
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
Have you ever tried to order a laptop with linux installed? You had to have a certain config...you couldn't add a larger hard drive or add any other option to it. And if you just got one of their other laptops and installed linux on it, and *if* you had a problem with the laptop (even a dual boot system) and called their tech support for an obvious hardware problem, they claimed the problem was because Linux was installed. Basically they wouldn't talk to you until you only had windows on it.
It doesn't surprise me one bit that they had low demand for their linux pre-installed systems. Personally I feel they did it to be a part of the linux bandwagon, never really wanting to have much part of it.
Solaris Internals
The SPARC Architecture Manual, Vol 9
As far as building applications for the Ultra Enterprise 10000, I don't believe you need to do much special, other than ensuring your program is multi-thread safe, or at least multi-processor safe (safe from deadlocks, and so on...) You can check http://docs.sun.com/ for information.
To answer your question about the kernel. From what I've read thus far, there is a single kernel running on the domain, and since the kernel itself is multi-threaded, it can run on all of the processors in the domain. There is a much better description in the book, and I can't serve it justice here. (That and I don't have it with me at the moment.)
I was handed a big pile of resume's by HR. I then sifted through those looking for glimmers of intelligence. I of course had to throw out resume's from people claiming knowledge of operating a microwave oven to a girl wanting an IT job, yet putting her measurements on there.
Finally after a couple hours of sifting, I had already narrowed the pool down to about 4 people worth interviewing. Two additional people were added by my boss...mainly because they were getting MBA's. One of the MBA students couldn't describe to me typical top level directories of a unix file system. (ie
My typical questions are as follows:
What technology do you find interesting?
Why do you want to be a sysadmin?
What are your experiences with Unix?
What unicies have you used? Solaris, HP/UX, OSF/1, OpenBSD, Linux?
Describe something that you have done.
How many users were on your system?
Was your system ever hacked?
What are some typical top level directories?
Have you ever patched your system?
If so, how often?
If not, why?
What is your favorite OS and why?
What are your outside interests?
and my personal favorite...yanking a hot swappable hard drive out of a disk array (a hot spare--I had two of them in that array), and watch their expression. If they looked like they just soiled themselves, that was the end of it. If they were like "cool!", then I knew they actually were somewhat interested in technology and would be willing to learn.
Yeah, I'd have to admit most of my questions are pretty basic and almost have no substance. But it was amazing how few people actually managed to make it through just those. Most of the people were clueless and lost with those questions. *sigh*
Wow, sounds like the same people I interviewed at my old job. One of the first things I'd do is check the dummy lights, then the link status (up/down wtih ifconfig). Granted with some of the people who are looking for IT jobs are totally clueless, yet want tons of cash. *sigh*
I have to admit this is a pretty good test...
"It's not a bug, it's a feature. Russia wants to loose nuclear devices, it makes for much less cleanup and disposal on their behalf."
--M$ Press Agent
--
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
I don't see telco's ever offering this service. Look how long they've drug their feet with DSL and the like. Hell ISDN has been out since the mid 80's, and telco's still can't seem to get it installed right. (At least Ameritech can't) DSL? Hell my ex back in 97 was beta testing ADSL from Ameritech in Ann Arbor, and yet years later, Ameritech has yet to fully roll it out. Honestly, how hard is it to support? Just add a few boards into the telco switch and volia, you have support.
If this was something that was available and at a reasonable price, it's something that I can see many many people picking up. I'd of course be in line for that much bandwidth. (Voice over IP comes to mind). But knowing how slow and lethargic telcos are, it will be at least 2010 before you start seeing anyone in the US with this service and much much longer before it's available nationwide as well as globally.
</rant>
--
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."