On Sat, 5 Jan 2008 19:13:20 -0500 (EST) "Dennis Clarke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
First off, thank you very much for taking the time to reply to what must be pretty boring newbie questions. > > Hello People: > > > > I'm experienced sysadmin with *BSD and HP-UX background, but completely > > new to Solaris. > > In that case you are in a good place. The command line is your friend and no > one needs to tell you how to do ls :-) > > That's a good thing. Yep. No problem with going commando (when first started using Unix, X didn't even yet exist). > > I've perused various docs and "propaganda" past couple > > days and have a few q's related to install, best practices, hardware, > > etc. I can install Express Dev edition no problem so figured this was > > better choice of lists. Potential uses include both workstation and > > server boxes. > > not too sure what to say here. but .. cool. Have you looked at BeleniX ? > It rocks and you don't even have to install it. Not recently. Did a while back but seemed sketchy at the time. That was just in Live CD mode though. > > 1) Stability: it seems the Express Dev edition is probably good balance > > between latest drivers, tweaks, etc. and stability for workstation > > use? > > good call .. there is a new rev around the corner but snv_70b is damned > fine. Is there an expected release date? "Around the corner" meaning days or weeks? > use the command uname -a as well as maybe cat out the file /etc/release to > see where you are. > > $ uname -a > SunOS charon 5.11 snv_70b i86pc i386 i86pc > $ cat /etc/release > Solaris Express Developer Edition 9/07 snv_70b X86 > Copyright 2007 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. > Use is subject to license terms. > Assembled 30 August 2007 > > > Or will I have issues? > > Yes you will but I don't know with what :-) > It is not a production grade release. It is beta all the way and don't > confuse it with production grade Solaris. It isn't and you can't get a > support contract or patch updates etc. But it does rock. Thanks for the clarification. I thought it was somewhere a bit more along than beta but not quite up to enterprise customer release grade. > > To be conservative should I be using > > Solaris 10, or am safe with the Express Dev edition? > > There is that "safe" word again. If you wear a belt and suspenders at the > same time then you probably want Solaris 8 on an UltraSparc machine like an > SunFire 280R ... but just don't do that. Or FreeBSD-4.x but then there's eol issues... ;) > Safe and production grade is Solaris 10 which you can get at the sun.com > site and it will work like a freight train. Anything else takes you into > the zone known as "not production" and you can not get a support contract .. > yet. Thanks. Sucking down the 10 bits now :) > > Need both my > > workstations and servers to be rock solid (spoiled by FreeBSD, sans the > > 5.x fiasco). > > oh .. well now you did it. > > OKay, stop whereever you are, take a deep breath and ask yourself what you > *really* want. If you really really want rock solid then you need Solaris > 10 and you need to get a software update contract. Don't do one without the > other. I would like rock solid server side. I can live with a _bit_ of adventure here and there on the workstation side, but ultimately I'm an admin and not developer so workstation's primary use needs to be for getting day to day work done not debugging beta software. > http://www.sun.com/service/subscriptions/index.jsp > > I don't work for Sun and I'm anything but a salesman. I'm just telling you > that if you like solid as a rock then you need Solaris 10 and that patch > access and software support contract. Good info, thanks. Given above, seems like the Community Dev might be reasonable compromise for desktop. Noticed the Update Tool but not yet tried it. Does not work unless Solaris 10. Does Sun also require support contract for it to function? > > 2) Boot Disk: I see folks talking about ZFS Boot setups but wonder if > > it's advisable, I mean assuming the latest upcoming release? Or should > > use volume manager to mirror? With FBSD I can just software raid1 boot > > disk via gmirror, which works out pretty nice. I haven't had time to > > read Solaris volume manager docs in any detail but assume comparable > > functionality is present? With FreeBSD I've evolved my +/- standard > > workstation and server slice and partitioning schemes. But ZFS changes > > things. Any recommendations? > > Don't even bother with ZFS on your boot disk until you see it show up as a > feature in production Solaris 10. If you want to play in the beta zone then > jump onto snv Nevada releases called Solaris Express ( Express means fast > and you get it early and good luck ) or Solaris Community edition which is > built by Sun or Solaris Developer Release or BeleniX or some sort of > OpenSolaris distro. > > You are in the production world with your wants/needs so that isn't ready yet. Thanks for speaking candidly. Told me what I need to know. > > 3) Graphics cards: I tend to prefer ATI cards and have RV370 based > > card in the workstation I'm using now. Haven't tried installing > > OpenSolaris on this box yet, but hopefully will work? I also have to > > replace a card in another box, however, and noticed OpenSolaris > > included nVidia tools. Are nVidia the cards better supported, and if > > so, any particular models? > > Try booting BeleniX first. It rocks. > > If that looks sweet then go ahead with Solaris 10, it will most likely work > fine. Ultimately nothing beats a nVidia graphics card .. but thats just my > opinion. I've not used nVidia for years and not kept up with their models. Any recommends for my short list? 2-D is all I need. 3-D is just icing on the cake. > > 4) Zones: Slick feature. Seem pretty analogous to FBSD jails? Any > > comments about how comparable in terms of security? > > arghh ... zones are not like jails but hey, it is a good place to start > from. So .. okay. Sorry, my bad. Was going from initial impressions. FreeBSD jails are sweet. But Solaris Zones appear to offer similar functionality w/simpler config. But apparently I need to do some reading. Speaking of which... > This loud mouth wrote the first thing about zones : > > http://www.blastwave.org/articles/DMC-0002/index.html > > but really Brendan Gregg is the high priest : > > http://www.solarisinternals.com/wiki/index.php/Zones > > Zones rock .. make them .. play with them. ask questions. ... we will, we will rock you... definitely on my short list ;-) > that is all I can say for now :-) > > > 5) Docs are prolific. Any particular books and/or websites you could > > recommend that distill things down to essentials and/or a bit more > > interesting read? > > Anything by Brendan Gregg rocks. Find him and throw money at him. > > Swim in OpenSolaris.org and ask questions .. some people will write a book > for you just to hear themselves type. > > > > 6) 3rd party apps; Is Blastwave the "unofficial official" repository? > > Or some others I should become familiar with? > > ugg .. well gee. You can get open source stuff from all over the place. > There is the CoolStack stuff for Apache etc and you can get that here : > > http://cooltools.sunsource.net/coolstack/ > > You can get a sweet compiler also > > http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/ > > You can still do hunt and peck at http://www.sunfreeware.com/ to get > software packages. You can also find an old thingy called the Companion > CD at http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/freeware/ which will confuse > the heck out of you. Or yes, you can install pkg-get from Blastwave and > then just pkg-get -i foo to get foo and all the dependecies that you can > shake a stick at. > > It is a long long story and fights break out. Really, I think that 2008 > needs to be the year of the "official" distribution point but don't hold > your breath until you see a whack of software migrated into the Indiana IPS > package software. > > Have I overwhelmed you ? Not even close ;-) > > and likely few others that escape me just now... Feel pretty ignorant > > asking newbie q's like this but from what I've seen thus far I'm > > favorably impressed enough to suffer through newbie learning curve. > > bring on the suffering .. get in line. Others have been there before. > > I think you are doing great by the way. Thank you :) > > fwiw- I've been checking in on this project every now and again for the > > past year and a half or so. First time I tried Solaris for i386 years > > ago (Solaris 8, 1/01) it wouldn't even install. > > It is a bugger isn't it ? Think hardware compatibility was at the root of it at the time but cannot recall. Just test driving a cd I got from Sun One convention. Didn't invest much time in fighting it. > $ uname -a > SunOS thor 5.8 Generic_117351-51 i86pc i386 i86pc > $ cat /etc/release > Solaris 8 2/02 s28x_u7wos_08a INTEL > Copyright 2002 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. > Assembled 18 December 2001 > Man, you is 1337 ;) > > Now it's something > > like a 3 clicks, recognizes all my hardware, and gives me a desktop > > that pretty much jfw. Nice job, folks :) > > From 1997 with Solaris 2.5.1 on x86 until now I have seen pretty much all of > it and worked with all of it and the Solaris 10 releases these days rock in > every measurable way. Certainly installation is much easier. > > Oh, you can find a step by step installation complete with sarcasm and LOTs > of pictures at : > > http://www.blastwave.org/docs/s10u3_howto.html Install is piece of cake for me on present hardware. Have a couple boxes built on Tyan K8E mainboards, one of the 2 "certified" Tyan boards and I believe is basis for X2100. Also a Tyan S2882, which I don't see on HCL and haven't yet tried, but expect should be well supported since uses AMD reference implementation chipsets? At present, figuring out my disk subsystem will take a bit of pondering because ZFS puts me in completely new world. For now, for workstation I think a 20MB boot partition for Sun, and ZFS home dirs, etc. Then keep FBSD around for multi-boot and mount ZFS home in case something borks Solaris side, I need to get work done, and don't have time for troubleshooting. btw- I can live with Gnome, but anyone running Xfce? I see there's port, but any comments about how solid? TIA- kg _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
