subject:"\[osol\-discuss\] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris\?"

I may be incorrect, but when I watched the webcast and they had the graphics 
displayed showing the hardware line and Oracle VM working with Logical Domains, 
etc., they had the x86 hardware.  I'll have to look again, but they had three 
blocks for operating systems on top which were Solaris, Linux, and Windows.

I know in another slide they listed OpenSolaris and had the website, but I 
honestly don't believe they will continue development of OpenSolaris which has 
mostly been developed on x86.  For quite some time there wasn't a Sparc install 
and then you needed AI.  Now a text installer for Sparc has been released, but 
it is late.

Oracle isn't going to put tens or hundreds of millions into OpenSolaris when 
they announed they are going to spend more on Solaris development than Sun.  
And there are many things in OpenSolaris which are not enterprise ready and it 
would cost a lot of money and time to get OpenSolaris to the point of being 
ready for enterprise data centers.  AI.  Caiman.  Zones.  Network Auto Magic 
(default).  Especially when Oracle spends millions on Linux, why spend more 
money for another x86 OS when Solaris isn't used much on x86?

There are a lot of good innovations in OpenSolaris which can be used in the 
next Solaris release, but 
I just don't see OpenSolaris being able to survive.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Alan Coopersmith

Gary Bainbridge wrote:
> Oracle isn't going to put tens or hundreds of millions into OpenSolaris when 
> they announed they are going to spend more on Solaris development than Sun. 

OpenSolaris isn't a separate OS from Solaris - it's the development branch of
the next release of Solaris.   Sun's plan was always that the next release of
Solaris would be a stable version of the OpenSolaris base, not a completely
different beast.

-- 
-Alan Coopersmith-   alan.coopersm...@sun.com
 Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering

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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Bruce Porter

> I may be incorrect, but when I watched the webcast
> and they had the graphics displayed showing the
> hardware line and Oracle VM working with Logical
> Domains, etc., they had the x86 hardware.  I'll have
> to look again, but they had three blocks for
> operating systems on top which were Solaris, Linux,
> and Windows.
> 
> I know in another slide they listed OpenSolaris and
> had the website, but I honestly don't believe they
> will continue development of OpenSolaris which has
> mostly been developed on x86.  For quite some time
> there wasn't a Sparc install and then you needed AI.
> Now a text installer for Sparc has been released,
>  but it is late.
> 
> Oracle isn't going to put tens or hundreds of
> millions into OpenSolaris when they announed they are
> going to spend more on Solaris development than Sun.
> And there are many things in OpenSolaris which are
> not enterprise ready and it would cost a lot of
> money and time to get OpenSolaris to the point of
> being ready for enterprise data centers.  AI.
> Caiman.  Zones.  Network Auto Magic (default).
> Especially when Oracle spends millions on Linux,
> why spend more money for another x86 OS when Solaris
>  isn't used much on x86?
> 
> There are a lot of good innovations in OpenSolaris
> which can be used in the next Solaris release, but 
> I just don't see OpenSolaris being able to survive.


While a good chunk of this sounds realistic to me, I have to disagree with the 
comments abiout Zones and Solaris on x86.

Zones are used widely in S10, in production on many sites in "enterprise" 
solutions, and from experince the use of zones out numbers the use of LDoms by 
a long way.

Once people get used to the idea of zones, and apps companies get on board, 
they start to be used widely (on Sparc an x86). Oracle sits well in zones (IMO).

The worst part about Solaris on x86 is having to deal with BIOS :-)
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

I should have clarified.  I was speaking about the way zones are implemented 
presently in OpenSolaris.  They need to function like Solaris 10.  I like zones 
and use them frequently.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

I realize that OpenSolaris isn't *entirely* separate from Solaris, but if Sun 
intended to have the next release of Solaris based on OpenSolaris, then 
millions will have to be spent to get it to that point, and many years.

The better option would have been to have the next release built on SXCE.  Now, 
I am aware that SXCE was built on OpenSolaris, but it was more ready for the 
enterprise because it had the installer, zones, packaging, etc., already there. 
 

The Sparc text installer for OpenSolaris was only released yesterday.  There 
can't be any denial that OpenSolaris was targeted for a desktop user.  Network 
Auto Magic?  That doesn't yell enterprise, but rather joe schmoe sitting at 
home.  OpenSolaris Sparc wasn't available for the longest time.  AI isn't near 
ready for the enterprise so how many years before OpenSolaris can be ready.  
How is OpenSolaris going to run on M-Series servers?  That I'd like to see.  
Sun spent $500 million on Solaris 10.  Is Oracle going to spend that much on 
OpenSolaris to get it ready for the enterprise?  I doubt it.  Take the good 
parts from SXCE and merge them into Solaris 10 and create SolarisNextGen or 
something.  

BTW, I do run OpenSolaris and have since 2008.05 and will install dev preview 
131 soon.  

But please, OpenSolaris isn't ready to be installed on T- and M-Series servers 
in a 2000 server data center.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Roger Savard

As much as I like OpenSolaris, I just migrated my FreeBSD (RockSolid) 
infrastructure to opensolaris with ease: Tomcat, CAS-SSO, OpenLdap, Bind, 
apache2, CIFS, Postgresql ... I think it is a mistake to design OpenSolaris as 
a desktop first, Sun always shine on the server side.

I earned my living on Sun's, managing servers from SunOS3.x - Solaris10 now, 
I'm into architecture and project management. As far as low-end servers Sun has 
been tossed big time and MANY companies are getting away from Huge 
Architectures. 

ZFS is a technological advance, the new package system is awesome, CIFS 
integration, ACL and all ...more power to it however, it has to spread on X86 
architecture too and the sooner, the more exposure, the better.

There are tones of small and not so small companies willing to take the plunge 
into (low cost/no cost) Linux solutions and not willing to spend on support! It 
is as crazy as it sounds.

In retrospect, yesterday's webcast reinforced a new fully and integrated stack 
(from disks to apps) for Sparc (Solaris) 
and Linux!

I wish Oracle sees OpenSolaris as a server and not only a desktop where you 
develop apps for Solaris!
Oracle is a big fan of Linux ... mentionned 2-3 times.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Glynn Foster



On 29/01/2010, at 1:41 PM, Roger Savard wrote:

As much as I like OpenSolaris, I just migrated my FreeBSD  
(RockSolid) infrastructure to opensolaris with ease: Tomcat, CAS- 
SSO, OpenLdap, Bind, apache2, CIFS, Postgresql ... I think it is a  
mistake to design OpenSolaris as a desktop first, Sun always shine  
on the server side.


Why do you think we're designing OpenSolaris as a desktop first?  
Because of the LiveCD? What about the Automated Install images, or the  
text based interactive installer? Lots of room for both, and over the  
last couple of releases, there's been a higher priority on getting  
some of the server/enterprise features in place.



Glynn
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Roger Savard

Well then, if it's the case, OpenSolaris is on the right track. I downloaded 
the text-based installer yesterday but did not have the time to work with it 
yet, but I will. The closer opensolaris is to the enterprise, the more exposure 
and push it' ll have. 

Keep up the good work.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Bayard Bell

Surely a fundamental part of the premise here is that there has to be  
some incentives to get people to join the OpenSolaris community to  
build some of the user base necessary to bed in a new release, and  
part of that is that the OpenSolaris builds be easy to deploy and have  
an initial focus on cheap x86 desktops and servers, where those  
desktops are probably targeted at developers as much as anyone else.


OpenSolaris is thus always going to be preparatory, an indication of  
what's coming over the horizon that's considerably more substantial  
than a demo but always ahead of release candidacy, so it'll never be  
"finished" or "ready" in the sense that you seem to expect. After all,  
Sun's problem doesn't appear to be getting Solaris to run well on high- 
end servers (they've got decades of experience in that discipline) so  
much as recruiting and retaining developer seats and allowing  
customers a more straight-forward way to try out things that are  
otherwise around the corner and to get behind that direction, while  
Sun presumably does some further work on the release once there's a  
stable code base implementing the new feature set before blessing it  
as a Solaris release.


That's what makes OpenSolaris interesting: it occupies a space rather  
ahead of he usual production cycle for developer/customer and Sun, yet  
Sun's willing to provide full support for customers who are willing to  
be more aggressive in deploying it, including for production (and I'd  
think that there would be plenty of shops running open-source  
infrastructure for n-tier apps who'd find that the time to market for  
new features in OpenSolaris may be worth more on modest x86 SMP  
systems than waiting for all the release to be massaged and cut as a  
Solaris 10 update or Solaris 11 release that pulls every ounce out of  
the bigger Sun iron). As far as hardware support goes, the likely  
deployment profile for OpenSolaris, at least in its earlier days,  
wouldn't be SPARC boxes, big or small, but x86 kit in engineering labs  
that people wanted to get up and running quickly to see if Solaris  
could do things that weren't quite coming together in production  
("this Linux cack isn't working, what you got Solaris?"), where SPARC  
kit and the kind of additional performance validation for big SPARC  
boxes could wait until the most recent releases.


In addition to source code access to what's released in OpenSolaris,  
these days people have tools like DTrace to give them an idea of  
whether their workload runs as well or better with changes that may be  
six months or more ahead of release, and there's considerable  
advantage in using that to build excitement and confidence, not to  
mention analytics that customers can share with Sun where they have  
concerns. A decade ago this would have been access by invitation only,  
largely limited to large commercial ISVs (I'm largely following the  
account offered of the partnership with the major RDBMS vendors in the  
Configuring and Tuning Databases on Solaris book by Alan Packer), with  
source code licensed separately, but the last decade has shown that  
there are distinct advantages to more participatory and open early  
access, which is the space OpenSolaris targets. I may be wrong in that  
understanding, and I'm sure someone from Sun will correct me if I'm  
off-base. In the last decade Sun lost market share because shipping  
Solaris lost customer bake-offs to Linux, where Sun couldn't put the  
later and greater into the hands of customers to show that promised  
improvements were more than vapourware (not to put too fine a point on  
it, but if you were using Sun compilers ten years ago, you might be  
forgiven for raising an eyebrow to Sun claims and finding yourself  
reluctant to say "compilers bad, systems good" after being bitten by  
the e-cache rash).


On the other hand, there's a foot-in-the-door element to delivering an  
OS that's rather less raw than what arrives on Solaris 10 install  
media, and you don't have to be a "shmoe at home" to want an OS that  
does a bit more out of the box than does vanilla Solaris if you're  
otherwise taking on the workload of sorting out a build with such an  
experimental bent. Developers wanting to look ahead don't necessarily  
want to have to deal with such initial configuration tasks, which  
doesn't make for a simple opposition to "enterprise" deployment  
(similar things should hold even for systems engineers). All of this  
seems to me a pretty sharp adaptation to the current market, so I'd  
struggle to imagine Oracle wanting to pull the legs out from under it.


Am 28 Jan 2010 um 22:08 schrieb Gary Bainbridge:

I realize that OpenSolaris isn't *entirely* separate from Solaris,  
but if Sun intended to have the next release of Solaris based on  
OpenSolaris, then millions will have to be spent to get it to that  
point, and many years.


The better option would have been to have the next release

Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Graham McArdle

> I realize that OpenSolaris isn't *entirely* separate
> from Solaris, but if Sun intended to have the next
> release of Solaris based on OpenSolaris, then
> millions will have to be spent to get it to that
> point, and many years.
> 
> The better option would have been to have the next
> release built on SXCE.  Now, I am aware that SXCE was
> built on OpenSolaris, but it was more ready for the
> enterprise because it had the installer, zones,
> packaging, etc., already there.  
> 
> The Sparc text installer for OpenSolaris was only
> released yesterday.  There can't be any denial that
> OpenSolaris was targeted for a desktop user.  Network
> Auto Magic?  That doesn't yell enterprise, but rather
> joe schmoe sitting at home.  OpenSolaris Sparc wasn't
> available for the longest time.  AI isn't near ready
> for the enterprise so how many years before
> OpenSolaris can be ready.  How is OpenSolaris going
> to run on M-Series servers?  That I'd like to see.
> Sun spent $500 million on Solaris 10.  Is Oracle
> going to spend that much on OpenSolaris to get it
> ready for the enterprise?  I doubt it.  Take the
> good parts from SXCE and merge them into Solaris 10
>  and create SolarisNextGen or something.  
> 
> BTW, I do run OpenSolaris and have since 2008.05 and
> will install dev preview 131 soon.  
> 
> But please, OpenSolaris isn't ready to be installed
> on T- and M-Series servers in a 2000 server data
> center.

I agree. I can't see the IPS being anywhere close to Enterprise ready. It's OK 
on my laptop but I wouldn't advocate switching from Solaris 10 on our data 
servers. People have complained about the SVR4 patching system, and it creaks 
like hell, but it's one thing to say it's broke and quite another to 'fix' it 
with something less functional. I don't like the 'all or nothing' image-update 
principle, is this because patching doesn't work yet or is that how it always 
will be? I can't see that fitting well with data centre SysAdmins wanting to 
patch one critical bug with minimal collateral impact on other services.

But this is all academic anyway now that Oracle has taken the reins. Judging by 
how the word OpenSolaris has yet to be uttered by any Oracle spokesperson, it's 
quite clear where their intentions are. They will continue to invest in 
ClosedSolaris. I don't even know if the successor to Solaris 10 will continue 
to be a free download or if Oracle will want to start making money again from 
licensing and compulsory support subscriptions. I hope not!

Compare Screven's statements about OpenOffice, where the Oracle pledge is to:
"Continue to develop, promote and support OpenOffice
– Including the OpenOffice.org community edition"
This contrasts with the rather bland operating system commitment:
"Invest significantly in both Solaris and Linux"
No inclusion of the opensolaris community edition here. Their website 
"community support" statements offer to support the java and opensolaris 
communities, but this is not a promise to continue Sun's plan to base the next 
release of Solaris on a public opensolaris build, nor is it a pledge to 
continue updating the opensolaris code base with any improvements they make to 
their commercial release of Solaris. If they're really going to spend more than 
Sun did on improving Solaris, they might choose to keep those improvements to 
the source code in-house.

The 7000 series is here to stay, so OpenSolaris is still of use to Oracle, but 
even the 7000 machines were always closed appliances from Sun. We know they 
were built using the OpenSolaris kernel, but that's about it.

Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but I think in this case given how much Oracle has 
already said about "Solaris", their lack of comment on "OpenSolaris" is 
worrying.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Jason King

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 6:51 PM, Glynn Foster  wrote:
>
> On 29/01/2010, at 1:41 PM, Roger Savard wrote:
>
>> As much as I like OpenSolaris, I just migrated my FreeBSD (RockSolid)
>> infrastructure to opensolaris with ease: Tomcat, CAS-SSO, OpenLdap, Bind,
>> apache2, CIFS, Postgresql ... I think it is a mistake to design OpenSolaris
>> as a desktop first, Sun always shine on the server side.
>
> Why do you think we're designing OpenSolaris as a desktop first? Because of
> the LiveCD? What about the Automated Install images, or the text based
> interactive installer? Lots of room for both, and over the last couple of
> releases, there's been a higher priority on getting some of the
> server/enterprise features in place.

Because anytime anyone tries to offer any criticism or documents
issues trying to use it as a server, the response is 'well we're
concentrating on the desktop first'.

I seem to recall the whole point of the project Indiana (now
OpenSolaris the distribution) versus SXCE was to have a desktop
oriented distribution (with the idea of trying to entice developers
from other *nix variants).  Hence the prioritization of the graphical
installer before a text-based one (thus x86 before sparc), interactive
installations before automated ones, nwam being the default, bash
being the default shell, GNU utilities being the default, etc.  If
someone wants to argue those are appropriate for a server setting
instead of a desktop, I'd like to know the name of their pharmacist =]

This is generally not a bad thing (as you know I disagree with a
couple of decisions, but I do try to do my talking with hg so to speak
to address that) -- I suspect most people understand the constraints
of limited resources and such, but it doesn't mean we get to have it
both ways.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Richard L. Hamilton

> Sun has already been doing that.  If you pay for
> support and use the
> support repository, you are using a closed fork.
>  Since
> penSolaris-dev and OpenSolaris-support are pretty
> close together
> temporally, this isn't a big deal.  You can look at a
> snapshot of the
> snv_111 code and the list of fixes applied to get a
> pretty good idea
> of what the code looks like.  After several years and
> potentially
> thousands of fixes, a lot of the benefit of the open
> source roots is
> lost.
> 
> While the typical customer doesn't have an interest
> in modifying the
> code, many have an interest in looking at it to
> understand observed
> behavior or to aid in writing dtrace scripts that
> journey into fbt
> probes.  As the years have passed since the fork
> between what became
> Solaris 10 and what became OpenSolaris, I have
> increasingly less
> confidence that looking at any version of OpenSolaris
> code will allow
> me to really understand what is happening on a
> Solaris 10 system.
> That is, as the number of fixes and features included
> in Solaris 10
> increases, the value of the open source roots
> decreases.
> 
> I have always expected that the same will happen with
> Solaris 10+1
> (11g?).  I have consistently asked Sun to make the
> code for supported
> OS's available to customers, even if it is under a
> license other than
> the CDDL.  I encourage others to make similar
> requests.
> 
> -- 
> Mike Gerdts
> http://mgerdts.blogspot.com/

With you 1000% on that.  I'd always like nothing better than to have
as much of the source as possible (i.e. not locked up in some agreement
to keep it proprietary) _matching_ what I'm running there to look at.
I'm most unlikely to have the time or patience to do a full build often, and
as the code sits now, it's not pretty to try to build one thing without having
first done a full build of everything.  So even on a development system,
I might never try _fixing_ something myself.  But the better the code I can
look at matches what I'm running (esp with tools like DTrace or (k)mdb),
the better the chance I can at least understand whose problem something is
(OS vendor, 3rd party, in-house) and do enough of the diagnosis that I can
get a quick turnaround out of them.

OpenGrok is pretty good for looking at the code, but it could be great if one
could tell it what one was running and have it show just that version of the 
code.

Too few people anywhere are good at troubleshooting, and the ones that
are tend to be busy and shielded by layers of helpdesk types and the like; so
whatever someone can do for themselves can really make a difference.  And
if there's an easy workaround, one might be able to find it oneself.

And then there's sunsolve.  Not terrible, but not great either.  Not near as 
good
at relevance of unfielded keyword searches as the major search engines, nor
capable of good old fashioned Boolean queries (like AltaVista used to be way
back when).
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?


On 01/28/10 09:07 PM, Jason King wrote:

I seem to recall the whole point of the project Indiana (now
OpenSolaris the distribution) versus SXCE was to have a desktop
oriented distribution (with the idea of trying to entice developers
from other *nix variants).  Hence the prioritization of the graphical
installer before a text-based one (thus x86 before sparc), interactive
installations before automated ones, nwam being the default, bash
being the default shell, GNU utilities being the default, etc.  If
someone wants to argue those are appropriate for a server setting
instead of a desktop, I'd like to know the name of their pharmacist =]


Given that almost all of the bits of functionality you mentioned above 
are often found in GNU/Linux server distributions too, I don't see the 
issue.  Yes, some of the bits were prioritised before others, but I've 
used (and installed) numerous GNU/Linux distributions in the past that 
used graphical installers, automated network configuration, GNU 
utilities, and bash as the default shell :)


Somehow, I don't think those are issues that are a large barrier to 
adoption.  And yes, I remember installing operating systems from *tape* 
and floppy disk...you want to talk about barriers!


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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread ed

> 
> In retrospect, yesterday's webcast reinforced a new
> fully and integrated stack (from disks to apps) for
> Sparc (Solaris) 
> and Linux!
> 
> I wish Oracle sees OpenSolaris as a server and not
> only a desktop where you develop apps for Solaris!
> Oracle is a big fan of Linux ... mentionned 2-3 times.

Oracle also  mention that Solaris is more advanced then linux and it would take 
years for linux to catch up to Solaris. I think Oracle sees a huge opening to 
promote Solaris while linux is currently missing those advancements,like 
ZFS,etc and if Oracle leaves OpenSolaris/Solaris under the CDDL then it can 
create it's own community with Opensolaris/Solaris similar to redhat and fedora 
 and take market share away from linux and when i say linux i really mean red 
hat and novell. only if Oracle promotes it correctly.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Glynn Foster



On 29/01/2010, at 4:07 PM, Jason King wrote:

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 6:51 PM, Glynn Foster   
wrote:


On 29/01/2010, at 1:41 PM, Roger Savard wrote:

As much as I like OpenSolaris, I just migrated my FreeBSD  
(RockSolid)
infrastructure to opensolaris with ease: Tomcat, CAS-SSO,  
OpenLdap, Bind,
apache2, CIFS, Postgresql ... I think it is a mistake to design  
OpenSolaris

as a desktop first, Sun always shine on the server side.


Why do you think we're designing OpenSolaris as a desktop first?  
Because of
the LiveCD? What about the Automated Install images, or the text  
based
interactive installer? Lots of room for both, and over the last  
couple of

releases, there's been a higher priority on getting some of the
server/enterprise features in place.


Because anytime anyone tries to offer any criticism or documents
issues trying to use it as a server, the response is 'well we're
concentrating on the desktop first'.


Certainly it made sense to focus on desktop and developer as ideal  
candidates to test out some of the technology we were building. The  
end game was always going to be enterprise and building something that  
would carry over into the next generation enterprise platform. The  
response was more likely to be acknowledgement that some things  
weren't quite ready yet for the larger scale.



Glynn
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

If I wanted to run a GNU/Linux distribution I would, but apparently the 
decision is being made for those who like Solaris, to be made to run another 
Linux-type server.

Seriously, how long (how many years) and how much money is it going to take to 
make OpenSolaris a replacement for Solaris 10?  Is Oracle going to spend that 
much money?  

To make a desktop OS work as a data center OS is not remotely the best 
engineering practice.  Could you run Solaris 8 on a desktop?  Sure.  But why?  
It wasn't practical.  Could you use Windows 95 as a server?  Probably many did. 
 But why?  That wasn't its intended use.

Now the OS is going to be retrofitted to make it an enterprise server?  With 
Solaris you can choose what you want to install.  Not so with OpenSolaris.  You 
get what you're told.

I'm probably old school, however, the barrier to adoption is probably right, 
but with those installers like RHEL and SuSE have, everything is going 
web-based and you need Java installed to open a console.  Give me a Putty 
session and connect me via ALOM and I'm ready to go with my Jumpstart server!  
'boot net - install' and off and running.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?


On 01/28/10 10:20 PM, Gary Bainbridge wrote:

Now the OS is going to be retrofitted to make it an enterprise server?  With 
Solaris you can choose what you want to install.  Not so with OpenSolaris.  You 
get what you're told.


That's actually less true with Solaris 10.  If you'll remember, with 
Solaris 10, the "OEM" or "OEM+" was usually the only supported 
configuration.


If anything, the complaint about Solaris 10 was usually that it wasn't 
customisable enuogh.  Because packages didn't always clearly (or 
correctly) express their dependencies, it made it very difficult to find 
a working configuration if you knew which packages you wanted.


With the OpenSolaris distribution, you install a relatively small core 
(that is supported), and then you add pieces to that.


The primary blocker for getting to choose what you want to install isn't 
really the installer itself so much as the package re-factoring work 
that is still in progress.


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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Bryan Allen

+--
| On 2010-01-28 20:20:08, Gary Bainbridge wrote:
| 
| I'm probably old school, however, the barrier to adoption is probably right, 
but with those installers like RHEL and SuSE have, everything is going 
web-based and you need Java installed to open a console.  Give me a Putty 
session and connect me via ALOM and I'm ready to go with my Jumpstart server!  
'boot net - install' and off and running.

So go look at the OpenSolaris Automated Installer. It's still very young and
has some ... odd ... design decisions, but you can network install OpenSolaris
with the packages you choose.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

> Why do you think we're designing OpenSolaris as a desktop first? 

OpenSolaris is designed as a destkop first because the GUI installer doesn't 
even let you assign a static IP address the way that Red Hat Enterprise Linux / 
Oracle Unbreakable Linux / CentOS installer does and it forces you to have a 
full on GNOME desktop installed on your server whether you want it to or not 
(compare this to a server OS like FreeBSD or Ubuntu Server which does not 
install x-windows and RHEL which lets you choose whether or not you want to 
install it).

For OpenSolaris to even be considered as a server O.S. in most shops, it needs 
three things:

(1) Assign a static IP address during the installation process (it's ok if it 
has to be installed from a live CD, that's fine, but the installer needs to 
have a static IP option and not just default to using DHCP, which is a huge 
pain for me because I never, never, NEVER, NEVER use DHCP in any of the several 
data centers I work in).

(2) There needs to be an option to install it as a "headless" server on x86 or 
on a SPARC Netra with no GNOME, no X-windows, no GUI installed. All that should 
be installed is a command line with SSH and virtual terminals and the "screen" 
utility to switch between different CLI's. Just put the server related packages 
like Postfix and Apache and BIND / DNS etc. etc. ready to go in the 
"/var/pkg/download" cache folder so that they can be installed quickly into 
zones right after the install without even needing to talk to the IPS 
repository.

(3) After the installation process is done, only SSH and mail should be 
running. Everything else (this includes GNOME and multicast DNS / avahi and 
CUPS) should be turned off!

When the OpenSolaris Indiana developers get serious about competing with 
FreeBSD and Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the server market and are willing to 
implement the three items that I have mentioned above, give us in the community 
a call and we will buy it. Until then, we will just be waiting quietly in the 
wings.

I've been waiting patiently for over a year now for a real minimalized JeOS 
OpenSolaris server distro that prospective clients can install from a CD to 
come out, but so far no dice, the only OpenSolaris minimal headless server type 
operating systems that are available so far are Nexenta and SXCE. Just go to 
any real professional Linux, *BSD or Solaris sysadmin's blog and you'll see 
that they all unanimously want the same thing for their servers. Take Ben 
Rockwood for example who said in several different posts in his blog here:

http://www.cuddletech.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=1065

that Nexenta and Solaris Express worked great on servers but that Indiana 
wasn't ready this is coming from a lead sysadmin from a company that is the 
largest OpenSolaris (SXCE) customer that Sun has ever had.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

> With the OpenSolaris distribution, you install a relatively small core
> (that is supported), and then you add pieces to that.

U, OpenSolaris might be an improvement over Solaris 10 in some ways (i.e. 
pkg image-update being better than live upgrade) but any OS that forces you to 
install a full on GNOME desktop (whether you want it or not) is certainly not a 
"relatively small core". If you want so see what a "small core" looks like, I 
recommend that you try installing FreeBSD or OpenBSD some time.

FreeBSD is starting to look particularly interesting because it has a lot of 
the same great features that OpenSolaris does, but it gives you a much smaller 
minimal installation footprint (just SSH and a command line and man pages and a 
ports tree and nothing else) which makes FreeBSD look good for people who 
develop embedded devices while OpenSolaris looks bad (i.e. you don't want a 
full on GNOME desktop running in an embedded server appliance).
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Alan Coopersmith

Anon Y Mous wrote:
> (2) There needs to be an option to install it as a "headless" server on x86 
> or on a SPARC Netra with no GNOME, no X-windows, no GUI installed. All that 
> should be installed is a command line with SSH and virtual terminals and the 
> "screen" utility to switch between different CLI's. Just put the server 
> related packages like Postfix and Apache and BIND / DNS etc. etc. ready to go 
> in the "/var/pkg/download" cache folder so that they can be installed quickly 
> into zones right after the install without even needing to talk to the IPS 
> repository.

Done.  See the Automated Install or new Text Install CD's.

> (3) After the installation process is done, only SSH and mail should be 
> running.

Done since the Secure by Default project integrated a few years ago.

-- 
-Alan Coopersmith-   alan.coopersm...@sun.com
 Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering

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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?


On 01/28/10 10:50 PM, Anon Y Mous wrote:

With the OpenSolaris distribution, you install a relatively small core
(that is supported), and then you add pieces to that.


U, OpenSolaris might be an improvement over Solaris 10 in some ways (i.e. pkg image-update 
being better than live upgrade) but any OS that forces you to install a full on GNOME desktop 
(whether you want it or not) is certainly not a "relatively small core". If you want so 
see what a "small core" looks like, I recommend that you try installing FreeBSD or 
OpenBSD some time.

FreeBSD is starting to look particularly interesting because it has a lot of 
the same great features that OpenSolaris does, but it gives you a much smaller 
minimal installation footprint (just SSH and a command line and man pages and a 
ports tree and nothing else) which makes FreeBSD look good for people who 
develop embedded devices while OpenSolaris looks bad (i.e. you don't want a 
full on GNOME desktop running in an embedded server appliance).


Everyone's definition of a minimal OS is different since their 
definition reflects their own needs.  For example, for a desktop user, 
their core OS includes GNOME, etc.


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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

> (3) After the installation process is done, only SSH and mail should be 
> running.

alanc:
> Done since the Secure by Default project integrated a few years ago.

Yes, but I just had to do the following two commands on an OpenSolaris Indiana 
snv_129 server that a client was evaluating:

#svcadm disable multicast:default
#svcadm disable cups/scheduler:default

so cups and multicast dns were running in the default install, which is fine 
and dandy on a desktop, such as the OpenSolaris desktop I do work on, but I was 
going to benchmark this server for a client to show them what OpenSolaris can 
(or can't) do as a minimalized headless server and I'm trying to squeeze out 
every last bit of performance here. 

It's not going to be a print server so there's no need for cups ;-)
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Mike Gerdts

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:20 PM, Gary Bainbridge  wrote:
> If I wanted to run a GNU/Linux distribution I would, but apparently the 
> decision is being made for those who like Solaris, to be made to run another 
> Linux-type server.
>
> Seriously, how long (how many years) and how much money is it going to take 
> to make OpenSolaris a replacement for Solaris 10?  Is Oracle going to spend 
> that much money?

In my mind the key things that seem to be missing for it to be able to
take the baton from Solaris 10 are:

- Interactive text installer (apparently that came out in the last day or so)
- Easy to configure automated installer.  Some docs to go with the
bootable AI iso would be a big help here.
- The ability to host all of the media required on my own install servers
- The ability to install software from a file
- Speed improvements for pkg command, particularly on CMT
- Package signing to ensure integrity of bits delivered.
- Refactor package names
- Integration with 800-USA-4SUN.  Any OpenSolaris cases I have opened
on a supported system have turned into redirects to mailing lists.
Maybe this has improved in the past 6 months.
- Stablization freeze and beta cycle

Certainly, there may be other things that are missing from a Solaris
11 roadmap that no one has shared with me.  However, those aren't
necessarily things that keep it from being at least as good as Solaris
10.  I suspect that if resources were increased to finish off the
areas listed above that the beta cycle could begin with 3 - 6 months
and a release could happen this year.

By and large, I find that (after installation) OpenSolaris servers are
nearly identical to Solaris 10 servers to administer, except when I
need a feature that is unique to OpenSolaris.  I generally find more
value in the OpenSolaris feature set.  Sure there are bleeding edge
issues that crop up, but those are the things that get ironed out in
stablization and beta.

> To make a desktop OS work as a data center OS is not remotely the best 
> engineering practice.  Could you run Solaris 8 on a desktop?  Sure.  But why? 
>  It wasn't practical.  Could you use Windows 95 as a server?  Probably many 
> did.  But why?  That wasn't its intended use.
>
> Now the OS is going to be retrofitted to make it an enterprise server?  With 
> Solaris you can choose what you want to install.  Not so with OpenSolaris.  
> You get what you're told.

I see it just the opposite.  On Solaris 10 if you are trying to create
an image to work across all hardware platforms, the most supported way
of doing this is to install SUNWCXall.  Then you can start trimming
away big things like Staroffice and the bulk of the desktop tools
until you become afraid that you are going to break some application's
unknown dependencies.  For example, the Oracle installer never says
that it needs to have X libraries (but it does if running in GUI mode)
and some annoying J2EE app never mentions that it needs X fonts but it
does else it can't render some text in images.  Go figure.

If you decide not to do flash archives on Solaris 10 and install via
pkgadd instead (not nearly as painful after Casper's work on turbo
charging), you can start out a lot smaller (e.g SUNWCmreq or
SUNWCreq), but creation of a custom profile to bring in those annoying
bits that you've learned are needed is quite a pain.  If you guess
wrong at install time, you will go through lots of iterations of
pkgadd + error messages to try to add the other packages you need -
once you figure out which uninstalled package delivers the shared
library or font files that you need.

In contrast, with OpenSolaris I can use AI to start out with a pretty
small installation.  Lots smaller than slim_install (live CD contents)
- look to the packages installed in a zone by default (plus kernel
bits) as a rough guide of the base install.  Then add the packages
that deliver the shared library or font that you need.  The
dependencies should automatically add the rest of the packages.  I
know this isn't perfect yet, but I think a beta cycle would raise the
bugs and fixes for missing dependencies.  If you miss something at
install time, it is just as easy after the system is installed to add
the required packages with automatic dependency resolution.

-- 
Mike Gerdts
http://mgerdts.blogspot.com/
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Alexander

> To make a desktop OS work as a data center OS is not
> remotely the best engineering practice.  Could you
> run Solaris 8 on a desktop?  Sure.  But why?  It
> wasn't practical.  Could you use Windows 95 as a
> server?  Probably many did.  But why?  That wasn't
> its intended use.
And where is that Solaris now? The most widespread server enterprise OS are 
Windows Server 2003/2008 and different Linux distributions.  
It's the worst policy: "we are cool server OS for REALLY BIG SPARC SERVERS". It 
made Solaris 10... not very popular. How many good Solaris admins can you find? 
How much do they want to earn? And every student can manage Windows 2003 after 
some months of training. It is like Win XP. (Yes, it may have in some type 
different architecture, it's not easy to administrate it correctly (as every 
other OS), but it looks familiar and simple).
Linux was the most available Unix-like OS. And after people had tried it, they 
didn't want to study commercial Unix (Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and other monsters). 
These OS looked unfamiliar and strange. 
RedHat appeared as mass spread desktop Linux. Ubuntu is the most wide spread 
desktop Linux - and now it goes to server market.  I heard a lot some wishes 
for Oracle to officially support Ubuntu Server... 
And do you really say that Oracle will close OpenSolaris project? It is the 
most stupid step they can do. The popularity of OS is determined not only by 
its quality, but even more (do you remember Win 98 servers in SMB area ?) by 
its community 
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Erik Trimble

Gary Bainbridge wrote:

If I wanted to run a GNU/Linux distribution I would, but apparently the
decision is being made for those who like Solaris, to be made to run another
Linux-type server.

As it has been said /repeatedly/ here, OpenSolaris is NOT a GNU OS clone
- go over to Nexenta and take a good long look at the (rather severe)
differences between it and OpenSolaris. Yes, there have been some
features from the Linux world that have been adopted in OpenSolaris, but
the old ways remain. And, progress moves on. I'm actually happy with
abandoning SVR4 packaging, even though IPS needs some work. Dumping CDE
has been a long-time coming. And, people have been bitching for YEARS
about Solaris not having "standard" GNU tools available as part of the OS.

Seriously, how long (how many years) and how much money is it going to take to make OpenSolaris a replacement for Solaris 10? Is Oracle going to spend that much money?

Oh, how people [conveniently] forget

OpenSolaris has been available for just over 2 years now. That's it.
SXDE a little longer. So, in the grand scheme of things where a typical
release has been on the order of 3-5 years total, we're about half-way.
How many years between S8 and S9?

Also, not to forget, that a fair number of the "interesting" features
from OpenSolaris have been back-ported to Solaris 10, so it's not like
there's been an enormous stagnation even in the current "enterprise"
release of Solaris. How many other UNIX/Linux OSes do what Sun has been
doing to S10? Oh, NONE, that's right.

To make a desktop OS work as a data center OS is not remotely the best
engineering practice. Could you run Solaris 8 on a desktop? Sure. But why?
It wasn't practical. Could you use Windows 95 as a server? Probably many did.
But why? That wasn't its intended use.

That's a horrible argument. The foundations of OpenSolaris and SXDE
are identical. Essentially, you're arguing that Ubuntu Desktop and
Ubuntu Server couldn't possibly have come from the same codebase, and
the effort to produce one from the other is doomed to failure.

Now the OS is going to be retrofitted to make it an enterprise server? With
Solaris you can choose what you want to install. Not so with OpenSolaris. You
get what you're told.

Oh, please. Go read Shawn's reply to this thread.

I'm probably old school, however, the barrier to adoption is probably right,
but with those installers like RHEL and SuSE have, everything is going
web-based and you need Java installed to open a console. Give me a Putty
session and connect me via ALOM and I'm ready to go with my Jumpstart server!
'boot net - install' and off and running.

Interactive installers are almost inevitably going to be a GUI of some
kind, given that the overriding desire when using a interactive
installer is Flexibility. As the cost of maintaining 2 different
interactive installers is non-trivial, it's a valid assumption that
those normally interested in a text installer would be equally well
served by some form of automated install (AI/Jumpstart/et al). After
all, text installers are heavily (if not exclusively) used by Enterprise
folks, and it's a valid assumption that an enterprise will have
automated install servers set up.AI still definitely need some work,
so I'm not going to stand here and claim OpenSolaris has a
ready-for-prime-time text/enterprise install solution, but it's
certainly on the radar and under active development. AI will provide
the exact same experience of "boot net - install" you crave. In fact,
it kinda (though not completely) already does.

I've always viewed the EOL of the SXDE stuff as the point-in-time where
development for OpenSolaris/Solaris Next takes a turn from focusing on
"early-adopter" focus (i.e. features which try to bring in new users),
and moves towards stabilizing existing features and fixing
enterprise-service functionality holes.

Honestly, I'd assume there are about 2 years more work to go into
OpenSolaris before Solaris Next emerges. Not that I have any
extra-sensory powers here (or inside info).

Also, people, please don't forget that Solaris Next != OpenSolaris. I
like to think of the relationship as with Ubuntu's Desktop and Server
flavors - built on the same foundation, but with different
customizations, depending on their target audience. With the ending of
SXDE, the dev tree for Solaris Next and OpenSolaris is currently the
same, but at some point in the not-so-distant-future, they'll re-fork again.

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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?


Mike knows all of this I believe, so this is mainly for others:

On 01/28/10 11:11 PM, Mike Gerdts wrote:

In my mind the key things that seem to be missing for it to be able to
take the baton from Solaris 10 are:

...

- The ability to host all of the media required on my own install servers


Planned; non-technical issues have made this difficult.  It was provided 
for the 2009.06 release.



- The ability to install software from a file


Missed 2010.03; already in progress for the next.


- Speed improvements for pkg command, particularly on CMT


There have been significant performance improvements to the point where 
many operations can take less than a second (or 500ms even) now on x86 
systems.  However, significant optimisation work remains for SPARC/CMT.



- Package signing to ensure integrity of bits delivered.


Tentatively scheduled for the next release.


- Refactor package names


Coming in the next build or so I believe.  Some of this has already been 
done.


Cheers,
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

I just had to play some more whack-a-mole and kill yet another one of these 
unnecessary services:

# svcadm disable avahi-bridge-dsd:default

and what does:

svc:/application/desktop-cache/mime-types-cache:default

do? And why is it running right now on my minimalized headless server that has 
X-windows disabled?

There should be an official minimal OpenSolaris Indiana distribution so that we 
aren't forced to use Milax or Nexenta Core to get that high performance, 
streamlined and minimalized headless server OS that many of us are looking for. 
Right now JeOS OpenSolaris only seems to work for VM images. A live CD distro 
that boots to a text prompt might with a static IP address might be nice to 
play around with in a lot of instances...

>Yes, but I just had to do the following two commands on an OpenSolaris Indiana 
>>snv_129 server that a client was evaluating:

>#svcadm disable multicast:default
>#svcadm disable cups/scheduler:default

>so cups and multicast dns were running in the default install, which is fine 
>and dandy >on a desktop, such as the OpenSolaris desktop I do work on, but I 
>was going to >benchmark this server for a client to show them what OpenSolaris 
>can (or can't) do >as a minimalized headless server and I'm trying to squeeze 
>out every last bit of >performance here.

>It's not going to be a print server so there's no need for cups ;-)
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

SMF is already filled up with so much stuff that at a certain point, it starts 
to become overwhelming from a sysadmin persective just to parse through the 
output of svcs -a and now the goal is to add even more stuff to it by getting 
rid of scripting during package installation and offloading all of that stuff 
to SMF as well! Jeepers creepers this is going to be tough to admin!

SysV packages had shell scripts in them, or at least I think they did, but then 
again I'm no UNIX expert.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Erik Trimble


Shawn Walker wrote:

On 01/28/10 10:50 PM, Anon Y Mous wrote:

With the OpenSolaris distribution, you install a relatively small core
(that is supported), and then you add pieces to that.


U, OpenSolaris might be an improvement over Solaris 10 in some 
ways (i.e. pkg image-update being better than live upgrade) but any 
OS that forces you to install a full on GNOME desktop (whether you 
want it or not) is certainly not a "relatively small core". If you 
want so see what a "small core" looks like, I recommend that you try 
installing FreeBSD or OpenBSD some time.


FreeBSD is starting to look particularly interesting because it has a 
lot of the same great features that OpenSolaris does, but it gives 
you a much smaller minimal installation footprint (just SSH and a 
command line and man pages and a ports tree and nothing else) which 
makes FreeBSD look good for people who develop embedded devices while 
OpenSolaris looks bad (i.e. you don't want a full on GNOME desktop 
running in an embedded server appliance).


Everyone's definition of a minimal OS is different since their 
definition reflects their own needs.  For example, for a desktop user, 
their core OS includes GNOME, etc.


Shawn hits the problem right on the head. Minimal installs for me 
wouldn't include man pages, but X server apps.  With the old Solaris 
method of packaging, the only pretty much usable install was everything. 
SUNWxallNow, with IPS, we at least have given everyone the option to 
create their own, well-understood install image, customized according to 
YOUR needs.


More importantly, custom installs from a LiveCD (or, frankly, any 
interactive media) aren't a valid Enterprise method of handling things. 
Automated installs are the way to go, and efforts to allow for distro 
customization belong there, not in a interactive installer, which it 
intended (by definition) as a 1-off.  Supporting N different "install 
flavors" for 1-offs is foolhardy, as we're always going to be making 
someone unhappy.  The current LiveCD is a reasonable compromise for a 
single image for 1-offs, and AI and related technologies are available 
for wide customization.  There's still some work to be done on AI, and 
we indeed should think about maybe tweeking the LiveCD, but efforts to 
support customization in the LiveCD install are (IMHO) misplaced.  
Frankly, the only thing I'd like the LiveCD to support in terms of 
customization is to have the ability of the LiveCD installer to point to 
an AI server, and have the AI server provide the install profile & 
software.


--
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Alan Coopersmith

Shawn Walker wrote:
>> - Refactor package names
> 
> Coming in the next build or so I believe.  Some of this has already been
> done.

Package renaming missed 132 and is trying for 133, but refactoring package
contents won't be until after 2010.03.   (Fortunately, it will be easier to
do that once the consolidations are building IPS only - we won't have to
worry about keeping in sync with the old SVR4 rules like separate root
vs. usr or the old SVR4 cluster boundaries like "no docs in end user
cluster".)

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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Erik Trimble


Anon Y Mous wrote:

SMF is already filled up with so much stuff that at a certain point, it starts 
to become overwhelming from a sysadmin persective just to parse through the 
output of svcs -a and now the goal is to add even more stuff to it by getting 
rid of scripting during package installation and offloading all of that stuff 
to SMF as well! Jeepers creepers this is going to be tough to admin!

SysV packages had shell scripts in them, or at least I think they did, but then 
again I'm no UNIX expert.
  
That's a valid complaint, and I don't think the answer is set in stone 
yet - that is, theres still room for ideas as to where to implement such 
functionality. SVR4 packages did indeed allow (arbitrary) shells 
scripts, both pre- and post-install (and pre- and post-remove).   This 
is a useful function, and discussions on it and related topics belong 
over ininstall-disc...@opensolaris.org


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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Erik Trauschke

> It appears that this site was left behind  on sun's
> servers and was not added to oracle.com like the rest
> of sun's products. I hope it's not a bad sign.

Just think a second why it has always been opensolaris.org and not 
sun.com/opensolaris ...
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Jason King

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 9:18 PM, Shawn Walker  wrote:
> On 01/28/10 09:07 PM, Jason King wrote:
>>
>> I seem to recall the whole point of the project Indiana (now
>> OpenSolaris the distribution) versus SXCE was to have a desktop
>> oriented distribution (with the idea of trying to entice developers
>> from other *nix variants).  Hence the prioritization of the graphical
>> installer before a text-based one (thus x86 before sparc), interactive
>> installations before automated ones, nwam being the default, bash
>> being the default shell, GNU utilities being the default, etc.  If
>> someone wants to argue those are appropriate for a server setting
>> instead of a desktop, I'd like to know the name of their pharmacist =]
>
> Given that almost all of the bits of functionality you mentioned above are
> often found in GNU/Linux server distributions too, I don't see the issue.
>  Yes, some of the bits were prioritised before others, but I've used (and
> installed) numerous GNU/Linux distributions in the past that used graphical
> installers, automated network configuration, GNU utilities, and bash as the
> default shell :)

The pieces prioritized were those most geared for the desktop -- as I
said (but perhaps wasn't clear) I don't think that's necessarily wrong
(I won't rehash the implications of a GNU userland in the context of
Solaris, that's been beaten to death, and will hopefully become a moot
point between the stuff I and Roland have been doing is complete), but
it does mean that currently the lack of usability at the server level
is a valid criticism (for now, I'm hopeful it will not continue to be
one).  My point was that to pretend that's not the case (even if the
eventual goal is to make sure it's equally suitable for both desktop
and the enterprise) when all the historical evidence suggests
otherwise just looks bad.

The desktop was prioritized first, but now more work is being done to
make it more suitable for the enterprise (and I do actually see that
btw).  No matter what the choice is, in the world of finite resources,
someone's going to be disappointed, so I don't know that any
particular order is necessarily 'better'.   It just is what is it is,
but don't pretend it's not -- that's all I'm suggesting.

> Somehow, I don't think those are issues that are a large barrier to
> adoption.  And yes, I remember installing operating systems from *tape* and
> floppy disk...you want to talk about barriers!

But there still are barriers (at the moment) for adoption in the
enterprise.  No I don't think they're insurmountable, nor that the
won't get addressed (I do actually read pkg-discuss, so I do see the
work that's going on, and see that it's being worked on), but the
barriers are there for the moment.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-28 Thread Richard L. Hamilton

> > To make a desktop OS work as a data center OS is
> not
> > remotely the best engineering practice.  Could you
> > run Solaris 8 on a desktop?  Sure.  But why?  It
> > wasn't practical.  Could you use Windows 95 as a
> > server?  Probably many did.  But why?  That wasn't
> > its intended use.
> And where is that Solaris now? The most widespread
> server enterprise OS are Windows Server 2003/2008 and
> different Linux distributions.  
> It's the worst policy: "we are cool server OS for
> REALLY BIG SPARC SERVERS". It made Solaris 10... not
> very popular. How many good Solaris admins can you
> find? How much do they want to earn? And every
> student can manage Windows 2003 after some months of
> training. It is like Win XP. (Yes, it may have in
> some type different architecture, it's not easy to
> administrate it correctly (as every other OS), but it
> looks familiar and simple).
> Linux was the most available Unix-like OS. And after
> people had tried it, they didn't want to study
> commercial Unix (Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and other
> monsters). These OS looked unfamiliar and strange. 
> RedHat appeared as mass spread desktop Linux. Ubuntu
> is the most wide spread desktop Linux - and now it
> goes to server market.  I heard a lot some wishes for
> Oracle to officially support Ubuntu Server... 
> And do you really say that Oracle will close
> OpenSolaris project? It is the most stupid step they
> can do. The popularity of OS is determined not only
> by its quality, but even more (do you remember Win 98
> servers in SMB area ?) by its community 

Nice rant.  There may even be some truth to it.  The big iron only
approach does tend to shut out newcomers.

A few points though:

* I don't think Ubuntu is the top desktop Unix-like OS,
that would probably be Mac OS X.  (in terms of actual desktops in use,
not necessarily downloads, since a lot of downloads are just people
playing around, e.g. I've got a VirtualBox VM with Ubuntu Studio in it, but
I hardly ever _use_ it; and Mac OS X isn't (legitimately) available for 
download anyway).

* if I'm dealing with lots of servers (small or large), I want automated 
installs and
serial (or better, network access via an RSC or ALOM) console access.  
Non-graphical,
no click-monkeys allowed.  Probably the server won't need _any_ of X11 
installed,
although sometimes it might.  _Obviously_ I don't want just a character console 
for
my desktop, but desktops aren't really running much more than browsers and word
processors, and occasionally website prototypes or the like.  Now with some 
sort of
distributed scheduler, unused desktop cycles might be doing more than that, but 
those
things would require uniform (automated) installs, and probably OpenMPI (which a
non-developer desktop not sharing cycles probably wouldn't need).  So not only 
big
servers, but even many little desktops, mean that enterprise features can't be
neglected for the sake of eye candy.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-29 Thread ed

> 
> Just think a second why it has always been
> opensolaris.org and not sun.com/opensolaris ...


  now, i get it,  only what was under sun.com was added.  I thought once the 
sale was finale  also SUN's opensource projects were  going to  to be added to  
oracle.com.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-29 Thread ed

> SMF is already filled up with so much stuff that at a
> certain point, it starts to become overwhelming from
> a sysadmin persective just to parse through the
> output of svcs -a and now the goal is to add even
> more stuff to it by getting rid of scripting during
> package installation and offloading all of that stuff
> to SMF as well! Jeepers creepers this is going to be
> tough to admin!
> 
> SysV packages had shell scripts in them, or at least
> I think they did, but then again I'm no UNIX expert.

 this may help
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-1985/hbrunlevels-25516?a=view
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-29 Thread Casper . Dik


>> SMF is already filled up with so much stuff that at a
>> certain point, it starts to become overwhelming from
>> a sysadmin persective just to parse through the
>> output of svcs -a and now the goal is to add even
>> more stuff to it by getting rid of scripting during
>> package installation and offloading all of that stuff
>> to SMF as well! Jeepers creepers this is going to be
>> tough to admin!
>> 
>> SysV packages had shell scripts in them, or at least
>> I think they did, but then again I'm no UNIX expert.
>
> this may help
>http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-1985/hbrunlevels-25516?a=view


For some reason, "package scripts" were apparently "very bad".

Unfortunately, it seems that the cure is worse.

There are two parts which I really detest:

- all the additional scripts are run at boot; they do take time
  and much more than you realize because they are all run with
  a cold cache (i.e., all the files needed needed to be found and
  loaded; a few of the "startup-scripts-only-needed-after-a-package
  was-update" run find.

- "svcs" is now nearly useless: you can't see the forest for the 
   trees

I think this clearly needs some architecture applied to it.

There are some issues with IPS also; it takes a lot of memory
(500 to 1500MBs) and it's a lot slower than SVr4 package install.
(On an Ultra 40 with 5GB, it takes about 80 minutes to install 
"redistributable" from a local package server.  That's more time
needed to install SXCE and the latter installs more software [25 minutes].

(Yes, I do use "redistributable" having to continuously add extra
packages cost more of my time than the local bandwidth: I believe this
is a fair comparison; both were installed from a local server over a
100Mbit net and install a similar amount of software)

While "memory is cheap" it makes IPS not scale to multiple concurrent
zones and makes it impossible to fit on small memory systems (2GB seems
to be the minimal if you want to install redistributable)

Clearly, serious work needs to be done and I suppose it is good that 
everyone in the Solaris engineering community is now forced to use IPS.

Casper

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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

So show me win 2003/2008 for sparc...

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:12 PM, Alexander  wrote:

> > To make a desktop OS work as a data center OS is not
> > remotely the best engineering practice.  Could you
> > run Solaris 8 on a desktop?  Sure.  But why?  It
> > wasn't practical.  Could you use Windows 95 as a
> > server?  Probably many did.  But why?  That wasn't
> > its intended use.
> And where is that Solaris now? The most widespread server enterprise OS are
> Windows Server 2003/2008 and different Linux distributions.
> It's the worst policy: "we are cool server OS for REALLY BIG SPARC
> SERVERS". It made Solaris 10... not very popular. How many good Solaris
> admins can you find? How much do they want to earn? And every student can
> manage Windows 2003 after some months of training. It is like Win XP. (Yes,
> it may have in some type different architecture, it's not easy to
> administrate it correctly (as every other OS), but it looks familiar and
> simple).
> Linux was the most available Unix-like OS. And after people had tried it,
> they didn't want to study commercial Unix (Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and other
> monsters). These OS looked unfamiliar and strange.
> RedHat appeared as mass spread desktop Linux. Ubuntu is the most wide
> spread desktop Linux - and now it goes to server market.  I heard a lot some
> wishes for Oracle to officially support Ubuntu Server...
> And do you really say that Oracle will close OpenSolaris project? It is the
> most stupid step they can do. The popularity of OS is determined not only by
> its quality, but even more (do you remember Win 98 servers in SMB area ?) by
> its community 
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-29 Thread Anon Y Mous

> So show me win 2003/2008 for sparc...

I think there is a version of Windows Server 2003 for those big HP-UX Itanium 
boxes:

  http://www.microsoft.com/servers/64bit/itanium/overview.mspx

I think it's called "Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition" and Microsoft 
claims that it scales to 512 processors and 1,000 terrabytes of RAM or some 
B.S.? I heard that it's probably the second most expensive server operating 
system out there after maybe IBM's Mainframe stuff (i.e. z/OS and friends) 
which I think we can all agree is the most expensive platform to run a server 
on but HP-UX and Windows Server 2003 Datacenter for Itanium are way up 
there in terms of cost. Microsoft does not even publicly post the price for 
Windows Server 2003 Itanium, because if you have to ask how much it costs... 
you can't afford it.

I personally can't see why anyone would use Windoze for anything else besides 
playing video games and collecting viruses anyway.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-29 Thread Alexander Pyhalov


john g4lt wrote:

So show me win 2003/2008 for sparc...


So show me SPARC :)  It's another difficult question - the price and 
popularity (i.e. its absence) of this  hardware, which caused Sun fault.
IBM (or even Sun) x64 blade costs about 3.000$. And Sun SPARC blade 
costs 10.000$. They are comparable (and Intel/AMD blade nowadays may be 
faster). So how should I explain our manager, that SPARC hardware is so 
good? Is it really 3 times better?


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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

Honestly, you shouldn't.  If the advantages of a given system aren't
screamingly obvious, you're trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.
However, the fact that you'll never see a windows version for sparc is an
extremely good plus in my book.  Windows is for games, and if you can play
games on it, it shouldn't be in the datacenter.  Explain to your manager
that he can have his nice game systems, and when he wants to grow up and do
real computing, hope to god that someone out there has kept the last
strictly Serious Computing platform alive and well.

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:10 AM, Alexander Pyhalov  wrote:

> john g4lt wrote:
>
>> So show me win 2003/2008 for sparc...
>>
>
> So show me SPARC :)  It's another difficult question - the price and
> popularity (i.e. its absence) of this  hardware, which caused Sun fault.
> IBM (or even Sun) x64 blade costs about 3.000$. And Sun SPARC blade costs
> 10.000$. They are comparable (and Intel/AMD blade nowadays may be faster).
> So how should I explain our manager, that SPARC hardware is so good? Is it
> really 3 times better?
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Alexander Pyhalov,
> system administrator of Computer Center of South Federal University
>
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-29 Thread Erik Trimble


Alexander Pyhalov wrote:

john g4lt wrote:

So show me win 2003/2008 for sparc...


So show me SPARC :)  It's another difficult question - the price and 
popularity (i.e. its absence) of this  hardware, which caused Sun fault.
IBM (or even Sun) x64 blade costs about 3.000$. And Sun SPARC blade 
costs 10.000$. They are comparable (and Intel/AMD blade nowadays may 
be faster). So how should I explain our manager, that SPARC hardware 
is so good? Is it really 3 times better?
Not to be a pain, but nowdays, AMD/Intel x64 processors and SPARC 
hardware have different targets, and thus, different featuresets, and 
aren't really apples-to-apples comparisons.   The various Niagara (and 
followon) processors kick the living crap out of even super-new 
Westmere/Nehalem or Istanbul CPUs in certain areas (compute/W, 
simultaneous threads, etc.), while not even the high-end Fijitsu SPARC64 
chips can compete against AMD/Intel on limited-thread (e.g. single or 
dual-thread) apps.Overall system design is also critically important 
when determining performance for various workloads.


As usual, the answer is more complex.  To reply to your question:  YES, 
in some cases, paying 3x for a SPARC is more than worth it.  In other 
cases, you'd be an idiot to pay even equal amounts for a SPARC vs. x64. 

Take a look at AMD's new offerings coming this year - they're looking at 
splitting their targets up, going with higher thread count/lower 
frequency for some areas (Magny Cours) and low thread count/high 
frequency (Sao Paulo).  It's all about market segmentation.


--
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Java System Support
Mailstop:  usca22-123
Phone:  x17195
Santa Clara, CA
Timezone: US/Pacific (GMT-0800)

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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-29 Thread Alexander

> I personally can't see why anyone would use Windoze
> for anything else besides playing video games and
> collecting viruses anyway.
1) AD Sever - there is no alternatives, samba 4 is regrettably in permanent 
alpha state...
2) You can use IIS or Apache, Windows DHCP Server, Terminal and file Server. 
They are quite functional and easy to start with. A SMB server may be 
constructed in one day by not very skilled and cheap staff.
3) Our several windows servers (VMWare server, Oracle 10 Server (old legacy 
staff :(. In fact we don't need it, but some old applications are not easy to 
rewrite)  + several others) have never caught any viruses. (However, we would 
be happy to change them with FreeBSD or something more adequate, but it is 
quite hard and in AD case impossible:)).
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

IIS with Solaris boxes in the same subnet is Bad.  ever hear of the sadmind
worm?  it infected via a IIS host and ran the sadmind exploit on all Solaris
boxes in its subnet

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:59 AM, Alexander  wrote:

> > I personally can't see why anyone would use Windoze
> > for anything else besides playing video games and
> > collecting viruses anyway.
> 1) AD Sever - there is no alternatives, samba 4 is regrettably in permanent
> alpha state...
> 2) You can use IIS or Apache, Windows DHCP Server, Terminal and file
> Server. They are quite functional and easy to start with. A SMB server may
> be constructed in one day by not very skilled and cheap staff.
> 3) Our several windows servers (VMWare server, Oracle 10 Server (old legacy
> staff :(. In fact we don't need it, but some old applications are not easy
> to rewrite)  + several others) have never caught any viruses. (However, we
> would be happy to change them with FreeBSD or something more adequate, but
> it is quite hard and in AD case impossible:)).
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-29 Thread Alexander

> IIS with Solaris boxes in the same subnet is Bad. 
> ever hear of the sadmind worm?  it infected via a IIS
> host and ran the sadmind exploit on all Solaris boxes
Cool. I always suspected that running IIS is bad. But I haven't expected that 
Solaris is also so vulnerable... It's good that we don't have a lot of Windows 
or Solaris servers...  :)
But seriously speaking every system may have vulnerabilities. There are no 
ideal software. There are no software without bugs. But bugs and some features 
of several systems I expect (because I work with this systems regularly, e.g. I 
have several dozens of FreeBSD servers). And other systems are much more 
mysterious for me (such as Win2008). If I worked with Windows (or any other OS) 
regularly I think it would be more secure for me to run it, and not other OS.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-29 Thread Bayard Bell

Running exploitable code with a wide-open listener is bad, so if you  
don't want chained attacks from one exploitable service to the other,  
you're going to need a better protection baseline than subnet  
segregation (which shouldn't be mistaken for a form of security  
domain, certainly not if you're running on the same switch domain  
without at least a packet filter, preferably stateful, between  
domains), to deal with older attack patterns. Better yet would be to  
disable or patch exploitable services or limit accessibility of the  
service via firewalling and secured port forwarding (e.g. ssh for  
protection against address spoofing and session hijacking).


Am 29 Jan 2010 um 14:33 schrieb john g4lt:

IIS with Solaris boxes in the same subnet is Bad.  ever hear of the  
sadmind worm?  it infected via a IIS host and ran the sadmind  
exploit on all Solaris boxes in its subnet


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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

Your best protection is knowledge of how things broke in the past to prevent
future occurences, not in whiz-bang hardware

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 9:01 AM, Bayard Bell <
buffer.g.overf...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> Running exploitable code with a wide-open listener is bad, so if you don't
> want chained attacks from one exploitable service to the other, you're going
> to need a better protection baseline than subnet segregation (which
> shouldn't be mistaken for a form of security domain, certainly not if you're
> running on the same switch domain without at least a packet filter,
> preferably stateful, between domains), to deal with older attack patterns.
> Better yet would be to disable or patch exploitable services or limit
> accessibility of the service via firewalling and secured port forwarding
> (e.g. ssh for protection against address spoofing and session hijacking).
>
> Am 29 Jan 2010 um 14:33 schrieb john g4lt:
>
>
>  IIS with Solaris boxes in the same subnet is Bad.  ever hear of the
>> sadmind worm?  it infected via a IIS host and ran the sadmind exploit on all
>> Solaris boxes in its subnet
>>
>
>
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-29 Thread Shawn Walker


On 01/29/10 04:14 AM, casper@sun.com wrote:

There are some issues with IPS also; it takes a lot of memory
(500 to 1500MBs) and it's a lot slower than SVr4 package install.


As an in-development project, memory usage greatly fluctuates.  Until 
recently, a install of redistributable took a lot less memory than that. 
 The project is aware of this particular issue that recently recurred 
however, and is actively researching ways to further reduce memory 
footprint.



(On an Ultra 40 with 5GB, it takes about 80 minutes to install
"redistributable" from a local package server.  That's more time
needed to install SXCE and the latter installs more software [25 minutes].

(Yes, I do use "redistributable" having to continuously add extra
packages cost more of my time than the local bandwidth: I believe this
is a fair comparison; both were installed from a local server over a
100Mbit net and install a similar amount of software)


The redistributable case is currently the "worst-case scenario". 
Significant performance work has been done and continues.


While installs are not yet as fast as we'd like, image-updates are 
significantly faster than live upgrade which is something to keep in mind.



While "memory is cheap" it makes IPS not scale to multiple concurrent
zones and makes it impossible to fit on small memory systems (2GB seems
to be the minimal if you want to install redistributable)


The current memory usage footprint is definitely not the ultimate 
target, and as recently as a few days ago, further reductions have 
already been made.


The pkg(5) project appreciates and encourages any constructive feedback 
either through pkg-discuss or via defect.opensolaris.org under 
'development -> pkg'.


Cheers,
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-29 Thread Orvar Korvar

What happens to JavaFX?
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-29 Thread Peter Tribble

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 10:31 PM, Orvar Korvar
 wrote:
> What happens to JavaFX?

Well, they talked about that. See, for example, a summary here:

http://learnjavafx.typepad.com/weblog/2010/01/oracle-we-will-invest-heavily-in-javafx.html

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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-29 Thread Gary

Why didn't Sun use the engineering path of FreeBSD and OpenBSD, namely the 
-release, -stable, -current branches instead of doing the OpenSolaris thing to 
pry it into the next Solaris 10 successor?

For example, FreeBSD had the framework for virtual networking in the 7.2 
release and it is available in 8.0, although it isn't ready for production, but 
should be in 8.1.

Why couldn't Crossbow had been put in Solaris -current and then it makes its 
way into Solaris -release?  When ready for production release it becomes 
Solaris 11.

OpenSolaris is more like OpenBSD forking from NetBSD.  OpenBSD is NOT NetBSD 
and vice versa.  OpenSolaris may be a fork of Solaris, but it IS a different 
operating system.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?

2010-01-29 Thread W. Wayne Liauh

> What happens to JavaFX?

Larry Ellison rarely, if ever, commented on any specific product of the 
companies that he acquired.  JavaFX is probably the only exception.  The words 
he used were that he encouraged OpenOffice.org developers to "write 
OpenOffice.org libraries in JavaFX".

Many commentators (including at least a couple of bloggers from the old Sun) 
interpreted his words as that the good ol' Larry wanting to rewrite OOo in 
JavaFX and immediately laughed at that thought.  As a card carrying member of 
Chairman Larry's fan club, I really think his words meant something more 
focused and much simpler.

Microsoft generated $20 billion in profit in 2008 from selling and servicing 
Microsoft Office.  This a very significant numbe--considering Microsoft "only" 
made $22 billion profit for the whole year.  In comparison, the old Sun 
probably took home no more than $20 dollars from OpenOffice (which includes 
StarOffice).  Again, this comparison is very significant, considering that 
OpenOffice is the ONLY alternative to Microsoft Office.

Strictly based on technical considerations, the main reason that OOo is not (or 
cannot be) used by corporations, from my own experience, is that the macro 
language in OOo (StarBasic) is no where near that of VirtualBasic.  As heavy 
office suite users, we NEVER generate any document from scratch, but always 
start with a template or running a macro.  The capabilities of OOo are, at 
least AFAIC, not much different from those of Microsoft Office.  But the 
inferiority of StarBasic compared to VB is what stopped OOo from being 
considered by corporations (and from generating any profit).

Thus, if the OOo developers could make JavaFX an easy-to-program macro language 
for OOo, allowing OOo to easily invoke the power of Java, the table, vis-a-vis 
Microsoft Office, could begin to turn (& the pony hair might still be able to 
keep his job).  I believe this is what Ellison meant, but I seem to be the only 
crazy idiot with this thought.

Chairman Larry also mentioned netbooks (I knew the netbooks are doing very 
well, but never in my wildest contemplation that its sales could reach $ 11.6B 
in only its second full year).  Ellison never mentioned any specific OS, except 
only stated that Android may not be the right OS for netbooks.  Well, if (and a 
very big IF) OpenSolaris can be made to be (much) lighter and boot (much) 
faster (e.g., making OpenSolaris primarily as a front end to run IPS and 
JavaFX, and run OOo cloud), this thought may not be as stupid as it seems.
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Re: [osol-discuss] What's Going to Happen to OpenSolaris?