http://www.laptopsolaris.com How to get the best from Solaris in a mobile environment Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:57:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This article, Transition to AIX from Solaris is all about moving away from Solaris to the AIX System p environment, which may sound like completely the wrong topic for here. In fact, the article contains a few interesting notes about zones and containers, and is a pretty good comparison of ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2008/10/29/transition-to-aix-from-solaris/ Inspired by a recent discussion on Xen Discuss about what different virtualization solutions were available from Sun I thought I'd take the information provided by Volker A. Brandt and Bernd Schemmer and put it into a convenient table. NameSparcx86MethodOS KernelGuest OS xVM-Xsoftware(1)manyvarious VirtualBox-Xsoftwaremanyvarious Containers/ZonesXXsoftwareoneSolaris/branded LDOMsX-hardwaremanySolaris(2) Domains (Mx000 series)X-hardwaremanySolaris Domains (E10K, SF##K series, v1280, v4800)X-hardwaremanySolaris, Linux Footnotes (1) with ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2008/10/26/summarizing-virtualization-technologies-from-sun/ While looking for some information on OpenSolaris in preparation for my talk this week I came across some excellent material providing backgrounds on OpenSolaris for both instructors and students. The material is part of the Curriculum Development Resources at OpenSolaris.org and is available as PDFs for download. The documents are ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2008/10/24/teaching-opensolaris/ Not exactly portable (unless you have a container lorry or ship handy), but I'd love to have one of Sun's Sun's Modular Datacenters available to use. The Modular Datacenter (otherwise known as Project Blackbox) squeezes 7 or 8 racks, depending on the the configuration fits 240 or 280 Us of ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2008/10/20/more-datacenters-in-a-container/ As Solaris gets more and more popular I'm seeing more and more people running Solaris on a laptop as their primary operating system. I've even got friends who have migrated over completely to Solaris from Linux. I've been using it for years and managed to tolerate some of the problems ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2008/10/18/resources-for-running-solaris-os-on-a-laptop/ So yesterday I mentioned the new Dell T105 I got on special offer. Setting up Solaris 10 on this new machine is a little more complex than I would have wanted, but it's now up and running fine. Here's what I did to get Solaris b81 working: 1. SXDE b81 ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2008/02/13/setting-up-the-new-t105/ I'm getting really deep into ZFS at the moment as I try and work out how best to use it in different environments and how it affects and alters performance on different loads. I've across some great ZFS resources, new and old, and blog posts surrounding using ZFS: Second Installment ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2008/02/13/zfs-resource-update/ I got a really good deal on some Dell servers. The T105's were on special offer starting at just 99GBP, and even with 3-year support contracts and 4GB RAM I managed to get both for less than 500 GBP (+VAT). That's a pretty good price for four cores of 64-bit ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2008/02/12/twin-64-bit-opterons/ Want to know whether your machine is capable of running Solaris? I came across the Sun Device Detection Tool, a Java application that you can run straight from the browser (it's a JNLP app) that will check the devices on your machine and then compare that against the devices known ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2008/02/10/determining-solaris-support-using-sun-device-detection-tool/ Not exactly a laptop, I reviewed Sun's Ultra 20M2 desktop last year and completely forgot to mention it. I loved the machine (it was fast, well configured and well put together) and I almost purchased my very own, until I got an alternative option just last week (of which more ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2008/02/09/sun-ultra-20m2-review/ This is more of a personal note than anything else, but hopefully it might filter to the top of web searches too. If you want to update the dynamic library loading path in Solaris 10 you must use the tool crle. If you want to add a path, say /usr/local/lib ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2007/08/09/updating-library-paths/ Just in case you think I've forgotten about things, I haven't, I'm just somewhat buried. What's been happening? Well Busy New Year will explain part of it. On the Sun/Solaris front: Sun shipped me a new card to fit into the T1000 to get some better performance on the network interface. ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2007/01/04/whats-going-on/ Frank Mash has started a brilliant series on making the best of running MySQL on the Solaris platform: Managing MySQL on Solaris 10: Part 1: Introduction Managing MySQL on Solaris 10: Part 2: Solaris Kernel Threads Model Managing MySQL on Solaris 10: Part 3: Inter-process communication Managing MySQL on Solaris 10: Part 4: ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2007/01/04/mysql-on-solaris/ Sun have announced a series of new servers and workstations, just as I finish up testing of the T1000 and begin testing of the Ultra 20M2. The key elements are: An updated version of the T2000 servers under the Netra brand, designed for the needs of the telecommunications industry An improvement to ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2006/09/22/sun-announces-new-servers-and-workstations/ Sun have released an updated list of PCI devices for Solaris x86; check this if you plan to run Solaris on your PC. PCI Device Support for Solaris OS on x86 Platforms http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2006/09/21/pci-device-list-for-solaris-x86/ I'm really only just getting used to the Sun Studio 11 environment after years of using gcc, so quick guides to the Sun Studio 11 command line environment are a great way to get familiar. There's just such a list on BigAdmin: Commands for Sun Studio 11 Software. There are some ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2006/09/20/sun-studio-11-commands/ My T1000 review at Computerworld has made it to the Sun News page. Cool! http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2006/09/18/t1000-cw-review-makes-sun-news-page/ Sun have very kindly me a sun Ultra 20M2 to test. I've only had it a few days, and already I'm hooked. The spec of the unit they have sent me is: 1 AMD Opteron Model 1218 Processor (Dual Core) 4GB RAM 250GB SATA HD NVIDIA Quadra FX 3500 Graphics Card 20" TFT LCD The LCD monitor ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2006/09/17/ultra-20m2-arrived/ A Sun engineer provides a detailed (and occasionally light-hearted) look at how to set up an X4200 server through a series of video guides on YouTube. Step 1: Anti-Static Setup Step 2: Hard Drive Install Step 3: PCI Card Install Step 4: DVD Install Step 5: Network Connection http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2006/09/13/video-guide-to-setting-up-the-x4200/ I noticed for the first time recently the ATA over Ethernet product from Coraid. There's a Solaris driver available (impressively in both SPARC binary, Solaris 7+ (direct download) and source (direct download), under a BSD-like license. The release notes are required reading too. ATA over Ethernet is an interesting concept, ... http://www.laptopsolaris.com/2006/09/11/ata-over-ethernet-for-solaris/