I came across a strange little networking problem earlier today. The client in question had needed to be rebooted earlier in the day. The server had had no changes made to it. The problem only started occurring after the reboot of the client. We had an NFS directory on the server that the client’s subnet had access to. However when we tried to mount the directory (via the automounter) it failed with a permission denied Read more
Another ‘damn! I keep forgetting how to do that!’ post… When you want to display something from one unix box to another there are two ways of doing it. 1. Use ssh. You need to use ‘ssh -X’ specifically which will allow X11 forwarding. ssh takes care of setting the DISPLAY variable for you. You also need to ensure that the server is configured for X forwarding: [sourcecode language=’php’]# X11 tunneling options X11Forwarding yes X11DisplayOffset Read more
Every now and again an install on a new machine fails for me and I have to google to remember how to change the label. So this time I’m writing it down! Docs.sun.com has some information on the differences between the two formats http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-5093/disksconcepts-47761?l=en&a=view But suffice to say that you cant install Solaris on an EFI disk, you need to change it to an SMI label. Thats done using ‘format -e’. Select the label option, Read more
At Home I run windows 7 on my laptop. And in order to run Opensolaris I use virtualbox. Virtualbox in case you dont know about it basically allows you to run an operating system within your main OS. You can also run windows on an opensolaris machine for example. I had fallen behind a bit with my virtualbox and opensolaris versions so decided to upgrade everything over the past couple of days. First I upgraded Read more
We’ve had some eventful days. We had fun and we kicked butt as Scott would say. We changed the world. We were part of the greatest technology company the world has ever seen. We changed computing forever – repeatedly. And in a few minutes we’ll learn what the future holds with Oracle. I hope Oracle is ready for Sun! Read more
Opensolaris users may be familiar with browsing repositories in firefox. To look through the latest Develpoment repo for example you just open up http://pkg.opensolaris.org/dev in your browser. Things are a little more complicated for the extras and support repos though. Firstly you need to register to get access to these repos. Anyone can get access tot he extra repo, only supported customers can get access to the support repo. Go to http://pkg.sun.com/register and follow the Read more
I hit an interesting problem tonight with jumpstart. Or old timeserver has gone away and the jumpstart clients are now going into interactive installs asking for the user to set the time. We rely heavily on automated installs so this needed to be fixed. The solution was obvious I thought. I’ll just set up one of our servers as a ntp server and tell the jumpstart clients to query that in the sysidcfg files. The Read more
Recently I had a discussion with some folks about ways to identify change in a workspace. In particular if there were ways where we could judge the risk associated with changes without needing to know the specifics of the changes or being told by the engineers. In Opensolaris for example there are flag days. These coincide with putbacks where a project team has identified major change and tells you about it. We have something similar Read more
There is a blueprint available on Patching mirrored systems using live upgrade. This document will take you through the steps needed to create an alternate boot environment and how to patch it. Why bother? Well by using Live Upgrade you can drastically reduce downtime as you are applying patches to a non-running boot environment. You just need one reboot to make everything active. If you run into problems you can easily reboot back into the Read more
There was an interesting segment on RTE’s "Capital D" program tonight about the work that Shamrock Rovers do in the community. The video feed is at http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0426/capitald.html The initiative from Shamrock Rovers include providing scolarships for payers to gain 3rd level qualifications. Just in case they dont make millions playing football! Also some schoolkids are featured whose training gear, school books and uniforms are paid for by Shamrock Rovers. Shamrock Rovers – Building The Future Read more