Rich Teer's Blog

Vinylphile issue 6 is ready for download!

2011-06-12T19:41:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

I know it's a little late, but I wanted to let you know that the sixth issue of Vinylphile is now available for download! This issue is a bit special for us, because it marks our first birthday! Yes, it was one year ago this month that we published the first issue of Vinylphile, and we're very happy with what we've achieved so far. If nothing else, it sets the bar for next year even higher!

Here's a direct download link to the current issue:

http://www.vinylphilemag.com/pdf/vinylphile-006.pdf

Enjoy, and as always, thanks for reading!

Vinylphile issue 5 is ready for download!

2011-03-15T11:20:00.000-07:00

Just a quick heads-up that issue 5 of Vinylphile is now available! You can download it for free from here:

http://www.vinylphilemag.com/pdf/vinylphile-005.pdf

Thanks for reading, and enjoy!

Vinylphile Issue 4 is now available!

2010-12-31T19:29:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

Just in time (literally!) for New Years, Issue 4 of Vinylphile is now ready for download! This issue contains more gear and music reviews than our previous issues, our RMAF 2010 photo essay, and more!

Here's a direct link to this issue:

http://www.vinylphilemag.com/pdf/vinylphile-004.pdf

Enjoy!

As always, thanks for reading. I hope you and yours have a very happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year!

Cheers,

Issue 2 of Vinylphile is now out!

2010-08-28T21:23:00.001-07:00

Just a quick line to say that Issue 2 of Vinylphile is now available for FREE download! Here's a direct download link (it's a 36 MB PDF file):

http://www.vinylphilemag.com/pdf/vinylphile-002.pdf

Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

OpenSolaris: RIP

2010-08-23T08:24:00.002-07:00

I've just finished participating in the last ever (in its current guise, anyway) OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) conference call. Due to Oracle's (arguably) criminal neglect of the OpenSolaris community and continued ignorance of requests for a conversation with the OGB, the latter felt that they had no option but to resign en masse, handing control of the community back to Oracle. I thought it ironically appropriate that I was wearing my "Pilot Member" limited edition OpenSolaris T-shirt for the call.

I'd like to thank everyone who's made contributions to OpenSolaris the past few years, especially those working tirelessly behind the scenes. Way to go guys; it's been a fun ride and I'm sad it's over.

And a big thanks to Oracle for screwing up what could have been the best open source collaberation on the planet.

OpenSolaris: June 14th, 2005 - August 23rd, 2010. RIP.

Announcing Vinylphile: a freely-downloadable, vinyl-centric audio mag

2010-06-04T14:06:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

As some of you know, I lost my computer programming job late in 2008. About a year ago I decided to put my (ahem) writing talent to use and publish a magazine about something I've loved almost my whole life: high-end audio and music (especially on vinyl). After a lot advice and encouragement from friends, acquaintances, and industry contacts--not to mention a LOT of hard work--I'm pleased to announce that today my dream has become a reality: I have just posted the first issue of Vinylphile! You can download it--for FREE--from here: http://www.vinylphilemag.com/pdf/vinylphile-001.pdf

I hope you enjoy reading the mag as much as I did putting it together!

Mad TV's iPad sketch

2010-04-05T14:32:00.003-07:00

How prophetic this (almost) 3-year old sketch about the iPad from MadTV was!

Vancouver 2010: What an amazing Winter Olympics!

2010-02-28T15:30:00.004-08:00

I'm not really into sports, so I'm kind of surprised by how into the Olympics I got over the last two weeks. Of course, being on home turf just 4 hours away helps a lot! :-)

Prior to this Olympics, Canada hadn't won a single gold medal on home soil. Now, two weeks later with 14 gold medals, we've smashed all sorts of records:

* Canada has the most number of gold medals of any winter Olympics.

* We also have the most number of gold medals on home turf of any winter Olympics.

* We have the most gold medals of the XXI Winter Olympics, which means that according to the IOC, Canada won the 2010 Winter Olympic games!

Jenny and I spent a few days in Vancouver last week soaking up the atmosphere. Although we didn't attend any actual events, the buzz there was incredible!

I know this might sound kinda corny, but I have never been more proud to be a Canadian. Go Canada Go!

Apple's iPad

2010-02-01T10:24:00.002-08:00

Apple recently announced their long-awaited iPad. Here's a very brief summary of my thoughts of this cool new widget:

* No camera for taking photos
* No iSight camera for visual comms (e.g., Skype)
* No built-in mic
* No multitasking
* No support for Java or Flash
* No phone capability

In other words,

* No thankyou!

It seems I'm not the only one disappointed by the iPad:

A New Year, A New Beginning...

2010-01-01T13:48:00.002-08:00

First things first: I'd like to wish my readers a very happy and prosperous New Year. Here's to 2010!

A new year is a great time for making changes, and 2010 is no different. To get straight to the point: I've had enough of being a technology professional, so (as Monty Python would say) it's time for something completely different. Yep, I no longer intend to try to earn a living as an IT professional (but I will always remain a geek; I'm changing my vocation, not losing my mind!).

I've been a geek for pretty much my whole life and computers have played a big part of that. From my Commodire PET 2001 in my early teens (like, 13 I think!) to my BBC Micro, I've nearly always had one or more computers at home. I never did get on the DOS/Windoze PC bandwagon (thankfully!), but it was only in the last 15 years or so I really got into real computers in a serious way.

Way back then, I acquired my first real computer, a Sun 3/80 workstation. I still have that machine here (ahh, nostalgia!), but I've gradually worked my way up through Sun's offerings as cash and my chosen career permitted/demanded. So for almost 15 years I've been a Solaris nut and specialist, but unfortunately since moving to Kelowna 11 years ago, paying Solaris gigs have been few and far between.

I love living here in Kelowna and don't like the idea of commuting to a big city to ply my trade. I did it for a while, but while the $$$ were great, the strain on my personal life wasn't worth it. I found a great job here in Kelowna 2.5 years ago, doing embedded systems development. But even that came to an end just over a year ago when the economy went into the shitter. :-(

It's taken me a while to admit this to myself, but earning a decent living as a Solaris specialist in Kelowna just isn't a realistic proposition. If I wanted to join the whoreds (sic) of Windoze-weenies, I could become a Windoze guy. But that just isn't going to happen: my loathing of all things Microsoft is far too strong for that!

Fortunately for me, there's something that I've loved for even longer than computers: music, especially music on vinyl. I've been a music lover my whole life. I've also been a long-term hifi nut (one of my first "dates" with Jenny was taking her to a hifi show in England!), and so I've decided to put the writing skills I learned courtesy of my book, Solaris Systems Programming, and the technical articles I've written over the past few years to work. I've decided to publish my own magazine. That's right: I'm in the process of starting up a freely-downloadable, vinyl-centric audio magazine called Vinylphile.

Vinylphile will contain reviews of records and everything needed to listen to records: turntables, tonearms, cartridges, amplifiers, speakers, cables, and various other audio accessories. Although it'll definately be vinyl-centric, the mag will not be vinyl-exclusive. It will contain some reviews of CD players and other digital gear--but the primary focus will be vinyl. The magazine will be free for everyone to download and read (it'll be distributed as a PDF file); the intent is that the ads that I sell in the mag and on its web site will enable me to pay the mortgage and put food on our table.

The business is very much in the start-up phase, but I've built the mag's web site at www.vinylphilemag.com. It's light on content at the moment, but interested people can sign up to the mailing list. I'll be adding more content in the weeks to come and plan to publish my first issue in April. If you're at all interested in music and/or hifi, please check out Vinylphile, and I hope you become a regular reader! And if you're going to CES or THE Show in Las Vegas next week and you want to get together, why not drop me a line?

I plan to blog a lot more about Vinylphile, but that's all for now folks! Stay tuned...

Enough of the PC BS! (And, Merry Xmas)

2009-12-19T17:07:00.003-08:00

And for once, I'm not referring to Personal Computers running Windoze!

This is the time of year when my (admitedly small) tolerance for political correctness is pushed past its bursting point. Just about anyone who says anything about this time of year (at least here in North America) refers to it as "the holidays", because they're worried they might offend others by referring to it by its proper name. For most people, its called Christmas, so call it Christmas!

Now, before I get accused of any religious bias or be called out for pushing my Christian views on the world, let me get one thing absolutely clear: I am an atheist, so I have no Christian views to push! (Anyone who does even a little research that Christmas was originally a pegan festival.) The point of my rant is this: call this time of year whatever is the correct thing for your beliefs; if you're a Jew, Hanukkah is obviously the correct term, and so on.

If someone wishes me a happy Hanukkah am I going to be offended? Absolutely not, for I will take it in the spirit in which it was meant. Why would I be offended by somone wishing me well?

Political correctness was invented to avoid offending people. Well guess what, nothing offends me more than political correctness! So call this time of year its correct name, and don't wimp out by calling it the holidays! Call it Christmas or Hanukkah, or anything else; anything but the holidays!

For me, this time of year is about peace on earth and goodwill to all men. So allow me to wish my readers a very merry Christmas, and a happy new year! I hope that you will be spending time with your loved ones and sparing a thought or two for those less fortunate. Peace...

The World's Most Advanced OS?

2009-10-28T10:43:00.002-07:00

A while ago Jenny bought herself a new laptop. There was no way we consider wasting money on a laptop running Windoze (you try buying a non-Apple laptop without paying Windoze tax!), so a MacBook Pro it was (I had some say in the machine's specs).

The Mac has some interesting features, and I like the way everything Just Works. MacOS is a bit different from Solaris, but it's really easy to pick up. So what's the point of this post? Apple touts Mac OS as "the world's most advanced OS", and that patently isn't so. Don't get me wrong: I like Mac OS (although I still find the idea of paying for an OS to be a bit grating), but the world's most advanced OS it isn't.

I'll raise just a couple of points to support my view.

1. Until the recent release of Mac OS Snow Leopard (10.6), Mac OS was a 32-bit only OS (Snow Leopard is apprently 64-bit--I can't confirm this cause I haven't got round to installing it yet). Colour me unimpressed: Solaris has been 64-bit clean the launch of Solaris 7, well over a decade ago! Also, Solaris' 64-bit kernel is quite capable of running brand new 64-bit apps and ancient 32-bit apps side by side. I don't know if Mac OS supports that.

2. Mac OS is based on (IIRC) FreeBSD. Not exactly the first OS that comes to mind for multithreaded scalability. How scalable is Mac OS? I guess we won't know because the biggest machine Apple sells is a piddly dual-socket, quad-core desktop. Big deal! Solaris scales from tiny single-core tiny laptops to massive 64-socket, quad-core behemoths that supports up to 4TB of RAM. And that's from the same OS binary.

3. Apple recently announced the dropping of ZFS, arguably the world's most advanced file system. If your OS doesn't support an adavanced file system like ZFS, then it is not a contender for the world's most advanced OS. It's just that simple.

4. Solaris has support for HW hot swapping that Mac OS can only dream of. In the right machine, if a CPU board dies, you can just replace it on the fly. No downtime, no interruptions.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Mac OS is a fine OS and is leagues ahead of Windoze, but the world's most advanced OS it isn't. That crown belongs to Solaris.

Wither Solaris x86 (again)?

2009-09-10T12:48:00.005-07:00

So, there's a message to Sun's customer's in the Wall Street Journal, highlighting some of Oracle's plans should their acquisition of Sun be approved (at this writing, the deal is pending EU approval). The ad states that Oracle plans to:

1. Spend more money developing SPARC than Sun does now;

2. Spend more money developing Solaris than Sun does now;

3. Have more than twice as many hardware specialists selling and servicing SPARC/Solaris systems than Sun does now;

4. Dramatically improve Sun’s hardware performance by tightly integrating Oracle software with Sun hardware.

Notice that mention of Sun's AMD and Intel x86 systems is suspiciously absent (and has been absent from all public words I've seen from Oracle). Does this mean anything? Sun tried to can Solaris x86 (concentrating on big SPARC systems) a few years ago which resulted in a massive backlash which forced them to reverse their decision, so one would hope that Sun's new owners wouldn't duplicate that mistake...

Rhetorical questions are fine, but let me ask a direct question to those in the know: What are Oracle's plans for Sun's x86 hardware support if/when they take over? Given their silence on this issue (as far as I've seen, anyway), I don't think it's an unfair question.

If Oracle has no plans to drop support for x86 (hardware or software), perhaps they should be a bit more vociferous about it.

Lots of old Sun stuff free or cheap to a good home!

2009-09-01T16:56:00.002-07:00

Well, the time has come for a long-overdue clear out and tidy up of my office, and regretably some stuff has to go. :-( It would be much easier to just chuck this stuff away, but given that at least some of it might have some historical curiosity, I wanted to see if anyone was interested in it. I don't want much, if anything, for this stuff (although I ask that interested people pick up the tab for shipping), provided it's to a good home.

Here's a partial list of the stuff I'm disposing of (there are still boxes of stuff I need to sort through). If interested, drop me an email!

* Insignia Solutions SoftPC 1.1 for Sun 3 systems. Complete package as far as I can tell.

* Pretty much complete SunOS 3.5 manual set. No binders, and most of it is still shrink-wrapped. Still in it's original shipping carton!

* SunOS 3.5 Export for the 68020, on 5 QIC 24(?) tapes.

* UK Sun Express catalogues, Issue 2 to Issue 20.

* SunOS 4.0.3 Export Upgrade, on 2 QIC24 tapes.

* Various old SunSolve and Catalyst CD ware CDs.

* Various Solaris media kits (mostly different Solaris 9 releases IIRC).

I'd really like the SunOS 3.5 tapes and manuals to go to a Sun museum if at all possible. I'll be listing more stuff in the coming weeks/months, so stay tuned!

Alas poor Orac (I knew it well)

2009-05-26T13:30:00.003-07:00

Wow. I can't believe it's been 18 months (give or take) since I last posted to my blog. What a slacker!

Much has changed in the last 18 months: I found a great programming job here in Kelowna only to be downsized about 18 months later (damned economy), and Sun is in the process of being acquired by Oracle! And to top it off, my beloved shiny red Acer Ferrari 3400 laptop died last Thursday. I tried all sorts of reset incantations, removed the battery, etc., etc., no no avail. I am now the proud owner of a shiny red brick (whose hostname was orac, hence the title of this blog entry).

I started looking at various laptops, with the intent of buying one to run Solaris. Windoze is still not an option for me! Finding an appropriate one was kinda hard, but the problem was solved when The Boss (that'd be Jenny, my wife) mentioned that she was hankering after a Mac so that she could hook her iPhone up to iTunes. She had some birthday money to spend, so (to cut a long story short) last night we ordered a 15.4" MacBook Pro with a 2.66 GHz CPU, 4 GB of RAM, and a 128 GB SSD (the speed increase of my Ferrari was phenominal when I installed an SSD into it, so there was no way I was going to order a new computer without one!). It should be here in the next week or so...

Third PAM article published

2007-10-14T12:32:00.000-07:00

My 3rd article about PAM on Solaris was recently published. I'm currently working on the fourth (and final) part.

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday to me!

2007-09-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

Well, today I reached the big four-oh. Yep, it's my 40th birthday today. To celebrate, Jenny and I treated me to a shiny new 80GB Playstation 3, plus accessories (i.e., an additional SixAxis controller and the Bluetooth Blu-ray remote control).

I also got a bunch of movies on Blu-ray, a couple of movies on UMD (for my PSP), and the game Ridge Racer 7. I'm addicted to Ridge Racer on my PSP, so the latter should provide endless hours of entertainment! :-)

I have a new job!

2007-09-11T21:02:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I started a new job at a company called Signalink Technologies. It's a bit of a departure from my more recent Solaris sysadmin gigs--I'm back to my C programmer roots!

The stuff I'm working on is about as far away from Solaris servers and workstations as one can get: I'm developing software for embedded systems, where resources are scarce (the chip I'm working with has a massive 6K of RAM!), and bit twiddling and register shuffling are the order of the day.

So far, it's great. I'm working with a great bunch of guys, doing some interesting work (which will only get more interesting as time passes), in an environment that suits me just fine (think Silicon Valley style start up). The job is well paid, and best of all, it's a mere 10-minute drive away in my own town of Kelowna! No more travelling to God knows where to earn a few shekels; hurrah! :-)

Despite being far removed from the Solaris world in my current professional capacity (though I hasten to add that I'm running build 70 of Nevada on my desktop--no Windoze for me!), I'll still be involved with the OpenSolaris community as much as I can. And I intend to keep writing articles for SDN, so it's good job the days are getting shorter (relaxing in the sun becomes less of a temptation when it's dark out!)...

Blu-ray Disc vs HD DVD: End the format war now!

2007-08-17T14:51:00.000-07:00

I really like watching movies, especially in the comfort of my own home, so I received the arrival of DVD with open arms. Although the picture and audio quality (PQ and AQ respectively) is much better than those available on VHS, DVDs are still a low-res format (here in North America, they have 480 lines of resolution). Add to that the fact that the DVD market is pretty much saturated, and it seems clear that a new generation of home video is called for.

Enter Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD, the two competing next-gen formats. Blu-ray is driven by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), and HD DVD is driven by Toshiba. Given that on the surface both seem to be the same (both offer up to 1080p resolution and 7.1 channels of high def sound), why would one choose one of the other? (N.B., in this article I'm only considering playing movies; other stuff like data archival is out of scope.)

This blog article explains my rationale for picking one, in what is intended to be an objective manner. To that end, I'll get my biases out of the way: I am not a gamer (though I will admit to owning a PSP), and I have no feelings either way towards Sony, Toshiba, or any other consummer electronics (CE) company out there. The only company I despise is Microsoft. At the time of writing, I have neither a Blu-ray nor an HD DVD player: I have invested $0 in either format.

In the interests of fairness here are links to the Wikipedia articles about Blu-ray and HD DVD.

Right, with that out of the way, let's take a look at the pros and cons of each format. I'll start with the technical stuff because it's the least disputable objective stuff, and because I'm a techie. :-)

We've already dealt with the resolution and audio availablity (despite all Blu-ray players being 1080p and some entry-level HD DVD players being only 1080i, I think we can pretty well call this one a tie), so what else is there?

The most obvious criteria is storage capacity: Blu-ray has a 25GB/layer capacity whereas HD DVDs is 15GB/layer. Dual-layer machines are universal, so we have a practical limit of 50GB for Blu-ray and 30GB for HD DVD. More space means that there's more room for extras, and, from a videophiles point of view, that lower compression ratios can be used for better PQ. IF you think compression ratios don't matter, take two big pictures with your digital camera: one at the lowest compression and one at the highest. Now compare them; the picture with the most compression will be noticably worse than the other one. So, advantage Blu-ray.

Not so obvious to the non-techie, but just as important as capacity, is the available bandwidth. Put simply, bandwidth is a measure of how much data the format handle per second. The higher the bandwidth, the better the potential PQ and AQ is. Audio and video information must be presented at a certain rate, otherwise it wouldn't be TV! Given the finite amount of time available to show each frame, it follows that a format with higher bandwidth can use a smaller amount of lossy compression, resulting in better quality.

Compared to DVD (which has a peak audio+video bandwidth of 10.08 Mb/s), both HD DVD and Blu-ray offer much better bandwidth: 30.24 Mb/s for HD DVD and 48.0 Mb/s for Blu-ray (dedicated video bandwidth is 29.4 Mb/s and 40.0 Mb/s respectively). So, Blu-ray handily has the upper hand here, too.

Arguably less important technical features include support for Picture in Picture (PIP), and Internet connectivity. Support for these features has been mandatory for HD DVD since day one, but only option for Blu-ray. That said, PIP support will be mandatory for all Blu-ray players launched after October 31 2007. Internet connectivity will still be optional for these so-called Profile 1.1 players, but is mandatory for players claiming to be Profile 2.0 compliant. So, advantage to HD DVD, although that advantage will be much reduced starting in November. Note that although HD DVD players must have an Ethernet port, nothing requires that these players are actually connected to the Internet. (I don't have network connectivity in my TV rack; do you?)

Blu-ray also mandates the use of a hard, anti-scratch coating on discs, making them very durable. Advantage Blu-ray.

Blu-ray unfortunately carries the idea of "Regions" over from DVD; all HD DVD platers are Region free. Advantage HD DVD, although it should be noted that several studios demanded support for Region encoding which is why it is part of the Blu-ray feature set. Also, the BDA has stipulated that only the first pressing of a movie can be region coded. Subsequent runs must be region free; many older titles are also region free, so (much as I hate region encoding) the situation on Blu-ray doesn't seem as dire as it could be.

Summarising the above: each format has its pros and cons, but purely from a technical point of view, Blu-ray is indisputebly the superior format. I don't think anyone who compares the technical specs with an open mind can think otherwise.

Of course, home movie viewing requires two things: a player and a disc to play. In other words, a format needs support from CEs for the players, and studios for the discs (movies) themselves. A player without movies is as useless as a disc without a player. This is where it starts getting interesting.

At the time of writing, HD DVD players are available from Toshiba and Microsoft (the latter being an add-on for the Xbox360). Onkyo has announced an HD DVD player due out in the next couple of months, but that is reportedly a rebadged Toshiba... Blu-ray players are available from Sony, Samsung, Pioneer, Philips, and Panasonic. Models from Denon and Sharp have been announced. So, consumers have much more choice when it comes to Blu-ray players than they do HD DVD players. I'm always a fan of competition, so advantage Blu-ray.

But what about the movies? HD DVD is supported by Warner Bros., Paramount, and Universal (the latter is an HD DVD exclusive). Blu-ray is supported by Warner Bros., Paramount, Disney, Fox, and Sony Pictures, of which Disney, Fox, and Sony (and their subsidiaries) are Blu-ray exclusive. So advantage Blu-ray, which arguably has more content availablity.

Blu-ray is technically superiror, has a greater choice of players, and has the support of more studios. So why is there a format war (at least in North America)?

HD DVD players were available months before the first Blu-ray player, which was also plagued with problems. Some of the early Blu-ray releases (most notably The Fifth Element) were also less than ideal, so Blu-ray got off to a shakey start while HD DVD justifiably started out well. (Sony have since redemed themselves by issuing a much-improved remastered version of The Fifth Element, and will replace all earlier versions for free.)

Early Blu-ray players were also very much more expensive than HD DVD players (even today, HD DVD players are cheaper than their Blu-ray counterparts), the cheapest one being $1000 US. Then, in November 2006, the shit hit the fan. Sony released their much-anticipated PS3, which used Blu-ray as its software medium. The PS3 also had the distinction of being hundreds of dollars less than other Blu-ray players, so it quickly became the biggest selling Blu-ray player. By February 2007, total Blu-ray movie sales passed HD DVD's, and so far this year, Blu-ray has outsold HD DVD every single week.

This is where I start getting speculative. People only have so much disposable income, so early adopters who bought into HD DVD don't want to see that investment go to waste. Hence they continue to support HD DVD (though many have also acquired Blu-ray players, senseing the end for HD DVD is nigh). Other factions, mostly gamers it seems, support HD DVD because they detest Sony. Fair enough, but if they like movies, why don't they buy a Blu-ray player from one of the other CEs? Admittedly, Sony still get some royalties on those players, but I'm pretty sure that those Sony bashers listen to CDs. Are they even aware that Sony co-developed CD, and therefore gets royalties on every CD player and disc sold?

So, Sony hatred is one reason that the format war drags on. Some people have suggested that the format war is a good thing, because it encourages competition and gets prices down. I agree: the format war was useful. But the time of its utility has passed: many potential high def player buyers are waiting for the war to end before they purchase, for fear of buying into the losing format. IMO, the format war is now harming the market by keeping it artificially small.

Some people advocate that both formats can survive side by side. I think this is wrong. There has recently been a (lower profile) high def audio format war, with SACD on one side and DVD-A on the other. The situation was much the same as it is now (although the split was nearer 50:50 for software and hardware, and universal players became quite prevalent): neither side wanted to give up, and most people sat on the sidelines until a winner was declared.

The result was that neither format gained mass-market acceptance, and both have essentially been relegated to niche status. In other words, neither format won, they're both dead, and consequently we're still listening to low res 16/42 CDs when we could be enjoying a high def 24/192 format. I really don't want the same thing to happen to high def video, so the sooner the war is declared over, the better. With the onslaught of titles coming up between now and Christmas, Blu-ray has a very good chance of winning. If you're considering getting into high def movies, I strongly recommend you buy into Blu-ray. Yes, HD DVD is much better than DVD, but why settle for second best? It's rare than the best technology wins, but in this case, the best technology (Blu-ray) has a real chance of winning!

If you bought into HD DVD in the past, you have my condolances. You probably bought them when the outcome of the war was truely up in the air, so you made your best bet. But I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would buy into HD DVD now. Blu-ray is outselling HD DVD by more than 2:1 (and that ratio is increasing), and I'd say the former has a 99% chance of winning the war, so why buy into the losing side? Buy into Blu-ray, and lets get this stupid war over and done with! (Incidentally, Blu-ray sales are even further ahead of HD DVD's elsewhere in the world, almost to the point that as far as their concerned there is no format war (Blu-ray has already won), or if there is, it's a State-side phenomenom only.)

Some pro-HD DVD people point to the cheaper players, claiming that HD DVD is the cheaper format. Bit of a shame the average HD DVD movie price is more than the Blu-ray one, isn't it? Over time, HD DVD is the more expensive format!

Well, FWIW, I've said my piece. I've no doubt that this article will get ripped to shreds by HD DVD FUD spreaders. In case it isn't obvious, when funds permit, I'll be buying a Blu-ray player.

Second PAM article published

2007-08-13T11:43:00.000-07:00

The second article in my series about PAM has been published on SDN. In it, I introduce PAM and some of the API functions.

[Tags: Solaris OpenSolaris]

Why I hate watching movies on TV

2007-08-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

I love watching movies, but I (as a rule) hate watching them on TV. Why? There are three reasons (in no particular order):

They're not shown in their original aspect ration (OAR), which means that I miss almost half the movie. To add insult to injury, many channels put up the disclaimer "This film has been reformatted to fit this TV". Well, the last time I checked, I had a widescreen TV, so reformatting the picture to 4:3 does nothing for me. I want to see the movie as the director originally intended. If that means I get some black bars, so be it.

Adult language is altered, or just dubbed out. If I'm watching an adult-orientated movie, I want to hear everything, OK? Hearing Samual L. Jackson calling people "Melon Farmers" just doesn't cut it for me! Worse, many channels put up warnings "This show contains scenes of violence and course language. Viewer discretion is advised", and still delete the swearing. Now, I think those warnings are great, because they let viewers know that they might not like the content. But having issued the warnings, the least the networks can do is show the movie sans dubs.

Adverts really get on my nerves. Not only do they interrupt the flow of the movie, the also mean that most films are edited for time. Fortunately, I watch most stuff in "time slip" mode (think Tivo), so the commercials are easily skipped.

The above are the main reasons why I tend not to watch movies on TV, and have a reasonably large DVD collection. But I've more or less stopped buying DVDs now because I see a high definition player in my (hopefully not-too-distant) future. I'll expand on my reasons in another post, but for now, suffice it to say that I'll be getting a Blu-ray Disc player.

New article published

2007-07-29T13:16:00.000-07:00

My latest article, User Authentication on the Solaris OS, was recently published on Sun Developer Network. It's the first in a short series of articles I'm writing on this subject. Give it a read!

Sysadmin stuff

2007-07-29T13:08:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been aeons since I last updated my blog, and a lot has happened (most of which probably isn't of interest to you, gentle reader). Friday July 27 was Sysadmin day, so hello fellow admins everywhere!

I received my August copy of Sysadmin Magazine a few days ago, and I wondered why it felt a bit thinner than usual. The answer was to be found in Amber's editorial: Sysadmin Mag has ceased to be. It is bereft of life, it's pushing up the daisies. It is an ex-magazine! I'll miss it--I've been reading Sysadmin for years, and I've even had an article or two published in it.

Close, but no cigar

2007-04-17T15:11:00.000-07:00

A while ago I lamented that Sun's low end storage offerings were somewhat lacking. Well, today Sun announced the StorageTek 2500 Array, which looks like it might be a great product. But it's still a way-too-expensive overkill for entry level needs. (In fact, it looks very much like the big brother of what I envisioned in my original posting.)

Sun, please release two truly entry-level, inexpensive, 1U high JBOD storage array: one using SAS disks, and the other using SATA (by inexpensive, I mean costing less than the entry-level servers one would connect the arrays to!). I'm talking about the modern day equivelent of the Netra D130 storage array: just a metal box, a power supply or two (hot swappable preferably), and any necessary relatively dumb interface electronics. No cache, no hardware RAID.

I think the combination of an entry-level server using ZFS on Solaris 10, plus one (or more) of these arrays would be a competition killer.

Behind every great man...

2007-04-16T09:12:00.000-07:00

... there's an even greater woman.

I'll leave the question of my greatness (or lack thereof) for others to ponder, but the woman behind me, my wife Jenny, really is great. She supported my dreams of writing my first book Solaris Systems Programming by being the only bread-winner in our family for more than 3 years, despite the enormous stress it placed on her, and the huge pile of debt it (writing SSP) got us into.

More recently (when I got back from my 7-month contracting stint in Edmonton), she has supported us while I spent the last 18 months or so working on my latest business, My Online Home Inventory (MOHI). I look forwward to the day that MOHI and my other business ideas are successful enough to be able to repay her (she's always wanted to take a vacation in Hawaii, and that seems to be more than fair compensation for what she's done)...

Today is her birthday. I won't tell you how old she is, but let's just say she's celebrating the 11th anniversary of her 29th birthday. :-) Because it's her birthday, I thought now would be a good time to say a very public "thank you", so here it is: Jenny, many thanks for your love and support over the last few years. I couldn't have achieved all that I have without you, and I can't wait to be able to repay you.

If any of my readers wants to send her a thank-you note (or wish her happy birthday), please send her an email at: jenny dot teer @ rite - group dot com.

[Tags: OpenSolaris : Solaris]

We will Rock you!

2007-04-12T15:38:00.000-07:00

I see from Jonathan Schwartz's blog that the first samples of the next-generation SPARC cpu for the data centre, codenamed Rock, have arrived. Congrats to everyone at Sun and their partners who made this happen!

For my fellow geeks, here's a picture of the CPU:

(You'll have to read Jonathan's blog for a peek at the bottom!)

Rock, like Niagara, has multiple cores, each of which can run multiple threads. The first release of Rock will have 16 cores, each of which can run an unspecified number of threads. My guess is that they'll run at least 4 threads per core, which means that we're effectively talking about a Starfire (E10000) on a chip!

As AC/DC's Brian Johnson might say: For those about to Rock (We compute you)!

Hasta la Vista, Baby!

2007-04-01T11:13:00.000-07:00

I had a couple of spare hours this weekend, so I decided, at the behest of my good friend Avril Dummkopf, to install Windows Vista on my Ferrari 3400 laptop. I'm glad I did: the power and usability of Vista far exceeds my usual OS of choice, OpenSolaris.

Vista's hardware requirements are a little more intense than Solaris', so I had to upgrade my laptop. I upgraded the CPU to the latest dual core AMD Mobile Athalon64 processor, and doubled the RAM to 4 GB. I also decided to upgrade the hard drive to a 15K RPM 250 GB one (which was kinda hard to find in a 2.5" laptop form factor).

I'm security conscious, so I turned Vista's new security policy doohickey up to maximum. It got quite annoying for a while, answering questions from it every time I wanted to do something, but no I'm really glad I'm protected from viruses and the like. Solaris sure doesn't have security like this!

Although I still have a bit of a learning curve ahead of me, I really think that Vista Ultimate was worth the $300 I paid for it. So much so, in fact, that I'm gonna switch to it for all my computing needs. Next on my shopping list is a copy of Office 2007—I can't wait!

OGB Election results are in!

2007-03-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of weeks, the Open Solaris community has been voting on two important issues:

The ratification of the OpenSolaris Constitution; and
The members of the new OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB).

There are 268 Core Contributors which means that we needed at least 135 affirmative votes to ratify the constitution. I'm very happy to say that we received a thumbs up from 145 people, so the Constitution is officially ratified—hurrah!

As for the OGB elections, there were 18 candidates running for 7 seats. Even though the voting finished at 24:00 Pacific yesterday (Monday March 26), the results are already in. With no further ado, the members of the 2007-2008 OGB (in alphabetical order) are:

James Carlson
Alan Coopersmith
Casper Dik
Glynn Foster
Stephen Lau
Rich Teer
Keith Wesolowski

Many congrats to all, and note that I seem to have the somewhat dubious honour of being the only non-Sun employee on the OGB...! :-)

More seriously, I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to vote in this important poll, especially those who voted for me. I'll do my best to live up to the task to which I've been elected.

OGB Elections—Have You Voted Yet?

2007-03-22T17:20:00.000-07:00

We (that is, the OpenSolaris community) are in the midst of the first OGB election to take place since the one in the Pilot Program, which elected the inaugral CAB community members.

If you're eligible to vote (i.e., you're an OpenSolaris Core Contributer), and haven't done so already vote now! I'm one of the candidates up for consideration, so I won't try to sway your vote. But I do strongly recommend that you vote "Yes" to ratifying the Constitution. It's not a perfect document (and it was never intended to be), but it is an excellent set of rules and procedures by which we can bootstrap ourselves.

Why are you still reading this? ssh to polls.opensolaris.org now and vote! :-)

Recruiting firms that just don't get it

2007-03-21T09:15:00.000-07:00

I was bemused, yet disappointed, to receive the following (trimmed) details for a job in Vancouver, from an individual from Globaltech who shall remain nameless to protect the clueless^Winnocent.

Job ID Job Title Job Type Location
Job-0564 Junior Desktop support/Office Technologies Analyst Permanent Downtown Vancouver

Please send your resume as a word doc.

TECHNICAL SKILL REQUIREMENTS:

You have 1-3 years experience supporting users.

o Hardware Support
o Intel Pentium Class workstations, laptops and servers
o LAN technologies (fiber, CAT5, Ethernet hubs and switches)
o Tape backup systems
o Software and Software Platform Support
o Microsoft Windows Workstation and Server (NT 4.0/2000/XP and up)
o Microsoft Office Products (including Project and Visio)
o Microsoft Exchange 5.5 and higher
o VirusScan Enterprise 7.0 and ePolicy Orchestrator 3.0.1 or higher
o ARCserve 2000 Advanced Edition or higher
o Partition Magic and Norton Ghost for configurations
o Redhat Linux
o Voice
o Nortel BCM PBX and voice sets
o Asterisk PBX and voice sets
o PDAs
o Palm Pilot Versions III and up.
o Blackberry all models
o Web Application Developing Skills (Optional)
o Microsoft Front Page and Macromedia Dreamweaver
o HTML and ASP/JSP preferred. PHP (an asset)

Look at all those Windoze skills in there! I mean, don't these people even read the skill suammaries of people on their books?! I intimated as much in my reply:

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007, XXX wrote:

> Below you will find a list of immediate job openings.

I appreciate the email, but why on Earth is Globaltech asking me to
consider Windoze positions? One glance at my resume would indicate
that I'm a senior UNIX admin/developer, with 0 interest in Windoze!

> Please send your resume as a word doc.

Sorry, I don't do closed, expensive, proprietory formats. I suggest
you guys switch to ODF (OpenDocument), which is free, open, and platform
independant.

What really made my day, though, was the one-line reply to the above email: "Are you applying?"! You can't blame 'em for trying, but I think these people would be doing themselves and their clients a favour by actually reading the CVs/resumes they have on file, thereby increasing the odds that they'll find someone qualified for the positions they're trying to fill...

In case any recruiters/head hunters are reading this: yes, I am interested in talking about job opportunites (preferably contract), especially in my neck of the woods. But in case it isn't obvious, I'm an Open Solaris guy; I don't do Windoze, and I don't send out resumes in Word format. Send me an email (plain text, please)!

Sun's new Chief Operating Platforms Officer

2007-03-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

I read with interest today that Ian Murdock has joined Sun as Chief Operating Platforms Officer. Despite not being intimately involved with the Linux community, I thought I recognised his name. It turns out that Ian founded Debian and was at the Linux Foundation.

I wish him well in his new position, but some statements in his blog give me pause. For example, "... I’ll be advocating that Solaris needs to close the usability gap with Linux to be competitive...". Given that both Solaris and Linux use GNOME (and KDE et al), I'm not sure what Solaris needs to do to improve. (Apart from, I guess, more multimedia capability (e.g., playing DVDs) out of the box, which might be hard given the US' laws.)

Even more disquieting for me was this: "[A]s I believe Solaris needs to change in some ways, I also believe deeply in the importance of backward compatibility; and that even with Solaris front and center, I’m pretty strongly of the opinion that Linux needs to play a clearer role in the platform strategy." (emphasis added). I can't believe this. A few years ago Sun almost blew it by embracing Linux at the expense of Solaris x86, and it seems now that history might repeat itself.

Let me be clear: I've no problem with Sun ensuring that their products run on Linux and vice versa, but I strongly disagree with the notion that Sun needs to make Linux play a clearer role in their platform strategy. Sun has the best OS on the planet--Solaris--and there's no need for it to be distracted by Linux again. It's not for me to second guess Sun's executive managament, but if you ask me, someone with more of a Solaris bias should have been appointed to this position. And isn't Debian the Linux distro that refused to allow any CDDL licensed stuff in, on the grounds that the CDDL isn't "free" enough? Obviously one can't blame one person with the position of a community, but it just doesn't feel right.

That said, I'm all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, so I'm not writing Ian off yet. I wish him all the best, but I doubt I'll be the only one watching what he does very closely...

MOHI at the Penticton home show

2007-03-14T20:04:00.000-07:00

Last weekend (March 9 - 11) my new business, My Online Home Inventory, exhibited at its first home. The show was in Penticton, a sleepy little retirement town about 50km south of Kelowna, on the southern shore of Lake Okanagan.

It's the first time I've exhibited at a show, so I was glad it was a small one. The show was quite successful: we spoke to many people about MOHI, including a handful of insurance agents who were very interested. We even made a sale or two! :-) The next step is to attend a larger show, either here in Kelowna, or perhaps Kamloops. More people, with better demographics (hopefully) means more sales!

The only downside was the live entertainment (Elvis impersonators and the like). Great for the punters, I'm sure, but not so great for us exhibitors who had forked out a lot of cash to be there...

Bruce (my business partner) and I stayed in the Penticton Lakeside Resort and Casino, in a room facing the lake (their web site is pretty lame; it doesn't even work with Firefox on Solaris...). When we arrived on Friday afternoon, the sky was a beautiful blue, so I took a few photos to show off the view to Jenny. Good job too, 'cause not long after, the clouds rolled in and it was overcast the rest of the weekend.

Check out MOHI's web site and sign up today because the only thing worse than losing everything you own is not knowing what you've lost...

My new business venture

2007-03-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

For the last year or so, I have been hard at work implementing my latest business idea. It's a web site where one can manage one's home inventory, and is called My Online Home Inventory (MOHI for short).

I got the idea for MOHI back in 2003, when a third of Kelowna's ~100K population was evacuated because of the Okanagan Mountain Park Fire. My mum was one of the evacuees, and we quickly ran round her house grabbing the most important stuff. One of those items was a notebook containing a rudimentary inventory. A great idea, I thought, but keeping it on a piece of paper ain't so great: paper tends to burn when the house in which it is is on fire, it's hard to update, and it's just too fragile a medium for storing so important. Being the geek I am, it didn't take long to come to the conclusion that storing one's inventory on a secure web site was ideal. (Don't talk to me about those inventory programs you install on your computer: what are you going to do when that computer is destroyed or stolen?)

Before you say "it'll never happen to me", check out this photo:

If this was your home, would you be able to remember everything that was in it, especially when you're trying to cope with the grief such an event would engender? If you have contents insurance (and who in their right mind doesn't), doesn't it make sense to have an accurate inventory so that you can replace everything you're paying to insure? The only thing worse than losing everything you own is not knowing what you've lost...

I was busy writing my book, Solaris Systems Programming at the time, so the idea got put on back burner. But in November 2005 I started thinking about MOHI again, and started writing a business plan. I started writing the code in February 2006, and we launched on March 1 this year. Tomorrow we're exhibiting at our first home show, in Penticton.

I'll spare you the heavy sales pitch, but I invite all my readers check out
www.myonlinehomeinventory.com. Take the online tour, or try the read-only interactive demo account (log in as the user "demo", using "demo" for the password too) which I used to create the tour and help pages.

Techie notes: the site runs on a Sun Fire X4200 running Solaris 10 (of course), and makes use of Solaris' many innovative features, including Zones and ZFS. Yep, I put my money where my mouth is: as far as I was concerned, Solaris on Sun hardware was the only sensible option!

Saw Meat Loaf in concert last night

2007-03-07T19:21:00.000-08:00

Last night (March 6), Jenny and I went to see Meat Loaf in our local concert arena, Skyreach Place. We were expecting a good show, butit was even better than we thought it'd be! Sure, he's gettin' on a bit (aren't we all?), but what a showman!

He performed for about two hours, singing numerous songs: old favourites as well as material from his latest album, Bat out of Hell III. He came back for not one, but two encores, doubtless to the chagrin of the impatient people who left after the main show or first encore. :-) The only (minor) complaint I had was that the sound mix wasn't that great. Meat Loaf's vocals were often lost in the mix.

It's the 3rd time we've been to Skyreach for a show: we've previously attended gigs by Bryan Adams and local comedian, Herb Dixon. We had a great time, though our throats and heads are a little worse for the wear!

OGB Nomination

2007-03-02T10:27:00.003-08:00

It's been far too long since I last updated my blog. I've been feverishly beavering away on a new business, more of which anon...

The OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) elections will soon be upon us, and after much thought and careful consideration, I have decided to nominate myself for a position on the board. I am a long-term [Open]Solaris advocate, and was among the first dozen or so people to join the OpenSolaris pilot (Jim invited the Solaris Cabal to participate in the pilot sometime in September 2004 IIRC).

I'm the author of the Sun Press book, Solaris Systems Programming, and numerous articles about Solaris, a Solaris developer and sys admin, and I was one of two community members elected by the Pilot participants to the inaugral CAB (Al Hopper being the other). I think it would be useful if at least one current CAB/OGB member was on the new board, if only for the sake of continuity.

I don't work for Sun (though I did do some consulting for Sun UK a few years ago): I'm an independant consultant, and I've recently launched a new business called My Online Home Inventory. I've also built my own kernel. :-)

Farewell, ARA...

2007-01-09T19:27:00.000-08:00

I've just read in the latest issue of TAS about the passing of SME's founder, Alistair Robertson-Aikman (fondly abbreviated to ARA by his friends and colleagues). Although I never met him, I did have the pleasure of receiving a letter from him (personally signed, no less).

SME is a manufacturer of high end turntables and tonearms. If I had the money, top on my audition list for turntables to replace my Forsell Air Force One Signature is the SME Model 30/2. I once had the privilege of owning an SME Series V tonearm, mounted on my Roksan Xerxes (the turntable I had before the Forsell). The Series V is a beautiful piece of engineering, and still highly recommended.

Farewell, ARA, and I hope that the operas are fantastic where you are...

A brief look back at 2006

2007-01-01T12:38:00.000-08:00

I haven't updated my blog in ages, because I've been mega-busy, working on my latest business project. But the New Year provides me with an excuse to take my work hat off and pause for a few minutes to reflect on 2006.

2006 was a mixed year for me. The saddest part was having to part with my best friend and little boy, Judge, back in June. Neither Jenny nor I could really get into the Christmas spirit without him here. Christmas morning used to be a noisy affair: between Jenny and I ripping the paper off our loot, Judge would help spread the mess by ripping up the discarded paper, leaving the remnants all over the living room. Or he would unwrap one of his presents, and run round the room squeaking his new toy. But this year was different: the gap between us opening our presents was eerily quiet--too quiet in fact. :-( Odds are we'll eventually get another dog, but not yet...

Solaris and OpenSolaris have improved in leaps and bounds: ZFS is now part of the shipping product, and Nevada has lots of new goodies in it, not least of which is GNOME 2.16, which is the closest thing to a usable alternative to CDE GNOME has yet released. There's still some work to do, but it shows great promise.

Sticking with the technical theme for a bit, the Simplified Chinese translation of my book, Solaris Systems Programming, was published. Sun's Joey Guo was kind enough to send me a copy. Seeing my book in all those Chinese characters sure is strange! The only downside is that due to my not being involved with the project, the code on the cover was replaced by Java (rather than C).

My technical writing continued (and still does) with a few articles being published. The writing helps keep my grey matter sharp, and also pays a few bills. When my current business project--which I'll blog about when it launches, hopefully in early February--finishes, I'll have lots more time to write. So expect to see a few more articles from me in 2007 than in 2006. :-)

My love of music returned with a vengeance in 2006. I'm an audiophile, which means that I like listening to music on a system where sound quality is the key criterion, not features and other gimmicks used by mass-market companies to sell their wares. When we moved from the UK to Canada, I brought with me my 1200+ LP collection and my audio system. Due to the difference in mains (the UK is 240V @ 50Hz, Canada is 110V @ 60Hz), my turntable span too quickly. The step up transformer I bought obviously couldn't change the frequency, but I was able to slow the turntable down enough to play my 45RPM singles (my 33RPM LPs sounded like the Chipmunks!). But I have only about 100 of those, so the choice is somewhat limited!

A couple of years ago a friend was kind enough to lend me his turntable that he wasn't using. I had to replace his broken cartridge with my spare one (an Audio Technica OC10), and it was an entry-level deck which wasn't anywhere near the same league as my usual record spinner. But it had the rather big advantage of spinning at the correct speeds!

So I made do with that, playing through my Mission Cyrus 2 integrated amp and Spendor SP1/2 speakers, all of which were from the UK (the amp works well, because it isn't sensitive to the mains frequency, only the voltage). I didn't listen to too many records, because although it was better than nothing, the system left quite a lot wanting. The in September, I (or rather, my company) treated myself to a new preamp for my birthday: an Audio Research SP9 Mk 2 from eBay. The vendor was Canadian, and the auction ended on my birthday, which I took as a good omen. I won the auction and a week or two later had it hooked into my system. Not ideally, mind, because I'm now using my Cyrus 2 as a power amp, by selecting the CD input (shortest signal path) and cranking the volume all the way up. But the increase in sound quality was palpable, and I started wanting more.

So I did a bit of research, and (to cut a long story short) managed to get my main record playing rig--a Forsell Air Force One Signature with a Lyra Parnassus cartridge--playing records at the right speed, using an inverter from Exeltech and a switched mode PSU from Samlex. I also treated myself to a 1M length of Nordost Blue Heaven interconnect between the SP9 and Cyrus 2 (thanks to the guys at HiFi Attic in Vernon for a great deal on the cable!). After giving everything a good clean, checking the cartridge alignment, and making sure my speakers were positioned just right, I started playing record after record. I was a happy camper, listening to music in a way that I hadn't since we moved here, back in 1999. For the first time in years, I got some new records (Xmas presents), from the fine people at Elusive Disc.

This year, I'm going to do my best to replace the Cyrus 2 with something more in keeping with the SP9 and Spendor SP1/2s, which works on 110V (I want rid myself of all 240V devices eventually). Top of my shortlist is a pair of PrimaLuna ProLogue Seven monoblocs. I also hope to upgrade the system's cables to Nordost Baldur, Heimdall, or Frey (depending on how the shekels go). Alas, Nordost Valhalla is out of the question (not to mention, not appropriate for my system at present)!

Well, that's about it. I hope all my readers have a happy and prosperous 2007!

New article published

2006-10-16T10:31:00.000-07:00

My latest article, Building Software on the Solaris OS, was recently published. It's mandatory reading for those new to building software on Solaris and OpenSolaris! :-)

If there's something Solaris-related you'd like me to write an article about, feel free to drop me a line.

Big gorillas and hi-def video

2006-10-05T16:04:00.000-07:00

I see that Micro$oft is planning to bundle King Kong with their Xbox360 HD-DVD player (not that I have the slightest bit of interest in what M$ does). I doubt I'm the only person to see the irony of a 700 lb gorilla of a software monopolist bundling a movie about another big gorilla with one of its products... :-)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: M$'s backing of HD-DVD is a damned fine reason to reject that format, and adopt Blu-ray instead.

OpenSPARC CAB announced

2006-10-05T16:01:00.000-07:00

The other day, Sun announced the appointment of the OpenSPARC CAB (Community Advisory Board). I haven't seen it blogged in the places I usually look yet, so thought I'd give it a quick mention.

First OpenSolaris developers' convention

2006-10-05T15:44:00.000-07:00

Ever since I attended ApacheCon in Las Vagas a couple of years ago, I've planned to try to arrange an OpenSolaris convention. Well, as luck would have it, our Teutonic friends have beaten me to the punch: Dirk Wetter and his colleagues at the German UNIX User Group are planning a convention early next year. If you're going to be in the area, why not drop in and show them your support?

SSP gets a plug in the current issue of Sun System News

2006-09-11T15:10:00.001-07:00

The past couple of weeks have been quite interesting. I recently blogged about the publishing of the Simplified Chinese translation of Solaris Systems Programming, and today I see that is the subject of a news story called Revisiting Valuable Solaris Books. The article even has a quote from fellow Solaris enthusiast, Ben Rockwood.

[Tags: Solaris OpenSolaris]

Solaris Systems Programming: Simplified Chinese Translation!

2006-09-01T19:51:00.000-07:00

Wow, this is amazing news (for me): I've just heard that my book, Solaris Systems Programming, was recently translated into Simplified Chinese! I can't wait to receive my copy, so that I can know what my friends feel like (i.e., I'll see the words (kanjii symbols, presumably) but won't understand any of it!). :-)

In the meantime, here's a picture of the cover I snarffed from the China-pub.com web site:

The thought of all those Chinese students studying program development on OpenSolaris and Solaris is quite exciting!

Sun joins Blu-ray Disc Association's Board

2006-09-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

According to this press release, Sun has recently joined the Blu-ray Disc Association's Board of Directors. Given that Sun's Java technology powers Blu-ray's interactivity features, known as BD-J, I guess this news isn't too surprising.

Blu-ray Disc vs HD DVD

2006-08-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

When I'm not symbiotically attached to my computer, or haven't got my nose in a book, I like to listen to music and watch movies. It's the latter I want to touch on today (my audiophile habit will have to wait for another post).

DVD is great for watching movies at home: you get to see the whole thing (both in terms of not being censored by overly-sensitive TV networks, and being able to see the whole picture the director intended you to see, i.e., not the half-screen 4:3 aspect ratio most networks still broadcast movies in) without adverts, and the quality is much better than VHS. But the picture quality is still low res, especially here in North America where we a saddled with NTSC (Never The Same Colour) at a pathetic 640 pixels x 480 interlaced lines (the PAL system used in the UK and elsewhere has much better picture quality, and at 768 pixels x 575 interlaced lines, is higher resolution too).

So enter the age of high definition TV. It started out as 720 (or thereabouts) interlaced lines--which I refer to as "medium definition"--written as 720i, but proper high definition is 1920 pixels x 1080 interlaced or progressively scanned lines, written as 1080i and 1080p respectively. The storage requirements for a high def movie far exceed the capacity of today's DVD (about 8 GB for a dual-layer DVD), so a successor with greater storage capacity was required.

Unfortunately, there are two competing standards for high def playback: Blu-ray and HD DVD. While both formats will play CDs and regular DVDs, Blu-ray and HD DVD are incompatible with each other. So, we have a media war on our hands; how to chose?

Both formats support 1080p (although current HD DVD players only go as far as 1080i; Blu-ray players go all the way to 1080p), and both support 7.1 sound in addition to uncompressed Dolby Digital and DTS. But from a technical point of view, HD DVD is inferior to Blu-ray: HD DVDs have a capacity of 15 GB per layer compared to Blu-ray's 25 GB, and HD DVD's bandwidth peaks at 36 Mbps compared to Blu-ray's 48 Mbps.

Perhaps for the end consumer, the most important feature is studio support, and Blu-ray winds the day here too: 7 of the 8 major movie studios (Warner, Paramount, Fox, Disney, Sony, MGM, and Lionsgate) have announced titles for Blu-ray, compared to only 3 (Warner, Paramount, and Universal) for HD DVD--and I reckon it won't be long before Universal announces support for Blu-ray. (Blu-ray is also the disribution medium for games on Sony's PlayStation 3.)

From a geek's perspective, there's one other issue: Sun is a Blu-ray supporter (all Blu-ray players feature Java technology), and Micro$oft supports HD DVD, so there's a good reason not to pick HD DVD! (Can you imagine the uproar if HD DVD players started spreading viruses?!) Given that Sun supports Blu-ray, I guess it's only a matter of time before Solaris and OpenSolaris support burning them.

Unfortunately, I don't have any cash to spend on these sorts of toys, which from a certain point of view is a good thing: by the time I can afford a high def player, the media war will be over and either Blu-ray or HD DVD will emerge as the clear winner (and if I could afford a player today, I'd buy a Blu-ray player without hesitation). I'm not a gambling man, but if I was, my money would be on Blu-ray winning the high def media war. What about you?

Sun outsells Dell!

2006-08-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

Now there's a headline I didn't think I'd be writing for a long time...

As reported in The Inquirer, Sun has just announced that they were the only top-four server vendor to post a year-on-year server revenue growth, surpassing Dull (I'm guessing the other targets to pick off are IBM and HP).

Presumably, most of those servers are running the planet's greatest OS, Solaris or OpenSolaris. Way to go Sun! To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of Sun's death have been greatly exaggerated.

dtterm on GNOME 2.14.1, redux

2006-08-11T09:10:00.000-07:00

Last month I blogged about my efforts to get dtterm to play nicely with the GNOME 2.14.1 that ships with recent builds of OpenSolaris. I managed to get everything working, with the exception of the default font.

I'm pleased to say that I have finally figured this one out too; just place the following line in your .Xdefaults file:

Dtterm*userFont:    -dt-interface user-medium-r-normal-s sans-*-*-72-72-*-*-iso8859-1

If the size isn't right for you, adjust the "s sans" bit to suit.

That's one big GNOME-usage obsticle gone for me; now if GNOME would provide relief for the other issues I (and other CDE users) have, I'd be happy to migrate...

Sun's new mid-range storage products

2006-08-11T08:55:00.000-07:00

So, Sun has announced their new mid-range storage products, the StorageTek 6140 array and the StorageTek 6540 array. They look pretty neat, but rather than going through all the nitty-gritty details, I'll refer you to the blog entry posted by my friend and storage maven, Ben Rockwood.

As I said, these look great, but what I'd really like to see is some low end, direct attach JBOD arrays...

The Solaris developers' holy trinity is complete!

2006-08-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

Last Friday (August 4), I received my copies of the second edition of Solaris Internals by Jim Mauro and Richard McDougall, and Solaris Performance and Tools by Jim, Richard, and Brendan Gregg. I've only had a chance to skim them so far (although I did help review part of Solaris Internals), and I have to say: I'm impressed. So much so that I'd go as far to say that these two books complete the Solaris and the OpenSolaris developers' holy trinity.

What's the third book? With all humilty, I'd say it's Solaris Systems Programming, by yours truely. If you're serious about developing software--be it userland or kernel--for (Open)Solaris, you need these books.

DTrace on MacOS!

2006-08-07T21:47:00.001-07:00

I've just read about Apple's port of DTrace to the next version of MacOS. Is that cool or what? Not to mention a poke in the eye to IBM's Ross Mauri. Exactly how is this news not in the true spirit of open source, Ross? I see the Apple team didn't chose to port SystemTap...

Now, if Apple would only adopt OpenSolaris as the core for MacOS, they'd be onto a real winner! :-)

Jonathan Scwartz named most influential mover and shaker

2006-07-21T16:59:00.000-07:00

I see that Sun President and CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, has been named as the most influential mover and shaker in the enterprise IT sector by Computer Business and Review. Way to go, Jonathan!

Computers in the movies

2006-07-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

Hollywood movies are well known among geeks for the usually poor (as in, unrealistic) representation of computers and computing. Obviously, one has to suspend a certain amount of disbelief in the name of entertainment, but it really bugs me when movies screw up technical details that almost any techie would spot.

I was watching one movie recently (alas, I can't remember the name), and the heros were looking at a list of IP addresses. However, some idiot thought that something like 456.23.75.749 was a realistic IP address! There are countless other examples (password overide, anyone?), but I think you get the point.

So I was pleasantly surprised last night when I watched Antitrust. Apart from one or two belief suspension moments, I thought the portrayal of computers was fairly accurate. The satellites in the movie are supposedly on a private network, and indeed they all have IP addrsses like 10.32.54.45. The OS the geeks use is obviously UNIX or UNIX-like, and the source code shown is real source code for real open source apps.

But as a Sun fan, perhaps the coolest scene (apart from when the CEO of NURV, Gary Winston, says "Bill who?" when Bill Gates was mentioned) for me was when one of the Good Guys is shown receiving an award from none other than Sun Chairman and ex-CEO, Scott McNealy! I wonder if the computers in the movie were running Solaris?

Getting dtterm to play nicely with GNOME 2.14.1

2006-07-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

I recently posted about my trials and tribulations with GNOME on Solaris and OpenSolaris. My list of grievances, until very recently included another show stopper: my preferred terminal application, dtterm, didn't play very will with GNOME (or perhaps it is vice-versa). Gnome-terminal is very nice, but not quite what I want.

Like most geeks, I run my terminals with green text on a black background. But when I opened dtterm in GNOME, I got an illegible green on light grey. If I tried setting the background to black (e.g., dtterm -bg black), the scrollbar background would also change to black: not what I wanted, and not very legilble.

Before giving up, I thought I'd try my luck with the OpenSolaris community, so I posed my question there. Sun's Laszlo Peter had the answer, and I thought I'd share it here.

To make dtterm play nicely with GNOME, simply put the following lines into your ~/.Xdefaults:

Dtterm*dtTermView*foreground:   green
*XmText*background: black
*XmTextField*background:    black
*background:    black

I'm still playing with getting the font the correct size (in my case, 9 points), but I suspect the fix for that will be similar.

Anyways, I hope that this little tidbit helps someone. Enjoy!

CDE to GNOME migration: the pros and cons

2006-07-16T13:33:00.000-07:00

I've been a CDE user for many years (in fact, since I started using very early internal builds of Solaris 2.6 when I was a contractor at Sun). For the most part, I've been happy: little superfluous, performance-robbing eye candy, intuitive ease-of-use, and enough customisation to let me do things more or less how I want.

Sun has stated for a long time now that GNOME is the way forward for Solaris desktops, so every now and then I give it a try. To say that I've underwhelmed by Solaris 10's GNOME 2.6-based JDS is an understatement. But recent builds of OpenSolaris have included Vermillion, which is the codename for the next generation of JDS--currently based on GNOME 2.14.1--so I thought I'd give it another try. Given that the only way something can be fixed is if people are aware of perceived trouble areas, I though I'd blog about my efforts to come to grips with GNOME.

I'll start off with the pros: The performance issues I remember with GNOME 2.6 are, for the most part, history. The default desktop, a striking fade of dark blue to black, is beautiful. Some of the toys--esepcially the image previewer of the file system browser--are great, and very useful. (The image previewer was VERY useful recently, when it was time to sort the 600 or so photos on my camera's CF card.) Finally, if you're coming to Solaris from Windoze, the migration should be fairly painless, as the two seem to act similarly (I am fortunate enough to not use Windoze very often, so I can't say for sure how close the two are). Unfortunately, this last point is the source for most of my issues with GNOME.

Let me get this one out of the way first: I *hate* the stupid "Launch" menu being buried in one corner of my screen. My screen is 24.1" in size, running at 1920x1200 pixels; the bright spark who thought that putting the menu in a corner of the screen was a good idea obviously didn't use high res displays (I'm sure that on a 15" monitor at 640x480, it's a fine set up). Sun touts the accessability features of their contributions to GNOME. All fine, I'm sure, but perhaps they ought to do something about that bloody menu location to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome! Moving my mouse to the bottom left corner of the screen everytime I want to open a new application is a major pain...

CDE has it right: you right click on the desktop, and presto: the "Launch" menu appears where your mouse is, enabling you to run the app you want with the minimum of hassle. I strongly encourage the GNOME people to adopt this behaviour--or at least make it an easily selectable option. Launch -> Preferences -> Menus & Toolbars seems to be the most logical place to put this; create an new option under "Behaviour and Appearence" called "Enable Desktop Launch Menu" or something similar.

The applet bar along the bootom is a good idea; I think minimised apps are supposed to go there, a la Windoze, but at least for me they don't. For me, this is another annoyance: I prefer my minimised apps to appear as icons on my desktop. Not everyone would like this--especially those coming from Windoze--so this too should be easily configurable behaviour. This time, Launch -> Preferences -> Window Behaviour is the logical place to put this option. Simply create an option called "Minimised windows appear as desktop icons", and away you go. Even if minimsed apps appear on the desktop, I'd keep the applet bar, because, as I said earlier, it's a great place to put nifty little applets, like the volume control, clock, and network activity monitor.

On the subject of window behaviour, can we please make it that double-clicking the top left Window menu button closes that window, like it does with CDE? Or at the very least, make this behviour optional (put it in the same place as above).

Here's another one: GNOME seems to (at best) ignore the keys on the Sun keyboard (Stop, Again, and so on). I very frequently use the Front, Open, Copy, and Paste keys, so their non functioning in GNOME is a major pain.

I think that's covered my major issues and annoyances with GNOME. I managed to fix one very major issue recently with the behaviour of dtterm on GNOME (I'll blog about that soon); I really want to adopt GNOME, but I'm afraid that right now there're too many problems with it for me to adopt it full time. For now I'll be sticking with CDE, opening up GNOME when necessary. If the community can fix these issues, I bet a lot of people would be happy. Oh, and one final message to GNOME developers: configurabilty is not necessarily evil!

A few days in the Canadian Rockies

2006-07-09T13:24:00.000-07:00

Jenny's dad, Ted, has just returned home to the UK after staying with us for a couple of weeks. We just relaxed around the house for the first week of his visit, but Ted's girlfriend, Chris, came out for the the second week. She arrived in Kelowna on Thursday evening (June 27th), and the next morning we departed for a 5 day road trip to the rockies.

We left Kelowna at around 08:30, and our first stop was the D Dutchman Dairy, in Sicamous. The dairy features mini onsite zoo, where we saw a camal, a horse, a lama, and several calves. Locally, the diary is perhaps most famous for their ice cream, which is made on the premises from milk got from the dairy's own cows. So naturally, we all had a double scoop of our favourite flavours!

Our next destination was Revelstoke. Normally we usually drive right through Revelstoke, but I had recently read an article about the view from the top of Mount Revelstoke, so we decided to check it out. The view was indeed fantastic, well worth the 2 hour delay. Next stop was Golden, where we had the traditional Subway for lunch.

After Golden, we (after turning our watches forward an hour, to Mountain time) made a couple of stops in Yoho National Park: Emerald Lake, Natural Bridge, and of course, the breathtaking Takakkaw Falls. After watching a train going through the Spiral Tunnel (which is where trains "loop back" overthemselves to climb the steep terrain), we went to Castle Mountain Chalets (which is roughl;y half way between Lake Louise and Banff), where we spent the first of two nights.

Refreshed after a good night's sleep, we headed towards Banff, stopping for a couple of hours at Johnston Canyon. At Banff, we persuaded Ted and Chris to take a ride on the Sulphur Mountain gondola ride (where we had the traditional ice cream), and then went to the Bow Falls, where Chris managed to snap a photo of a Mountie in full dress uniform (they had just returned from a Canada Day parade in downtown Banff).

After that, we were finished with Banff, so we drove to Moraine Lake (a beautiful blue lake near Lake Louise) and Lake Louise, before returning to Castle Mountain Chalets.

The next day we drove up the Icefields Parkway to Jasper, taking in many sights along the way, including the Athabasca Falls, the Sun Wapta Falls, the Columbia Icefield (where we went for a ride onto the glacier on the Snocoach), and Tangle Creek. We spent the night in a cabin in Becker's Chalets, which was a little dissapointing to be honest--although the food in the onsite restaurant was excellent.

After breakfast the next day, we went for a ride on Maligne Lake, to see the world-famous Spirit Island. And after that, we had a long drive to Pemberton (Which was interrupted by a two hour delay caused by someone's motorhome catching alight!), which is a bit north of Whistler. In Pemberton, we stayed at the Log House Inn B & B.

The next day, Tuesday, we headed home for Kelowna. We stopped at a few waterfalls on the way (including the Brandywine Falls, the Shannon Falls, and the Bridal Veil Falls), and stopped for a Subway lunch in Hope.

Five days and 2500 KM later, we arrived back in Kelowna. The weather, which was absolutly gorgeous on our trip, had turned somewhat inclement back in the Okanagan Valley, and the house seemed a bit quiet without Judge. All in all, a great--though tiring!--trip!

All that's new isn't always good (or bad)

2006-06-28T15:53:00.000-07:00

Despite my habit of upgrading to recent releases of OpenSolaris, namely, Solaris Express Community Release (SXCR), I'm one of those people that doesn't like too much change in the technical lives. This has become more true recently, as I've been beavering away on a little business idea, which is close to fruition: I've been much too busy to play with new toys.

That said, I'm installing a new server for my wife's employer--a Sun machine (specifically, an X2100) of course!--so I took the opportunity to to get myself a new UNIX layout Type 7 keyboard. My current keyboard of choice is Sun's UNIX layout Type 5c, and my opinion of it's replacement, the Type 6, is no secret: it's a piece of junk, unworthy of the Sun logo. I'd heard some good things about the Type 7, so I though I'd check it out. My first thoughts are that it's better than the Type 6, but not as good as the Type 5.

The current SXCR also includes GNOME 2.14.1. It too is an improvement over the current 2.6-based JDSv3, but still isn't as friendly to us CDE types as I'd like. I htink I need to play with it more before I come to a final conclusion though.

I really didn't like the login screen background of S10 (the wavey S), and until recently SXCR came with a nice teal blue background. Very nice. Well, the background image has been updated again, and I have to say: I like it! It looks like a combination of the previous two iterations, and (to my untrained eye) it works.

Finally, I'm glad that Solaris 10 6/06 (AKA Update 2) is finally out: I have a couple of servers that are desprately awaiting a supported, ZFS enabled OS! Installation will have to wait a week or so, though, as we have family visiting from the UK, and we're off to the Rockies on Friday for a driving tour. No phone, and (more importantly) no Net access; how will I cope?! :-)

Some Summer fun

2006-06-28T15:39:00.001-07:00

I watch Canada's Space channel quite often, for shows like Star Trek Enterprise, Voyager, Hex, and so on. There's usually a few minutes to fill between shows, so they show a feature. Sometimes that feature is a short cartoon, called Petey and Jaydee go Exploring. Petey and Jaydee are a pair of miniature aliens that take great delight in the mishaps that happen to each other as they explore common household artifacts. One of them invariably ends up getting made into soup ("The Blender"), chopped up ("The Binding Machine") on incinerated into ashes ("The Stove Top").

(Incidentally, Petey and Jaydee have, at least to my eye, a passing resemblence to Sun's V-Force droids from a few years ago.)

It's sick, but immensely funny to my warped sense of humour. Check 'em out, and enjoy!

Happy 1st birthday, OpenSolaris!

2006-06-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

It was a year ago today that the OpenSolaris project opened to the public, releasing the first batch of Solaris source code under an OSI-approved open source license. The naysayers at the time said that Sun would never release the source code, or if they did, they'd only release the boring bits, keeping the "secret sauce" to themselves. They kept up this stance even after Sun released the source code to DTrace in January 2005, as a good will gesture.

The program to open up Solaris--called Tonic--had been going on inside Sun for years, and it wasn't until September 2004 that serious moves outside of Sun started happening. I was a member of the Solaris Cabal (the successor to the Secret Six that were so instrumental in getting Solaris x86 back from the grave), and a guy called Jim Grisanzio was a guest on one of our conference calls (which were, BTW, subject to a gentleman's NDA). During the call, Jim shared with us Sun's plans to open source Solaris, and said that he wanted to have a small pilot program. The pilot members would be subject to an NDA (a fact that frustrated Jim to no end!), but in exchange we would be privvy to and have input to Sun's plans. We would also get access to the Solaris source code months before anyone else outside Sun. Because of the people on the Cabal (Joerg Schilling, Dennis Clarke, Al Hopper, and me to name a couple of non-Sun people) represented the sort of people OpenSolaris would be aimed at, the Cabal were the first non-Sun people to be invited to join the program. I think we all lept at the opportunity!

As the months went by, more and more people joined the pilot, until we had about 150 members. One of the hardest things for me as a pilot member under NDA was countering the FUD spreading naysayers. All we could do was repeat that Sun was serious about open sourcing Solaris--all of it--and that it would be made public as soon as possible (Sun's engineers had to go through the code with a fine toothed comb to make sure that Sun had the rights to publish the source code--an arduous task considering the millions of lines of code they had to inspect).

Here we are, a year later, and what a change we've seen! The OpenSolaris community has grown from about 150 people to over 14000 members, 13000 of which are not Sun employees. We have numerous community contributions, at least 5 OpenSolaris distributions, and dozens of projects (others have posted the exact figures, so I won't bother to repeat them here). For the most part, the naysayers have kept schtuum, although I see some die-hard Linux advocates still seem to have their heads in the sand. Which is their loss, really, because as a developer, I can't think of anything more interesting that hacking on the most advanced OS on the planet: Solaris. The Linux, Solaris, and BSD communities can learn a lot from each other, and it's gratifying to see bits of OpenSolaris technology in other OSes. For example, DTrace is well on its way to being ported to BSD, and I hear that a Linux port of ZFS is just getting started.

If you're not already invloved, come join us on opensolaris.org, or IRC in #opensolaris on freenode.net. See you there!

First annual OpenSolaris contributor awards

2006-06-10T16:03:00.000-07:00

As part of the first OpenSolaris birthday celebrations, the Marketing Community is accepting your nominations for the first annual OSCAs (OpenSolaris Contributor Awards). Despite the similarity in name to a certain other award event, there will be no limos for the lucky nominees--nor any red carpet. :-)

The polls close at the end of June 12th, so get your nominations in now!

Thank you

2006-06-10T16:00:00.000-07:00

Just a quick line to say a big "thank you" to everyone who expressed their sympathy about Judge's passing. It is very much appreciated.

My little boy, Judge, has passed away

2006-06-02T13:18:00.000-07:00

This is the saddest piece of news I'll probably ever have to impart: at 17:15 Pacific time on Thursday, June 1st, 2006, my little boy, Judge, passed away. He was my best friend, my constant companion, and my canine child; he passed away in my arms, while the vet did what he had to do.

Here's a photo of Judge, in our garden with his favourite toy:

Judge Teer, February 1991 - June 2006

I wrote a poem about Judge; it's not very good but here it is anyway:

My Best Friend
An Ode to Judge

by Rich Teer

My best friend is very special
He gives me all and asks for nothing
Except fresh water and a bowl of food
(And treats by the score if the truth be told)

My best friend lay by my side
During the long months I spent stuck inside
Down in the basement, writing my book
He'd melt your heart with just one look

My best friend used to run and play,
But now he just sleeps most of the day
Twitching and dreaming on his mat
I wonder if he ever caught that cat?

My best friend has big brown eyes
That twinkle like stars in velvet skies
With a fearsome bark and fluffy tail
His favourite songs made him wail

My best friend (his name is Judge)
Needs me for all, but I bear him no grudge
He gave me his love unconditionally,
Do I need to say he got the same from me?

My best friend has passed away
The house is cold and empty today
No more barking, no playing with toy
No more hugs with my little boy

When it comes for my time to end,
At last I'll be rejoining
My best friend

Rest in peace, little boy...

New Ferrari laptops coming soon

2006-05-31T10:31:00.000-07:00

According to this report in El Reg, Acer will soon be padding out their range of Ferrari laptops with two new models: the 1000 and the 5000 (to complement the current 4000). Both models use AMD's dual-core Turion 64 X2 processors, and the 5000 is a black and red carbon fibre machine with a 15.4" widescreen display (the 1000 has only a 12.1" display).

I would think that these two (especially the 5000) would make fine machines to run Solaris or OpenSolaris on. If he hasn't got one already, doubtless Casper will be getting his grubby mitts on one! My Ferrari 3400 is fast enough, but I wouldn't mind getting a fully loaded 5000 (two cores are better than one, right?). Given how strapped for cash I am, it'll be a while...

New Galaxy server--the X4600--coming soon?

2006-05-24T16:50:00.000-07:00

I've just been perusing Sun's documentation site, looking for X4200 documentation. At the page that lists the servers, I noticed an entry for the Sun Fire X4600.

Given that the X2100 is two core 1U, the X4100 is four core 1U and the X4200 is four core 2U, I reckon the X4600 is a four core 6U machine. What that extra 4U buys is anyone's guess, but I suspect that more SAS drive bays would be top of the list, and perhaps a memory expansion card. A CPU/memory card also fill some of the space, but that would go against the naming convention (assuming I parsed it correctly, of course!). Time will tell...

A Sun storage product I would like to see really soon

2006-05-22T17:39:00.000-07:00

Ever since the September 2005 introduction of Sun's Galaxy servers (the X4100 and X4200), and more recently the T2000 CoolThreads server, I've been convinced that Sun needs to add an entry-level, SAS-based, direct attached, JBOD drive array to their storage portfolio. The array would be 1U high, and hold up to 8 SAS disks, that are presented as two external UltraSCSI320 busses. The user would be able to connect the two busses together to have 8 disks on one bus, or, for performance and redundancy reasons, have 4 disks on each of two busses. In other words, an 8 disk, SAS based, version of the StorageTek 3120 SCSI array. Of course, the array would also have two hot swappable PSUs.

A fibre attached variant of this array could also be introduced, as could a 2U version with a 16 drive capacity.

With the availability of low cost, high performance servers like the X4200 and T2000, I think a matching drive array would sell like hot cakes--especially if they're priced right. I think Sun's current entry level S1 is over priced at $3695 (list) for what amounts to a case, PSU, and a couple of disks. I think if Sun could introduce an array like I described above for $1995 entry price ("small" model: dual PSUs and two 73 GB 10000RPM SAS disks), they'd be on to a real winner.

Here's a picture of my hypothetical array I mocked up in The GIMP:

I think a Sun X4200 + an UltraSCSI320 HBA + one of these arrays, using ZFS on Solaris or OpenSolaris would be really cool. What do you think?

New programming article published

2006-05-18T11:31:00.000-07:00

My latest article, Programming in the Solaris OS With Privileges, has just been posted on the Sun Developer Network (SDN). The article describes how to write privilege-aware Solaris and OpenSolaris applications.

In addition to Zones, DTrace, SMF, and ZFS, the ability to break down the traditional "all or nothing" powers bestowed upon UID 0 processes is another reason adopt Solaris 10 now!

That's enough evangelising for now; enjoy the article!

Bon voyage, Jim

2006-05-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

I've just read that my friend (and Sun's OpenSolaris Community Manager), Jim Grisanzio, is moving to Japan in July. Having moved from England to Canada in 1999, I know the sort of things he's going through. All I can say is that despite the differences in culture (admittedly relatively small in my case), the strain on our finances, and the upheaval of leaving friends and family behind, I've not regretted the move one iota. Best of luck with your move, Jim san!

The amusements of being divided by a common language

2006-05-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

Being a native Englishman (now living in Canada), the American bastardization of the English language really irritates me at times. But the same language gap provides for much amusement at times.

One of the contenders in the current season of The Apprentice is English. A couple of times during interviews he's said of someone "he's such a wanker!". Given the American TV channels' preponsity for bleeping out swear words and other supposedly offensive things (Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" is a prime example; it's a breast, people! We all have them...), I was surprised that they let this word though unscathed.

Then it occured to me: the censor-dudes don't know what a wanker is. Wanking is a slang word for masturbating, and while it isn't quite up there with the f-word, it's not the sort of word one would hear in polite conversation! Depending on context (as so much slang does), a wanker can either be a term of endearment between friends, or, as presumably intended on The Apprentice, used as a pejorative.

Well, it tickled my funny bone. I guess I need to get out more... :-)

The law isn't quite as big of an ass as I thought...

2006-05-07T20:09:00.000-07:00

Last January I blogged about how someone here in Canada was sueing the host of a party at which someone got inebriated and then drove home, injuring this woman. It was this person's position that the host of the party was responsible for the actions of his guests, was therefore negligent in allowing that person to drive, and therefore was fair game for a law suit where she sued for millions of dollars in damages. Last Friday the Supreme Court of Canada handed out their findings, and at last some sense in the law has been shown: individual adults are responsible for their own actions; the host of a party cannot be expected to babysit their guests, and therefore cannot be negligent in the evnt that one fo their guests chooses drive whilw under the influence of alcohol.

Bravo is what I say. It's about time some common sense was applied to the law, and people started taking responsibility for their own actions. The idiot who chose to drive while drunk is the guilty party here, no one else. And before I get flammed for this, remember: I'm writing this as a teetoal who thinks that there should be 0 tolerance for drunk-drivers.

We now return to our usual, more technical, babblings...

Apple to port ZFS to MacOS?

2006-05-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

According to at least one story, Apple are thinking about porting Solaris' latest file system, ZFS, to MacOS. I think this is a great idea; given the amout of people who use their Macs for video editing, which requires HUGE amounts of disk space, ZFS will be a Godsend.

Of course, I can't resist making this suggestion: given that Macs are now embracing x86 (but why on Earth Intel rather than AMD's Opeteron?!), why don't they just base their whole OS on Open Solaris? I may be a little biased, but Solaris is the most powerful and advanced OS on the planet; the combination of Open Solaris with Apple's Aqua GUI would be pretty cool! If this combo ever surfaces, just remember where you read it first! :-)

My $0.02 on Sun's new CEO

2006-04-26T09:07:00.001-07:00

I've not updated my blog in ages because I've been really busy recently. But I just had to comment on this one.

If you're a follower of Sun Microsystems (and if you're reading this, it's a pretty safe bet that you are!), you'll know by now that Scott McNealy has stepped down as CEO, handing over the reins to Jonathan Schwartz (Scott will continue to be chairman).

I've not (yet) met Scott, but I've had the pleasure of meeting Jonathan several times. He's a great guy, and I'm sure he'll do well mapping out Sun's future. I have great admiration and respect for both of these guys, and wish them all the best.

I was going to write more, but I think Jonathan says it best: Thank you, Scott, you are a hero to us all. Amen to that.

New OpenSolaris project: /dev/recycle

2006-04-01T09:00:00.000-08:00

I've just heard of this project from a colleague of mine, Avril Dummkopf. To use one one of John Clingan's expressions, Avril is a non-blogging heathan, so I thought I'd share the details of Avril's new OpenSolaris project announcement here.

For many years Solaris has had a device, /dev/null, which is used as a bit bucket. Anything written to /dev/null is thrown away, and reads return EOF. Another device exists, /dev/zero, which is similar except that it returns an endless stream of 0 bytes when read.

I think that this is wasteful, /dev/null especially so. So with a nod of inspiration to Sun's environmentally friendly UltraSPARC T1 processor and T1000 and T2000 servers, I am pleased to announce an OpenSolaris project to implement /dev/recycle, sponsored in part by GreenPeace.

The idea of this device is simple: rather than simply discarding unwanted bytes like /dev/null, data written to /dev/recycle is stored for later recycling: reads from /dev/recycle will be satisfied from this pool. (When the Trusted Extensions to Solaris are used, there is one recycling depot for each MAC label. Data with a given MAC label can only be read or written by a process at the same label.)

I've done some benchmarking, and compared to using /dev/null, using /dev/recycle will result in huge byte savings: on the order of terabytes per year. Bytes are a finite resource, so it just makes sense to recycle them where possible (software engineers have long appreciated the benefits of recycled--aka reusable--code).

I hear that the Mustang (Java 6) team is planning to replace Java's garbage collector with something that uses /dev/recycle. Given that Java currently performs automatic garbage collection, moving to the practice of of automatic recycling collection leveraging /dev/recycle will result in considerable byte savings, which is a Good Thing.

Please join the eco-device community on www.opensolaris.org for more details.

Looks pretting interesting to me, and I'm looking forward to contributing to this project.

He who dies with the most toys...

2006-03-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

... wins.

There's nothing more exciting to a Sun geek than being surrounded by Sun hardware running Solaris or OpenSolaris. In my home office I have a Sun Blade 1000 (thanks Acclinet!) which Jenny uses, and an Ultra 20 (thanks Sun!), and in my basement storage area, I have my home server (an E220R), firewall (A Netra T1 105), and various other bits of Sun kit. Not bad for someone who has spent most of the last four years unemployed!

With some of the money I got from $TELCO in Edmonton last year, I decided to invest in a web-based business idea I had a couple of years ago. So I bought myself a shiny new "medium" spec Sun Fire X4200 (I'd sure like to compare it to a T2000 when I've finished developing the web application...), and a fine machine it is. You can imagine how green with envy I was then, to read fellow Sun-enthusiast and all-round nice guy Ben Rockwood's post about the huge stack of Sun gear he had at work on Friday last week! His new machines are currently stuck using Linux (ha!), but knowing Ben, they'll be running Solaris as soon as his application will allow.

My Ferrari is sick :-(

2006-03-06T08:59:00.000-08:00

My Ferrari 3400 started misbehaving recently: it would turn itself off without so much as a by your leave. It happened a few days before the warranty expired, but when I first called Acer's tech support, they suggested that I try swapping out the 2 GB RAM I installed when I got the machine with the original memory. I did this, but it made no difference so I reinstalled the 2 GB after making sure the DIMM sockets were free from debris.

All seemd to be OK, until a few days later when the same thing happened. By this time, the warrany had technically expired, but the support guy I was talking with said that it wouldn't be aproblem, and that they'd fix my laptop under the warranty. He did advise me to remove my memory and 7200 RPM disk before returning it, which I did. That was last Friday. Purolater picked up the package on Friday, so hopefully it'll be with Acer either today or tomorrow.

Fingers crossed, but so far I have to say that I am impressed with Acer's technical support people. Until I get it back, I'm back downstairs in my basement. That's not so bad, though, as I'm working on my Ultra 20 with it's 24.1" Sun monitor. :-)

OpenSolaris Charter: Signed, sealed, and delivered!

2006-02-10T21:33:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday February 8, the OpenSolaris CAB (that is, me, Casper Dik, Roy Fielding, Al Hopper, and Simon Phipps) met to approve the OpenSolaris Charter. We voted and it was unanimously approved. Today (the Friday the 10th of February), Glenn Weinberg (vice president of Sun's Operating Platforms Group) approved the charter on behalf of Sun.

This is a huge step forwards; kudos to everyone who helped make this happen!

The law is an ass (part 1)

2006-01-19T10:50:00.000-08:00

Since moving to Canada in 1999, I've noticed a disturbing trend amongst many North Americans, especially, it has to be said, our friends in the US. Put simply, and I know that this doesn't apply to everyone, people (adults) do not want to take responsibility for their own actions. A story on the news last night exemplified this, and is what promoted this blog entry.

Before I get into the story, let me be absolutely clear: I am teetotal (I don't like the taste; I have no religous or moral reasons why I don't drink), and I think that people who get caught DUI should be severely punished--especially those that injur or kill someone. I also think that the legal blood-alcohol limits for drivers should be reduced: 0 tolerance would be best. Note that I don't have a problem with people drinking; I only have a problem with people who drink and drive.

OK, with the caveats out of the way, on to the gist of this blog entry. From what I understand, if you have an accident while drunk-driving, you or the people that you injur can sue the person who served you the alcohol. That means the barkeeper or owner of a pub, or the host at a private party. The rationale behind this nonsense is something like this: the judgment of the person who was drunk was impaired at the time they got into the car, so therefore the host or pub staff should go out of their way to ensure that the drunk person does not drive. Furthermore, if they don't do that, they (the host) are responsible for the drunk's actions and can therefore be sued for negligence.

All I can say about that is: what a load of bollocks! I agree that at the time of getting into the car the drinker's judgment was impaired, and they may therefore chose to drive when they shouldn't. But--and this is the crux of my point--their judgement wasn't impaired when they chose to have the first drink. They chose to have a drink (or drinks) when they knew that they'd be driving, and therefore they, and they alone, are responsible for their actions. To suggest that the host is responsible is stupidty taken to an extreme. I mean, what next? Liqour stores being sued because they are responsible for someone drinking from the bottle of booze that they just bought from that store? Knife merchants being sued because they are responsible for the actions of someone who uses the knife they bought to attack someone? Craft shops being sued because the glue they sold was sniffed rather than being used to stick bits of paper in a scrapbook? In my opinion, this is definately the case of the law being an ass.

It's time to stop all this nonsense before it gets even more out of hand. When people make a mistake, their first reaction shouldn't be "Who can I sue?" but "What can I learn?". The way things are going, we're going to have to ask our guests and house visitors to sign a disclaimer before they enter our houses. And that is just insane.

The above isn't the only example of the law gone mad. There's something very wrong in a society where the victims of crime have less rights than the perpetrators of that crime. But I can feel another rant coming on, so that'll have to wait until another time...

Second Building OpenSolaris article finally posted

2006-01-13T09:20:00.000-08:00

Happy belated New Year!

I had intended to do one of those "review of 2005" kind of entries, but I just haven't had the time. I still don't have the time, but now that we're half way through January there doesn't seem to be much point. :-)

Anyways, I just wanted to post a heads up that my second article about building and installing OpenSolaris has finally been published. I wrote it a few months ago, but for one reason or another, it didn't get published until now. Oh well; better late than never!

An "overqualified" rant

2005-12-20T09:18:00.000-08:00

Like many (far too many, it seems) of my fellow Solaris admins, I am once again looking for work, preferably contract, and preferably in my town (or commutable therefrom). Searching on one of the local high tech job boards, I saw that a local hosting company--coincidentally the one that hosts my colocated servers--was looking for a reasonably experienced sys admin/CSR type person. The money wasn't great, but even a measly $12/hour puts more food on the table than the $0/hour I'm currently earning. Besides, I know a couple of guys there, so I thought it would be an interesting experience and change of pace. With all that in mind, I sent off my resume (not really expecting to get an offer, but you have to try, right?).

A day or two later, I go this reply:

Rich,

I sincerely appreciate you sending us your resume, but regretfully must
inform you that you are much too overqualified for this position. I
have no doubts that your *many* years of experience would help build a
better department and company overall, however, this position is very
much entry-level system administration.

Here comes the rant: WTF is "overqualified"? If someone is willing to do a job that they are more than qualified for, at a lower rate of pay than they could command for a more senior position that more closely matches their skill level, why WOULDN'T an employer leap at the chance? Suppose you were in the market for a new car and only had, say, $10K to spend. If someone offered you a bona-fide deal on a $20K car for only $10K, would you say "Hey, what a deal!" and snap it up, or would you say "Sorry, that car is over qualified for my needs."?

Or suppose you needed a relatively minor surgery, one that can be performed by an intern. If all other things are equal (so it'll cost you the same), if the senior specialist offered to perform your surgey, would you go for it, or would you say "Sorry, you're overqualified for this simple surgery. Please ask the intern to do it."?

One of the usual excuses given is "well, we assume you'd want too much cash--more than we're prepared to pay for this position." Don't you think the guy applying for the job knows that, and has already taken that into account? By applying for the position, they're implicitly saying "I'm prepared to offer my skills at a lower rate, because other things make up for it". In my case, that would be getting to sleep in my own bed with my own family, and helping to pay down our debts.

Another excuse is "you'll just get bored and leave, so we'll have to replace you." Well, duh! This is the high tech industry people! Most IT peeps stay only a short time and move on anyway--it's the nature of the geek. Given that people are bound to move on and need to be replaced anyway, isn't it better to hire the best person available for that time period? If nothing else, you're paying low end wages, yet getting high end skills and experience.

Maybe I should start lying about my experience--understate it. "Yeah, I know I look like I'm in my late 30's, but really, I'm only 25 and have only a couple of years of post-education experience". Nah, that would compromise my integrity, and I have to live with myself. The best thing to do is get cracking on implementing some business ideas I have, then I can be self-sufficient and *I'll* be in the hiring seat. And I'll tell you now: there'll be no such thing as being "overqualified" in my company...

Today's UserFriendly

2005-12-05T10:17:00.000-08:00

I almost pissed myself laughing at today's User Friendly comic strip. It helps if you know who Sid (the old geezer with the new webcam), Pearl, and Pitr are, of course... :-)

Solaris NAT page updated

2005-11-28T15:53:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, I wrote some instructions describing how to set up NAT on Solaris using IP Filter. This page is pretty popular, getting about 1000 hits per month, so I've updated it to include some info about setting up NAT on Solaris 10.

When I originally wrote the article, my firewall was a SPARCstation 2 running Solaris 7. I have since replaced that machine with a 440 MHz Netra T1 105 running Solaris 10. The T1 is ideal for this duty: it has dual 100 base-T Ethernet interfaces, dual hot-swappable disks, and consumes little power. It's 1U rack size also helps; it is also quite quiet. (I wish I could say the same about my E220R and the D1000 array that's attached to it! I'd like to replace these with smaller, quieter, more efficient machines, but cash for a new home server is a low priority at the moment...)

Solaris Express 11/05 is now available!

2005-11-21T14:50:00.000-08:00

Solaris Express 11/05, which is build 24 of Nevada, is now available. I'm not sure what new features this has over Solaris Express 10/05 (build 23), but it *doesn't* include ZFS, which wasn't integrated until build 27. Dan Price's blog usually contains a detailed "what's new" summary, although at the time of this writing there isn't one for 11/05. He's probably too knackered after putting together his excellent ZFS screencasts, but I'm sure a guide will be published soon.

Enjoy!

What a week for Sun fans!

2005-11-20T20:57:00.000-08:00

Last week (November 14 - 18) was a fantastic week for Sun advocates, with a major annoncement on nearly every day.

On Monday, Sun introduced the processor previously known as Niagara, the UltraSPARC T1. This first implementation of chip multithreading (CMT) can run up to 32 threads on 8 cores, while consuming less than 70 watts of power. Given how well Solaris scales in a multithreaded enviroment--it eats threads for lunch!--I can't wait to see some benchmarks for this CPU.

On Tuesday, Sun and Oracle announced that Oracle have selected Solaris 10 as their preferred open source 64-bit development platform and deployment platform. This should mean that Oracle on Solaris (both SPARC and x86) will continue to be tier one platforms for Oracle.

Wednesday was the big one for me. First and foremost, Build 27 of OpenSolaris was made available. Build 27 is an important release, because it contains the much-anticipated ZFS file system. Second, Sun released Sun Studio 11--for free. Finally, support for PTC Pro/Engineer was announced for 64-bit Solaris x86.

Continuing the database/application theme for this week, on Thursday Sun announced support for Postgres on Solaris. Postgres is a free, open source database, which is technologically superior to MySQL, which for some reason gets most of the press/attention.

No announcements on Friday, but with NC05Q4 just a couple of weeks away, I think the future is looking very bright. We live in very intersting times...

Sun's Studio compiler are now FREE!

2005-11-15T10:56:00.000-08:00

I've known about this for quite a while, so I'm glad that the cat can finally be let out of the bag: Sun's Studio compiler collection is now FREE for all users! (Sun Studio 10 was free to registered users of OpenSolaris, but Studio 11 removes even this small barrier to entry.)

Not only is this great news for Solaris developers (both SPARC and x86), but Linux users can also benefit from this professional-quality suite of tools, which includes C, C++, and Fortran 95 compilers, the dbx debugger, and various performance analysis and miscellaneous tools.

Who needs gcc when Studio is free?

Galaxy systems now in the Sun HW Handbook

2005-11-10T18:43:00.000-08:00

I just noticed that the Sun Fire X4100 and X4200 have been added to the Sun HW Handbook. Enjoy...

First glimpse of the next Galaxy server?

2005-11-03T10:14:00.000-08:00

If you want a glimpse of what might be one of the next Galaxy servers, check out Sun and Seagate's Flash presentation on SAS (serial attached SCSI). The presentation shows a couple of racks full of the now-familiar X4100 and X4200s, but those racks also contain similar looking 4U boxes. Hmm...

Sepculation: my guess (and if I *did* know, I wouldn't be posting this, right?) is that the 4U box is one of the 4-way or 8-way Galaxy variants Sun have hinted they're working on. Delivery time? Your guess is as good as mine, but I guess they must be fairly near completion.

I thought long and hard about posting this entry. I am privileged to receive quite a lot of confidential information from friends and contacts inside Sun, info that is either covered by a formal NDA or (more likely) by a "gentleman's NDA". That Sun entrusts some of their secrets to me is an honour that I will not abuse; the deciding factors in posting this entry were: 1) the presentation is already available on a public web site, and 2) Sun themselves link to the presentation, from the X4100 and X4200 product info pages.

Including Formatted Source Code in Groff Documents

2005-10-04T15:54:00.000-07:00

My latest article, Including Formatted Source Code in Groff Documents, has been posted to UnixReview.com. It describes how I included formatted program source code into the text of my book, Solaris Systems Programming.

More Solaris related stuff.

Contrarian Minds: Bryan Cantrill interviewed

2005-09-29T13:36:00.000-07:00

DTrace inventor, Bryan Cantrill, is the subject of an interview in the current Contrarian Minds feature on Sun's web site. It's a great read; enjoy.

Lock 1.1 is now available

2005-09-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

I sometimes find myself writing little utilities. Those that I think are worthy for "public consumption" I'll make available from my web site. The first of these programs is called lock, and was inspired by its BSD namesake. The program's home page contains more details, including source code, man page, and pre-built binary packages for Solaris 10 on SPARC and x86.

Enjoy!

AJ and Miranda finally get together!

2005-09-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

In addition to Dilbert, JD "Illiad" Frazers's User Friendly is one of my daily "must reads". AJ is a shy web designer who has had eyes for a collegue of his called Miranda for years. Every now and then she tries to get him to admit his feelings for her (she feels the same way about him), but he's always been too shy to say anything.

Today, finally, he admits to Miranda that he has feelings for her, and she responds by giving him a great big sloppy kiss (just don't ask what AJ's hands are doing in that last panel...). Hooray, it's about time!

I just hope this doesn't end up being one of those dream sequences.

By Galaxy, Sun's new x86 servers are here!

2005-09-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

Today was Sun's 3rd Network Computing event this year (NC05Q3), and for me this one was the most interesting this year. Today was the day when the first of the long-awaited, AMD-powered "Galaxy" servers were officially announced.

What makes the boxes so interesting is that unlike previous Sun x86 products, these servers are designed in-house. Three servers were announced today: the entry level Sun Fire X2100 (whose base configuration is less than $750 US), and the more up market Sun Fire X4100 and X4200. The X2100 is a dual-core ready single-socket machine, and seems to be related to the Ultra 20 workstation. The X4100 and X4200, on the other hand, are dual-core ready twin dual-socket machines. This is just speculation on my part, but I wouldn't be too surprised to see workstation products related to these to servers in the not-too-distant future.

The X4[12]00 are apparently setting the standard for Sun's next generation of servers: the cases, for example, will be shared with Niagara-based servers. This is a good move on Sun's part as they will be able to leverage economies of scale to keep costs low. (Jeez, I can't believe I just typed "leverage economies of scale"; I sound like a fscking manager!) Anyways, these machines are also Sun's first machines to use 2.5" SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drives. The smaller form factor enhances the airflow for better cooling. It also has the added bonus of allowing Sun to offer models with four hot-swappable drives in a 1U chassis (although in this configuration a DVD/CD drive can't be fitted).

Also standard with the X4[12]00 servers is ILOM (Integrated Lights Out Management) for true lights-out operation. That's in addition to the 16GB memory capacity, dual hot-swappable PSUs, hot-swappable fans, two 64-bit PCI-X slots, and four Gigabit Ethernet ports. Like all of Sun's x86 products, these servers offer a choice of Solaris, RedHat or SuSE Linux, or Windoze (although quite why one would cripple such great machines by using the latter is beyond me...); Solaris is, of course, preloaded on all of these systems.

As I mentioned in a recent blog, I am currently looking for a 1U or 2U server to replace a pair of Ultra 1s. And I have to admit, I'm tempted--very tempted. About the only thing preventing me from making a decision right now is I want to see what the first Niagara-based servers brings us...

NIagara's many faces, err, cores

2005-09-09T19:30:00.000-07:00

My recent blog about Sun's the upcoming Niagara gave a brief overview about this facinating chip. According to this story at El Reg, 8-core CPUs are not the only variation Sun is planning.

Recognising that 100% yields are not going to happen, Sun is planning to ship 6-core variants of Niagara as well as 8-core ones, the former will be at a lower price point than the latter (of course). A 4-core version is also being considered.

Apparently, systems based on Niagara will have only one CPU socket; I guess we'll have to wait for Rock-based systems for multi-socket CMP machines.

Systems called the Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 (1U and 2U respectively) will feature the Niagara CPUs. This nomenclature is similar to what I've seen for Sun's forthcoming Opteron-based "Galaxy" systems (aka Becky boxes, an allusion to designer and Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim).

On a more personal note, I need to replace a pair of aging Ultra 1s with a 1U or 2U server. Looks like I'll have an embarresment of riches from which to chose!

Anti-M$ people will love this...

2005-09-09T19:28:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice anti-M$ rant.

Richard Giles' Podcast interview with Bryan Cantrill

2005-09-09T19:19:00.000-07:00

Prolific podcaster, Richard Giles, has published his interview with Bryan Cantrill (who was recently awarded with a Top 35 Innovators Award). Check it out.

Niagara: UltraSPARC's Viagra?

2005-09-09T08:57:00.000-07:00

I like Sun's SPARC and UltraSPARC processors. There's something about them that feels inherently "right". But, let's be honest, their price/performance is lack-lustre to say the least. All right, it sucks. There, I've said it.

Their scalabilty is excellent, as the success of Sun's 100+ CPU SF25K behemoths illustrates. And that's important because sometimes, for certain workloads, straightline performance isn't everything. You wouldn't use a Formula 1 car in a rally, for example.

But many workloads are highly or even embaressingly parallel. For example, a web server. Each "hit" is potentially a different thread. Super fast CPUs like AMD's Opteron mask this by being really quick, in an inefficient manner. That is, they mask the fact that today's CPUs are *much* faster than the memory systems to which they're connected, and so even the fastest CPU spends a lot of time twiddling its electronic thumbs, waiting for memory (be it main RAM, or cache). The trouble is that while these fast CPUs are stalled, waiting for data or instructions to be fetched from memory, they're doing nothing. Well, nothing useful: they still eat up electricity. Today's multi-core chips (e.g., UltraSPARC-IV and the latest Opterons) suffer from the same problem, although the stalling is limited to each core (i.e., a stall in one core has no effect on the other).

While Intel was playing the GHz game, Sun's engineers recognised that a better way to faster performance--or more throughput--was to tackle the problem differently. Rather than endlessly ramping up the clock speed for smaller and smaller performance increases, they took a different approach: when the CPU stalls because it is waiting for memory, why not switch the CPU to a different thread? Sun's research concluded that a CPU spends about 75% of its time waiting for memory, so a CPU with four threads could conceivably be kept busy much more often: while three threads are waiting for memory, the fourth is running. (I guess an analogy would be the difference between using different processes and different threads. The former is more expensive to switch state (waiting for memory), while the latter is less.) To put it simply, a 4 GHz chip is busy only 25% of the time (the rest is spent waiting for memory), so it has an effective speed of 1 GHz.

The next logical step after having a single-core CPU that can run four threads is a multi-core CPU where each core has four threads. Enter Niagara, the code name for Sun's first implementation of its CMT (Chip Multi Threading) architecture. Niagara has eight cores, each of which runs four threads. Yep, 32 threads on a single CPU, 8 of which run simultaneously (one on each core).

As reported at El Reg, the first machines using Niagara--which will probably have a product name of "UltraSPARC-T1"--are already in Beta testing (no, alas, I don't have access to one). Here's what psrinfo says on these systems:


$ ./psrinfo -vp
The physical processor has 8 cores and 32 virtual processors
The core 0 has 4 virtual processors (0, 1, 2, 3)
The core 1 has 4 virtual processors (4, 5, 6, 7)
The core 2 has 4 virtual processors (8, 9, 10, 11)
The core 3 has 4 virtual processors (12, 13, 14, 15)
The core 4 has 4 virtual processors (16, 17, 18, 19)
The core 5 has 4 virtual processors (20, 21, 22, 23)
The core 6 has 4 virtual processors (24, 25, 26, 27)
The core 7 has 4 virtual processors (28, 29, 30, 31)
UltraSPARC-T1 (clock 1080 MHz)

So, we're looking at a ballpark clock speed of 1GHz. Doesn't sound very impressive, until you figure in the eight multi-threaded cores. In terms of throughput, these puppies are better than an 8 GHz CPU!

With all these threads (especially in multi-socket machines!), it's a good job that Solaris eats threads for lunch!

Inside Jack: Sun's best-ever marketing?

2005-09-08T19:55:00.000-07:00

One of the best, if not *the* best, marketing ideas to come out of Sun is a series of cartoons called Inside Jack. It's funny, it appeals to geeks, it's irreverent; it's great! Noone and nothing is taboo: Scott, Jonathan, Larry Ellison, and even Intel's CEO are ruthlessly parodied, as are the competition's products (but, as Cupid Stunt would say, it's all done in the best possible taste). Scott McNealy making an announcement in Klingon--who'da thunk it?

Jack is a (presumably ficticious) Sun software engineer who spends his meetings with marketroids daydreaming more effective ways to market Sun's products. He's smart, he's witty, he writes code, and no, he won't fix your computer.

Kudos to whomever dreamed up Inside Jack, and had the balls to get it published. All I can say is well done, and bring on the FUD Fighters!

The Ben and Jim show...

2005-09-07T13:31:00.000-07:00

Check out Richard Giles' second I/O podcast, featuring my friends Jim Grisanzio and Ben Rockwood. Jim is the OpenSolaris project's Community Manager, and Ben is a community member who (like me) was on the OpenSolaris Pilot project.

Bryan Cantrill awarded

2005-09-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

Bryan Cantrill, Senior Solaris kernel engineer, has been awarded Technology Review's Top 35 Innovators Award. Bryan is the guy (together with Adam Leventhal and Mike Shapiro) who brought DTrace to the world.

Congrats, Bryan; it's a honour well deserved.

Happy birthday Alberta--and goodbye Edmonton

2005-09-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (September 1st) was Alberta's 100th birthday. I didn't see much of the celebrations, but I did manage to watch the firework display that took place at the Alberta Legistalure. That Thursday night was also my last night as a temporary resident of Edmonton (awfully nice of them to put on the fireworks for me, I thought!), as my contract at $TELCO was not renewed. (Some senior manager, who's main claim to infamy was power cycling a SF15K when he thought he was opening the cabinet, has decided that most contractors must go. I'll not argue with that policy, but I think his timing, with half the company out on strike, isn't that great. Oh well...)

Anyways, I thought I'd record some of best and worst memories of Edmonton. In no particluar order, the things I *won't* miss:

The noise. Despite being on the 15th floor, the noise from outside was almost unberable at night. Definately a stark contrast to the peace and quiet I get in my house in Kelowna, up on a moutainside overlooking Glenmore valley.
The smokers. I can't believe the number of people who smoke (both in absolute terms, and as a ratio) in Edmonton; they're everywhere! The worst thing is when bunches of smokers cluster around the entrace to a building: us non-smokers have to walk through a smoke haze to get to work.
Being away from my home and family. This was the hardest, and IMHO, most unnecessary, part. There's no technical reason why I couldn't have worked from Kelowna (even my own home), as 99% of what my team did was remote anyway. Two blocks or 1000km, it's all the same. Alas, the "innovation" in the company's values doesn't stretch as far as allowing its employees and contractors to work from home on a regular basis. Again, this is not a technical problem, it's a cultural one...
Walking 10 blocks to the nearest grocery store! Oh well, it gave me some exercise.
The concrete--it's everywhere!
The short summer.
The cold!

And to end on a more positive note, here are some things that I *will* miss:

My favourite restaurant, The Wok Box. If you like oriental food, you owe it to yourself to give this place a try. They're near the corner of 102nd Street and Japser Avenue (opposite Commerce Place), and their "Spicy Singapore Cashew" is to die for! My 2nd favourite restaurant, Chicken for Lunch, is also great (especially on Fridays), but get there early: the queue gets pretty long! And fellow chocoholics would be remiss to visit Edmonton and not go to the all-you-can-eat chocolate buffet, at the Sutton Place Hotel every Thursday and Friday night!
The friends and collegues I made and met over the past 7 months, including (but not limited too; apols if I missed anyone!) Jim, Steven, Dave, Eappan, Jimi, Mike, Ian, Terri, Marg, Jay, and Francois. We shared many a good time...
The cash. I enjoyed being able to go to Futureshop et al, and actually afford to buy something (mostly DVDs). OK, that's not specific to Edmonton per se, but I still miss it!
The neat architecture: the pyrmaid-shaped city hall, the Muttart Conservatory, and Manulife Place (the nicest looking building in Edmonton, IMHO), and so on. (Mind you, Edmonton has more than its fair share of ugly buildings too...)

Well, that's about it for this list. But I must thank the anonymous person who's insecure Wifi connection enabled me to get onto the 'Net in my rented apartment: thank you!

Latest draft of the OpenSolaris Charter now available

2005-09-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

If you have an interest in OpenSolaris and would like to participate in the discussion around its charter, now is the time to do so. Fellow CABber Al Hopper recently posted the latest draft of the OpenSolaris Charter, and we are seeking *your* feedback.

Once the Charter is ratified, we still have the Governance Model and Joint Development Process to complete, so we still have a lot of work to do!

PSP System Update 2.00 is here!

2005-08-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

I'm not usually into games, but I was recently given a Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP). Those things are damned impressive: even more so now that System Update 2.00 is finally here!

As well as the usual bug fixes, SU2.00 contains several new features, most notably a web browser. Before now, the only way to get onto the web friom a PSP (assuming one hadn't installed the Japanese 2.00 System Update) was to buy a copy of Wipeout Pure (which, incidentally, is a great game), and use a connection that used a specific DNS server.

As well as playing games, the PSP can be used to watch movies, listen to music, and look at photos. A very versatile little machine! Now, how to port OpenSolaris to it...?

Sun opens Open Source Office

2005-08-18T20:11:00.000-07:00

According to this article at El Reg, Sun has opened an Open Source Office to coordinate its open source activities. The OSO is chaired by fellow-CABber, Simon Phipps. Given that Sun has stated their desire (and intention) to open source all of their software eventually, I'd say Simon and the OSO have their work cut out for them!

Hey Simon, if you need someone to come on an international jolly trip with you, you know my email address. :-)