Technical posts have flat lined in this blog and I’ve prided myself on staying more technically focused than other Solaris/UNIX blogs…. but I admit, I’m running out of ideas! So I’m reaching out to you, my readers…. what do you want me to write about?
Hi,
i like to read about current developments in (open)solaris and similar systems, especially developments that are currently not fully implemented or junst in discussion. Examples are zfs encryption or boomer. It would nice to here about the current state of such projects from time to time.
An other interesting target are unexpected limitations like the 1TB Blockdevice limit in Solaris 32Bit which has nothing to do with the extended vtoc.
I agree with the previous poster, new developments on UNIX systems is interesting.
Barring any juicy bits in such veins I would say that historical/nostalgic posts would be of interest. Personally I only started interesting myself for this stuff last year, starting out with Ubuntu Linux of all things. I’ve never known anything but x86 unless you count phones and game consoles, so things like ‘check out this cool old SPARC machine from x and x, had x and x before this and that, it could do this and that, very cool’, etc etc
Then again I’m not sure about the demographics of this blog, perhaps 90% of the readers would be rolling their eyes at that stuff..
Tips and tricks on debugging app issues that occur on Solaris. E.g. dbx (and now dbxtool), core files, dtrace, cool Solaris utilities, etc…
your efforts needed to move from SXCE to OSOL
ZFS is always a win
Anything combining multiple new Solaris 10 and beyond technologies to solve issues
.i.e. ZFS + Dtrace, Crossbow+Dtrace+Zones.
Simple configuration of Email on Solaris that includes pop and imap services
iscsi, cifs tips
Web server tuning using webstack/coolstack
+1 for Victor’s request. Going from SXCE->OSOL needs some serious considerations. For example:
* ufs root partitions to zfs boot (and reclaim the ufs partition)
* live upgrade to AI (I’ve heard that we can install AI (ipkg) into SXCE. Is that sufficient)
New and interesting developments in the (Open)Solaris world and within Sun. New “recipies” for problems. ZFS quirks (and bugs?) Virtualisation, centralised management, distributed processing… Other Solaris based projects?
I love reading this blog, please don’t give it up!
Another vote for talking about the migration from SXCE to opensolaris. I was coming to add it after reading the RSS feed, but it appears I’m not alone in wondering how to transisition my server without completely wiping it first.
Glassfish – http://www.sun.com/software/webstack/index.xml. More troubleshooting and writing SMF scripts, your experiences with the various patch management tools, perhaps unexpected challenges between program versions in /bin /sbin vs /xpg vs opencsw, dark corners like what options various x86 nics will accept, configuring X on Solaris for high res, dual monitor, different aspect ratios, advise on implementing nfsv4. Some of this has been covered, but is still very relevant and doesn’t get much attention. So recycling, by dusting off an old article and maybe add a few updates, will still be very much appreciated. Hope this helps.
What about some knowledge on porting device drivers from *BSD to OpenSolaris? Would this be possible?
- Funny stories from the daily IT life
- Errors/Mistakes that happened to you and how to avoid them
- How you solve your daily business (like your way to make backups) as information exchange…maybe somebody can find new ideas from it
- Tricks to optimize performance (network, disk, IO) in different environments
- Hints on Solaris shortcomings (things somebody should avoid)
- General “Do it this way”-Manuals, because of….(i often find How-Tos describing the same goal with different tools/ways without explaining why its done this way.)
I’d like to see some stuff on the advanced access control bits if you’ve done anything with it.
How about using the link editor (ld(1)) and $ORIGIN properly?
Installing, configuring and packaging Sun cluster + ZFS + SNDR (Sun network data replicator), so that systems can be configured with local disks as shared storage, instead of using SANs?
Or how about creating new IPS packages, and writing SMF manifests for them in lieu of now killed pre-, post- install and remove scripts?
I’d be curious to learn some of the OpenSolaris best practices you have developed internally. We’re teetering on the edge of replacing RHEL with OS, and that’s one of our holdups – lack of time to get down best practices for the basics – securing, deploying, user account management, high availability, etc.
information about migration from SXCE to opensolaris,
will be very useful soon.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on keeping OpenSolaris machines up-to-date without having to pay Sun for support.
I realize that Sun’s support levels are a good value, but for a startup with little to spend on infrastructure, CentOS seems like a more prudent choice.
I would personally love to hear what you’re doing at Joyent related to Solaris.
I would love to read about the history of Sun and stories of it’s glory days kind of like the folklore.org site for Macs. Also, I would love to read about what desktop software you use on a daily basis in order to make Solaris your everyday machine.
Agree with ‘cla’ – there’s a goldmine of Solaris info in your blog (which is why I have it permanently bookmarked lol), but it would be neat to hear about some of your “stories from the trenches”
I would like to here some Stories on your home network. Do you use Solaris ? How to interface with Macs ? Any issues withs charsets ? Any issues with charsets, if you mount Mac Volumes from Solaris via CIFS ? How do your backup’s work ? Does the new Samsung Television with media playback interface with the solaris fileserver ? Any problems with wireless due to steel in the concret walls. Does Tamara or your kids banter you, if you don’t get services on solaris up to run as easily with the Mac or Windows machine as a Mac or Windows machine ?
OK, there might be stuff in that, which you consider private. Just write about the rest.
Rather than the migration from SXCE to Opensolaris,
I’d like to see the POV from a company that uses S11
and what Joyent/Jason/yourself see as the technical
issues/challenges/solutions when living at the bleeding
edge, esp. post takeover.
We need to avoiding the politics and work out how we
can all continue to use ZFS/DTrace/Zones/Crossbow/
IPFilter on our production systems.
ZFS deduplication
I’d like some coverage on networking esp HA type stuff – Joyent must have quite a store of bit-flinging knowledge.
I’d like to see more stuff on home usage of ZFS, especially with regards to mirroring, and backup on very small and cheap systems. What’s the best way to protect 500G of photos, videos, tax returns, etc.? Also touch on easy access from Mac’s, linux, etc. This blog got me started on using ZFS for home storage, more please!
–Woof!
how about zone-clusters and cluster manager?
I’m guessing, you guys at Joyent probably does some speculator stuff with scale out/ failover with zones. Thanks for the great blog!
Tell us about your current desktop environment. Is it MacOSX these days or do you still run enlightenment? What desktop features do you find absolutely necessary that perhaps OpenSolaris/Gnome doesn’t provide?
I would like to see an article on setting up Solaris + ZFS + networking within Hyper-V.
You mentioned you had solaris working in Microsoft’s Hyper-V, but I have not heard anyone else doing this successfully with full networking support. I’d love to read how you did it.
How about 2 boxes, with a block replicated, fault tolerant (AVS), ZFS, iscsi target using Comstar ? Everyone wants to know how to build a fault tolerant storage – Show them
Solaris / OpenSol from the standpoint of someone comfortable with Linux. What does Solaris truly provide that Solaris doesn’t? Where is it strong and where is it weak? Be honest.
Perhaps someone on this blog can help me with turning off UPPERCASE when mounting my USB stick on OpenSolaris?
http://forums.opensolaris.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1153
Wow, I see a lot of good ideas already !
Please consider the following:
- your experiences with monitoring systems and what you’d like to see improved.
- Power supply management (UPS failovers, load management).
- How you use crossbow at work.
- War stories of tough situations that you’ve faced as a sysadmin, and what you had to do to get out of those (to the extent that you can speak about such things without affecting Joyent’s reputation).
Best of luck, and may you continue to get good wishes from us all !
Hi Ben,
I enjoy reading your blog. Actually it re-started my interest in Solaris.
Even though I like the nitty-gritty details, I am also interested in the ‘bigger picture’ and ‘putting it all together’, with actual examples / deployments.
Thanks!
-Arne
Kind of trivial compared to ZFS internals and the like but I’d like to know the first 10 (or whatever) things you do on a fresh OSOL install to make it fit for daily use. Also it would be interesting to know what shell you use and how you configure your environment.
And to echo the other comments: keep up the good work … great blog!
I’d like to see more comparisions on how Solaris does things vs. Linux or BSD, and which system may be better at some things than others.
Articles on tuning the system, tracking down memory/swap problems, identifying and solving problems with truss and dtrace.
Effective deployment and use of zones, branded zones.
thanks for the great blog!
Info on hardware that runs OpenSolaris well. Suggestions from the cheapest machine and then scaling up from there.
I enjoy all of the Solaris and Storage related articles and especially enjoy when you do introductory articles on newer tools (such as crossbow).
I first stumbled across you years ago when I started using Enlightenment. I know you’re still an E on X guy, but are you involved much in the project these days? If so it would be nice to hear some news about it.
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