VDbench: The Amazing Swiss Army Knife of Benchmarks
VDbench (so named for its creator, Henk Vandenbergh of Sun Microsystems, formerly StorageTek) is a truly incredible enterprise grade storage benchmark that is free and open source. In celebration of vdbench 5.02's release I thought it time we discuss it. One of the things I love about VDbench is that its implemented in Java. Its extremely portable (Windows, Solaris, Linux, AIX, OS/X and HP/UX) and includes a both GUI and CLI interfaces. ...
OpenSolaris Election Season is Upon Us
Its that time of year again for OpenSolaris Governing Board (OGB) Elections. This is the time of year that we clean up contributor grants within our meritocracy and generally clean house. The Annual Report was due Feb 4th but is still in the works. Nominations for OGB will open on Feb 15th and close on Mar 1st. If you are seeking a core contributor grant (and the voting rights that come with it) you need to get that approved by Feb ...
Jonathan Says Goodbye via Twitter Haiku
The message was simple: Today's my last day at Sun. I'll miss it. Seems only fitting to end on a #haiku. Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more Please post your thoughts on Jonathan's leaving. Its a mixed emotion... on one hand he set some great goals and put a fire under things. A lot of us believed in him. And yet, he failed to execute and ultimately was responsible for Sun's demise. Could someone else have ...
OPEN LETTER TO ORACLE: (Open)Solaris Roadmap
Dear Oracle, Congratulations on the EU approval of your acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Many of us in the various Sun communities spent years working closely with Oracle products on Sun technology and feel right at home being part to the Oracle family. The business savvy and dedication to customer success will be a welcome change in the direction of all of Sun's technologies. While the strategy webcasts and FAQs have been ...
Transition & Closure as Oracle Takes the Con
On Jan 27th Sun, as an independent company, died and Oracle's reign begins. No time was wasted. As you no doubt have noticed by now, sun.com redirects to Oracle.com, which is in keeping with its acquisition history... but even so it happened quicker than I expected. No time being wasted. Oracle hosted a 5 hour (yes, 5) event in Redwood City (Oracle HQ) to lay out its strategy for Sun. Charles Phillips: Welcome and Oracle + Sun: ...
Haiti: Fact Finding Mission, Churches Helping Churches
A coalition of churches quickly formed following the quake in Haiti, Churches Helping Churches, made up of several churches including Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. They went on site last week to assist the churches in Haiti and assess the needs. Yesterday Pastor Mark preached a special sermon which told the entire story of his trip. If your interested in the situation on the ground in Haiti and particularly in ...
Larry Gets What Larry Wants: Sun Now Oracle
Its all over folks. Oracle buys Sun, EU approved. There will be a Oracle + Sun Strategy Update Webcast on Wed the 27th, so make sure to tune in for that. The invite was sent out yesterday, so looks like Oracle got early notice.
Modifying Solaris “useradd” Default Behaviour
A colleague recently told me that he'd heard that you could create some file that would change the default parameters that "useradd" used, such as change the default shell. I hadn't heard of this before and answered, "Ya, you just specify it as an argument to useradd!" Never the less, he was insistent that there was a way and wanted to know what it was. So our journey began. If there was a way, we had two options. First, we could run ...
So long 2009…
2009 is going... along with the first decade of the new millennium. After 10 years I'm still unsure what we call this decade, seems like we've dodged the question in uncertainty. I'll end this year on a personal note and get back to technical posts in the new year. If there was any doubt about my suspicions of being ADHD they are confirmed by the strange journey my studies have taken me in December. You'll notice my last post was an ...
ORACLE 11g R2 FOR SOLARIS X86!!! FINALLY!!!!!!
Let there be great rejoicing! Oracle 11g R2 has been released for X86!!! So snubbed was Solaris/X86 that there was no release for Oracle 11g (R1)... but that time has passed and R2 is available on BOTH SPARC & X86. w00t! Only 5 years of checking daily... I knew it would pay off eventually. ;)