root@quatro src$ uname -a
SunOS quatro 5.11 snv_133 i86pc i386 i86pc Solaris

root@quatro src$ pkg search gcc
Segmentation Fault (core dumped)
root@quatro src$ exit
exit
benr@quatro src$ pkg search gcc
Segmentation Fault
benr@quatro src$ pfexec pkg search gcc
INDEX           ACTION   VALUE               PACKAGE
description     set      GCC                 pkg:/SUNWgccruntime@3.4.3-0.97
description     set      GCC                 pkg:/developer/gcc/gcc-libgfortran@4.3.3-0.133
description     set      GCC                 pkg:/developer/gcc/gcc-libssp@4.3.3-0.133
description     set      GCC                 pkg:/developer/gcc/gcc-libgcc@4.3.3-0.133

Why does IPS still suck? Seriously, we can't catch errors before segfaulting? And people wonder why I claim that IPS and AI are so immature. I just can't wait for Oracle to cram this down my throat.

I want SX:CE back. Anybody in MPK17 listening!?!? Stop telling customers they are stupid for using post-install scripts, stop pontificating about how you know better. ZFS made claims to rightness and proved itself. IPS has yet to convince me.... its had years, and still has yet.

I'm not a huge fan of XKCD, but this is classic:

BTW, if you don't play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (1 or 2), you should start. Amazing game. Props to my fellow snipers.

Phoronix has quickly risen as my favorite review site (along with Anandtech). They focus more on the *NIX world than other sites and have set the bar for a benchmark review site. In particular thanks to the Phoronix Test Suite, a venerable suite of benchmarks beautifully weaved together. Did I mention they like OpenSolaris? That helps too. :)

They recently uploaded a presentation by site founder Michael Larabel entitled: The Five Stages of Benchmark Loss. In it Michael shares his collected experiences on how people react when they dislike benchmark results. As he says, when someone comes out the winner in a benchmark they naturally exclaim, "Of course, we're awesome, thanks." but if they loose all kinds of pain results, which he lays out into 5 stages.

The five stages are:
1. Shock
2. Denial
3. Discreditation
4. Analysis
5. Acceptance

This is, imho, a must listen to recording. It's audio only, the quality is horrible, but get some headphones and battle through. It's absolutely worth it.

This is particularly interesting to me because it strikes at the heart of one of my greatest irritations with the geek world; that is, a total dismissal of benchmarking. Its paradoxical really, as computer scientists we should be preforming experiments with measurable results, analyzing data, using and constructing new tools, etc. But, any time a benchmark result is posted so many dipshits simply exclaim "bullshit, your an idiot" that it makes people incredibly gun shy.

I believe the result is the world of horrible benchmarking tools we have (particularly in the UNIX world) and almost no information on how to effectively benchmark systems and storage. If only we would help each other out by leaving Michael's Stages 2 & 3, "Denial" and "Discreditation" and instead move directly to Stage 4, "Analysis", the world would be a much better, kinder, and more informed place.

For instance, "bonnie++" is said to suck. But how many people can tell you why? "iozone" is said to be great. Again, how many people can tell you why? At some point, most particularly in this area, FUD is ingested and regurgitated on folks just trying to learn something, who in turn become bitter and pass on the pain to a whole new generation.

It is, I believe, the single best example of cynical bitterness and stupidity that rages our industry. To be sure it's part of a larger issue, wherein geeks famously trash this technology or that (consider opinions against Java as another example) which are based in outdated or incomplete information or understanding. It only serves to discourage folks and keep the viral spread of cynicism and stupidity going.

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 the state of the churches there watch the sermon here: 32 Hours in Haiti

If you would like to help the churches in Haiti to continue helping the people of Haiti please consider a donation to churcheshelpingchurches.com.

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 the state of the churches there watch the sermon here: 32 Hours in Haiti

If you would like to help the churches in Haiti to continue helping the people of Haiti please consider a donation to churcheshelpingchurches.com.

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 "useradd" with truss and look at any files its trying to open and then search Google. But thats not very educational. So I opted for the second method, that is to go to src.opensolaris.org, search for the useradd.c code and read through it. Within about 2 minutes we had our answer.

Turns out he was absolutely right, useradd look at /usr/sadm/defadduser and if it exists reads default values from it. You can see the default parameters its looking for and the format in userdefs.h line 47. So from that we created the following file (/usr/sadm/defadduser):

## Ben's test defuseradd file: /usr/sadm/defadduser
## http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/head/userdefs.h#89
defrid=99
defgroup=99
defgname=other
defparent=/home
defskel=/etc/skel
defshell=/usr/bin/bash
definact=0
defexpire=
defauthorization=
defprofile=
defrole=
defproj=3
defprojname=default
deflimitpriv=
defdefaultpriv=
deflock_after_retries=

Now test it, and sure enough its working. In this case we're only overriding the default shell, changing from /bin/sh to /usr/bin/bash:

$ useradd alex
$ tail -1 /etc/passwd 
alex:x:501:99::/home/alex:/usr/bin/bash

One word of caution is that you will want to specify all the values in the defaults file (/usr/sadm/defadduser)... if the value is empty it will use no value.

So this was a fun problem which not only showed a new flexibility that I was unaware of but showcased the awesome power of open source and accessibility via OpenGrok. Viva la code!

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 exuberant burst of Oracle 11g R2 on Solaris/X86 joy.... and I was obsessed like a madman for about a week straight. Oracle 11g R2 is the first release of the Oracle database that has entirely and completely impressed me. Namely because it just works! For instance, since the introduction of Enterprise Manager (8i I think?) its never actually worked properly for me, something was always wrong or flimsy and no matter how many times I re-installed I couldn't get it right... with 11g R2 is worked flawlessly. No more messing with listener configuration thanks to wizards that actually work. The installer did its thing brilliantly and you don't even need to tell it to ignore pre-reqs anymore, it just asks you. You can install from start to finish in 15 minutes and be playing.

Of course, this put me in this wierd position of having a lot of time to actually play with the features of the database instead of fix install issues or tuning crap. And so I engrossed myself in its world and got a renewed appreciation for the robustness of features present in Oracle. Yes its big and bloated, but for the first time with 11g it doesn't feel big and bloated. This is partially because of the simplicity of install and configuration, but also because the lowest common denominator in workstation hardware has finally caught up with the robustness of the database... no more lumbering database on a Sun Blade workstation or Ultra2, on my consumer grade Intel Quad-Core it just rocks along.

What happened next was an odd turn of fate. After playing with all the features of the database I could think of I wanted into its OLAP capabilties and then got re-interested with Business Intelligence (BI) software. I checked out Oracle's various industry specific application suites and looked around at SAP and SAS's new offerings, caught up with PeopleSoft and JD Edwards and spend a lot of time researching the history of consolidation of BI tools over the last couple of years that I paid little attention to at the time.

I then got off on a tangent with security... but before long I was digging deep into ISO27001 which pushed me into ISO20000 which unfolded into ITIL and CobiT and CMMI and COSO and PMBOK and PRINCE2 and on and on. Knee deep in a pile of standards I've mostly avoided for some time now and with a renewed interest in procedures for building serviced based IT departments. Naturally this re-converged with Oracle and SAP and SAS.

The spiral got so violently out of control, buried under piles of laserjet paper (22lbs paper, only the best of course), that I essentially had to hit the reset button on my brain and ended up researching ADHD for a couple of days, picking up a great deal of pointers in the process. All this came back into focus after Christmas as I've tried to cleanup and re-organize all my personal projects which have grown like monsters on rampage.

Many of you have a passion for learning, growing, improving. But maybe you've hit places like I do, every so often, where you sort of hit a point at which you are so entrenched in an area that you question its practicality. I mean, at what point am I going to need to espouse the merits of CMMI? When have you gone so far down the rabbit hole that your loosing touch with the reality of your station? It's good to stretch yourself and learn new things, but at some point, without a rigorous structure on which to build, the weight becomes to great to bear and you collapse under the pressure.

And so now I'm re-engaged, back on the GTD wagon, and lining up for a good new year. I didn't plan it to coincide with New Years but it just sort of happened that way. And why shouldn't it? This is about the time last year that I figured I'd finally trash my current blogging software (Pivot) and migrate to WordPress, redesign the site and start doing video content.... which of course never happened. Startup life still hasn't really left me enough spare cycles to invest sufficient time to get it all done. January is going to be crazy but maybe February will allow me the time to update things.

Anyway... 2010 is upon us. Oracle should close the acquisition of Sun by the end of January. SX:CE is supposed to die any time now. ZFS Dedup is here but ZFS Encr still lagging. The Oracle 11g R2 release stands to shake up things and hopefully re-inject enterprise attention to Solaris. But really, who knows.

I'll be honest, 2010 is going to be a very tough year. Most of the question about Oracle's intentions are sorted out, but what will really happen? OpenSolaris, Solaris 10, Solaris Next... whats really going to happen this year? I'm not sure we can say. It could be time for a big change, or maybe not. I just don't think there is enough data to tell. I can say that some big changes are needed to make all the Nevada goodness trickle back into a proper enterprise release and OpenSolaris sure as hell isn't it, but what? S11? S10 Update 9? I just don't know. And with the rise of Oracle's fight with IBM, will AIX and HP-UX rise anew? Who can tell?

So, lets all raise a pint and toast to the year and enjoy it while it lasts... history will be made soon and lets all hope that we're a whole lot more excited when 2010 winds down 365 days from now.

Happy New Years folks.

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. ;)

Role models aren't something we have few of; sad that perhaps the most recent one comes from a beer commercial:

I mean, come on... his advice on careers "Find what you don't do well.... and don't do that thing." Classic!

Need something more expansive? Learn Chinese! If you find it difficult, try to learn Japanesse... and then you'll go back and appreciate how much easier Chinese languages are.

Not intellectual enough? Need to stretch those brain cells a bit more? Then, I ask, what is justice? As a Christian I have all those answers, laid down thousands of years ago, but since apparently folks like to re-invent the wheel (something King Solomon explained to us about 1,000 BC... "There is nothing new under the sun"), try Harvard's Michael Sandel discussion on Justice. A fun and engaging discussion in one of Harvard's beautiful facilities, exploring the "Moral Side of Murder". Its an enjoyable metal excersize and well expressed.

If your reading this post on an aggregator or via RSS and don't see the embedded video, just come here to cuddletech to see it properly.

Lots of folks have switched to Mac, its the most commonly used laptop in the Bay Area now. Sometimes people give me flack for using it, but I'll tell you why I use a Mac laptop:

1. It just works! When going to a client site, a conference, or just a cafe, there is nothing more embarrassing than spending 20 minutes trying to get your l337 *NIX laptop to connect to wireless or properly DHCP or work with a printer. This isn't as big a problem as it once was but it can still happen. This is especially the case if you ever do a presentation where your fiddling with things in front of 30+ people. Mac's just work, period.
2. The Apps are high quality! Thanks to the Linux desktop invasion we have a lot of great apps for *NIX; however Mac apps have a very high standard for quality, all work more or less similarly, and there are lots of great apps. The problem I have on Windows these days is that there aren't as many great apps for Windows as there are for OS X.
3. Its UNIX! This is the most important fact for me, its a real desktop OS with a real UNIX underneath. I was a Mac hater prior to OS X, but developed a love affair with NeXT... when the two converged in OS X I was a happy camper indeed.
4. The Apple Laptops are the best on the market! I can not find a PC Laptop with the same build quality and durability of the Apple's. Most PC's use cheap plastics, are too thick, too flimsy, etc. The MacBook Pro 15" Aluminum is what I still use and love. The size is absolutely perfect, the thing is solid, and very comfortable to use. The power adapters are even better. Even if I wanted a machine just to run Solaris on metal, I'd want a MacBook Pro over any PC laptop available. In terms of hardware you really do seem to get what you pay for.

   Now, please note that I do not have nor do I ever plan to have a Mac desktop! For my daily work I need a real UNIX Workstation. I prefer to work with Enlightenment, Eterm, and have a real Solaris system on which to work. Without my desktop I can't accomplish real work, but for the road I need my MacBook Pro.

   So here are some of my "must have apps" for OS X:

   • iTerm: It once was that OS X's terminal was pretty basic and pathetic, glTerm and iTerm filled the void. Since that time the default terminal application has improved significantly making iTerm unnecessary, but I continue to be faithful to it.
   • Adium: Adium is the best multi-protocol IM client available for Mac. While iChat AV is fantastic for voice and video "chat", I want to keep my desktop tidy which means I want IRC style chat in multiple tabs, not windows. I just can't stand having a real discussion in those iChat balloons.
   • NewsFire: Best RSS reader, imho. The primary advantage to Newsfire is that it doesn't make RSS look like email! Email feels like work, I just want to flip through RSS and see whats news. Newfire is free and really spiffy.
   • TrueCrypt: I'm not a really big crypto freak, I wish I were, but I'm lazy. Never the less, at some point you'll go on the road and Sysadmins are bound to have text files containing sensitive information. TrueCrypt makes it easy to create a small encrypted drives on which to store that data. Plus, the virtual drives it creates are cross-platform, so your not locked into only retrieving the data on Mac like other encrypting archive apps.
   • Things: I think its the best todo application available. Its light-weight and easy to use. OmniFocus is a much more structured application and I think is good for people who need rigorous structure to keep them honest, but Things can be made to do almost everything OmniFocus can do, if you choose to, or be used much more casually.
   • RealVNC: The most popular VNC Viewer application for OS X is "Chicken of the VNC". I love the name, love the icon, but a lot of times it doesn't work for me. RealVNC isn't so sexxy but works every time without a problem.
   • Colloquy: Great IRC application. Many *NIX folks will prefer a more traditional terminal based IRC client, but if your an Xchat users who's looking for a nicely integrated IRC client for OS X Colloquy is the best imho.
   • VirtualBox: Very powerful and free to boot. I use both VirtualBox and VMware Fusion. Honestly, VMware is slightly faster, but VirtualBox is still fantastic and the additional portability is handy.
   • Apache Directory Studio: If there is one nifty app the Windows boys have its Softerra LDAP Administrator. Apache Directory Studio is the best alternative I've seen, and I think will ultimately surpass Softerra's capabilities.
   • iShowU: Best screen recording app period. Very easy to use, very flexable and lightweight. When creating screencasts I recommend using the Quicktime Animation CODEC; you'll be happy with it.
   • globalSAN iSCSI initiator for OS X: Its sad that even in Snow Leopard we don't have an Apple supplied iSCSI Initiator, but thankfully globalSAN has us covered. Its free and works very well with COMSTAR.
   • Cornerstone: I didn't think Subversion needed a GUI... but Zennaware Cornerstone changed my mind. Its expensive, but if you do a lot of SVN work you won't want to miss it.

   I'll add some more to the honorable mention list...

   • Textmate
   • iWork '09
   • iLife '09
   • Skitch
   • iStumbler
   • Netbeans
   • Navicat Lite
   • OmniGraffle
   • ...

   On the hardware side, every UNIX Admin must be able to access an RS-232 serial console. This fact kept me away from Mac laptops for a long time. Which is why you need this:

   

   The Keyspan Serial-USB Adapter. Buy one, download the Keyspan Assistant software and install Zterm. Good to go!

   Finally let me point out 2 things which are already in Leopard that you may not be aware of:

   First, with the OS on the Install disk is the Apple Xcode IDE. Along with Xcode is the koolest GUI for DTrace you'll ever see: Instruments Its really amazingly awesome and a must see.

   Secondly, OS X includes native Kerberos support and a ticket management GUI which is sort of buried: /System/Library/CoreServices/Kerberos. If you use Kerberos at all drag that binary onto your doc for quick access. Several other hidden gems can be found in the same directory.

   
   
   > Read More... | Digg This!

I'm really pleased to announce that Intel Capital has invests in Joyent.

This is a really exciting thing for us. This is the first time we've taken funding. We've really been proud of the fact that we haven't needed funding, but the benefits that come along with an investment from Intel are fantastic and just that relationship alone is exciting.

This is a big announcement not only for Joyent, but for OpenSolaris as well. We're thrilled that Intel supports not only what we're doing, but also how we're doing it. Combined with our recent expansion into China, we have a lot to be happy about.

My talk at LISA is now available. This is a 1 hour version of the ZFS in the Trenches talk. As always I hope that you find it informative and at least a little entertaining. Slides are here).

I also want to take this opportunity to say a heart felt thank you to Deirdré Straughan, Lynn Rohrer, and Teresa Giacomini.

Because of Deirdre countless people around the globe can participate and learn from important events. Not only does she spend a mind-boggling amount of time going to these events, but she has done a fantastic job producing very high quality content, and I think is setting the bar in community video presentation. We just don't get this kind of content from other top tier vendors and I really hope they take notice of her efforts and the benefit to Sun's current and prospective customer bases.

So please join me in extending your support and appreciation to Deirdre and everyone at Sun that makes these events accessible to the whole world!

For sometime now I've gone back and forth on what is my personally preferred (LDAP) directory server; in particular between Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition, OpenDS, and OpenLDAP. Each has advantages and trade-offs:

• DSEE: Not free, complex, but well trusted, exceptional scalability
• OpenDS: Free, super simple install and management GUI included, best starter directory for sure, but relatively new to the scene and thus needs to build more cred.
• OpenLDAP: Not the best scalability, not the best replication or feature list, but very extensible, extremely well known and supported, free. Advanced features much more straight forward than competitors due to flat config file (especially ACLs, TLS, etc)

So I put it to my loyal and educated readers... which is your directory of choice?

benr@quadra ~$ zpool list
NAME     SIZE  ALLOC   FREE    CAP  DEDUP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
quadra   928G   518G   410G    55%  1.00x  ONLINE  -

Shiny. ;)

More to come soon....

One of the many facinating things I discovered at LISA was that almost no one has heard of (no one at my sessions at LISA anyway) Dr. G: Medical Examiner

Jan C. Garavaglia, M.D., (aka "Dr. G") is the chief medical examiner for the District Nine (Orange-Osceola) Medical Examiner's Office in Florida. An assortment of her cases are strung together to create the weekly show on Discovery Health "Dr. G: Medical Examiner."

Another...

I started watching the show because Tamarah is a Discovery Health channel junky. She loves the medical detective shows such as Dr. G and Mystery Diagnosis. I am particularly drawn to the show when I do a lot of postmortem work on systems (aka: "core dump analysis"). Medical practice is a great model for how to approach problems systematically and to follow the story to its conclusion. I suspect many geeks (at least those who don't pontificate about not owning a TV) would also enjoy it.