OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/19225/Nexenta_Core_Platform_RC3_Released Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:04:27 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Xen http://osnews.com/thread?298059 http://osnews.com/thread?298059 Xen dom0 support, a great addition to already big feature list, Nexenta looks very promising OpenSolaris based OS. Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vermaden) Comments Just some open questions http://osnews.com/thread?298061 http://osnews.com/thread?298061 Can anyone tell me how the OpenSolaris kernel is advantageous compared to the Linux one? I can see the benefits of having access to all those packages but (being ignorant) I have no idea apart from some of the headline-grabbing stuff (ZFS) why opting for this kernel/userland mix would offer an advantage over a stock Linux installation.

Can anyone explain in Joe User language?

Appreciated Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (orfanum) Comments i love linux and all http://osnews.com/thread?298064 http://osnews.com/thread?298064 but its getting really hard to tell myself not to use this, when it supports:

* Xen dom0 and domU
* ZFS
* DTrace
* apt-clone hotness
* gnu core-utils

What more can I ask for?

does aiglx work? Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (chrish01) Comments RE: i love linux and all http://osnews.com/thread?298066 http://osnews.com/thread?298066 With NVidia drivers the graphics support should be exactly as on Linux, and since X.org is the same as well AIGLX will work with an NVidia supported graphics card.

By the way, regarding advantages over Linux I'd say the stable driver interface allowing you to use the same stable drivers with a newer kernel build is worth settling for ... Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (s_groening) Comments RE: Just some open questions http://osnews.com/thread?298071 http://osnews.com/thread?298071 Read this for some advantages that Solaris has:

"Just to be explicit: on the same hardware, solaris 10 fixed your corruption/read-only /data problem?"

"Yes. Same exact hardware. We reinstalled Linux twice even to make sure there wasn't something wrong with the install. I've had lots of other people chime in reporting very similar problems."

http://www.lethargy.org/~jesus/archives/77-Choosing-Solaris-10-over... Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kebabbert) Comments RE: i love linux and all http://osnews.com/thread?298072 http://osnews.com/thread?298072
but its getting really hard to tell myself not to use this, when it supports:

* Xen dom0 and domU
* ZFS
* DTrace
* apt-clone hotness
* gnu core-utils

What more can I ask for?

does aiglx work?


I'd imagine that the hardware driver support is far more extensive for Linux that it is for Solaris.

Having siad that, the bulk of the Nvidia driver is a binary blob that should work on any x86 machine, and the interface from that blob to the kernel is compiled anyway, so nvidia drivers should work. Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (lemur2) Comments who fixed it? http://osnews.com/thread?298089 http://osnews.com/thread?298089 critical fixes for ZFS

Are these fixes to Nexenta's specific or did they just grab the latest ZFS from the OpenSolaris guys and list any changes?

The reason I ask is because I'm looking to build a box for the sole purpose of running ZFS. Nexenta seemed attractive to me but in the end I want to use whatever is stable. Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (FunkyELF) Comments RE: who fixed it? http://osnews.com/thread?298090 http://osnews.com/thread?298090
The reason I ask is because I'm looking to build a box for the sole purpose of running ZFS. Nexenta seemed attractive to me but in the end I want to use whatever is stable.

If you want stable, you should wait for the next Solaris Express Developer Edition. Those get extensive testing and are being respun with fixes if there are critical issues. The next one's coming in February (--edit: And is based on build 80).Edited 2008-01-28 14:06 UTC Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Weeman) Comments RE: who fixed it? http://osnews.com/thread?298093 http://osnews.com/thread?298093 I'm using Nexenta as a storage server - ZFS and nfs - and have been running it for some 5 months now. No crashes, no problems. It's very stable (even their alpha:s were stable). I've only tested it as a server, not any kind of desktop functionalities.

Upgrades were a breeze - it did a snapshot of the root file system and then performed the upgrade there, and finally asked if it could reboot the system. Once rebooted, and I saw it worked fine, I sent a command to make the recently created snapshot the current boot. If things would have gone bad, you'd be able to back out all the changes made in a jiffy. I'm quite impressed how smooth it went.

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to any home or small office user. Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (reflect) Comments SATA fixes, yummy. http://osnews.com/thread?298117 http://osnews.com/thread?298117 I tried the last RC on my system, but it did not have a driver for my SATA chipset. I hope this RC fixes that. I am looking forward to giving it a try. Apt-clone looks very handy and I ma sure I will take advantage of it.
(For people not familer with it, apt-clone will make a snapshot of the current filesystem prior to installing new stuff. It them makes a grub entry of the old FS and the new. So if you want to revert back, you just reboot and pick your backup.) Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (uteck) Comments RE: Xen http://osnews.com/thread?298120 http://osnews.com/thread?298120 ... Now if only someone would club nVidia into supporting Xen. (Xen under Solaris, just like Linux, is unsupported.)

- Gilboa Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gilboa) Comments RE[2]: i love linux and all http://osnews.com/thread?298121 http://osnews.com/thread?298121 Minus Xen.

Last time I checked (with nVidia; ~3 months ago), they clearly stated that Solaris/Xen is unsupported.

- GilboaEdited 2008-01-28 16:49 UTC Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gilboa) Comments RE: SATA fixes, yummy. http://osnews.com/thread?298157 http://osnews.com/thread?298157 apt-clone sounds pretty fantastic and I'm thinking about using Nexenta 1.0 on my new file server. I've been building a home file server out of a Sun Ultra 40 M2 (using 1TB drives purchased from newegg - Sun's hard drives are too expensive for me).

For anyone interested in using an Ultra 40 as a file server - it has 8 hard drive bays and a decent price tag. The only catch is that you have to buy hard drive brackets for the additional drives if you don't want to buy them from Sun. You can usually find them on ebay or refurb vendors (the old model brackets are Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jondice) Comments RE: Just some open questions http://osnews.com/thread?298159 http://osnews.com/thread?298159 Joe User is probably not going to care. Very rarely (these days) does the kernel matter much to the user. ZFS and DTrace are good examples of something a user *might* care about, on the OpenSolaris side (if he likes to tinker). Or on the Linux side maybe you want Samba in the Kernel. There are a few other things.

I personally love OpenSolaris, and the idea of OpenSolaris. I am a long time Sun Solaris administrator and enjoyed working with the OS. I think that open sourcing the OS has brought new life, and a new future to it. Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Matt Giacomini) Comments RE: who fixed it? http://osnews.com/thread?298164 http://osnews.com/thread?298164 They are not Nexenta specific. A build of SXCE may not exist that has these changes, but eventually there will be one. Both distros draw from the same base of OpenSolaris code. Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Luminair) Comments RE[2]: SATA fixes, yummy. http://osnews.com/thread?298165 http://osnews.com/thread?298165 I like the quality of Sun hardware too. But still, the only thing an Ultra 40 does better than a similar x86 system is support more RAM and cost more money. ;) Edited 2008-01-28 20:40 UTC Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Luminair) Comments does solaris http://osnews.com/thread?298167 http://osnews.com/thread?298167 support sata? E.g. AHCI? I know it doesn't what are these sata fixes? Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (fithisux) Comments RE: does solaris http://osnews.com/thread?298170 http://osnews.com/thread?298170 SunOS loki 5.11 NexentaOS_20080124 i86pc i386 i86pc Solaris
man -k ahci
ahci (7d) - Advanced Host Controller Interface SATA controller driver

It has AHCI support for some controllers, my supermicro 8-port PCI-X card seems to support it. Running "cfgadm" and checking the output for signs of SATA.

From the manpage "the ahci driver currently only supports hard disk, ATAPI SATA DVD, hot-plug and NCQ (Native command queuing)." Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (reflect) Comments RE[2]: Xen http://osnews.com/thread?298189 http://osnews.com/thread?298189 A project to provide hardware accelration to Xen domU guests already exist, and even works, here:
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~andreslc/xen-gl Tue, 29 Jan 2008 06:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vermaden) Comments RE[3]: Xen http://osnews.com/thread?298199 http://osnews.com/thread?298199 I'm aware of this project.
However, this project requires at least basic support from the driver.

However, at least in my experience, the nVidia module blows up when being loaded into a Xen aware kernel *, so this project is limited to OSS/Built-in drivers.

- Gilboa
* Only under Linux; Never tested Xen under OpenSolaris. Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gilboa) Comments