Solaris Archive

In an effort to spur adoption of Solaris, Sun has begun a project code-named Indiana to try to give its operating system some of the trappings of Linux. The project is one of the items on the to-do list of Ian Murdock, founder of the Debian version of Linux and, as of March, Sun's chief operating systems officer. Though he wouldn't confirm the name of the project, Murdock - who's from Indiana - discussed the project's essence at the JavaOne conference here Monday, and Sun spokesman Russ Castronovo confirmed the name.

"If you're an OpenSolaris x86 user and are using a NVIDIA graphics card with NVIDIA's binary Solaris drivers, you can now enjoy Compiz on your desktop. Erwann Chenede has produced packages of Compiz 0.5.0 for OpenSolaris x86. In fact, to ease the process he has even written an OpenSolaris install script for Compiz. More information (download links) is available from Erwann's Sun Blog."

"Sun's Solaris JumpStart technology is used to automate the installation of the Solaris Operating System and other associated software on multiple nodes of a network. Using Solaris JumpStart software on the Solaris 10 OS for x86/x64 platforms is essentially the same as on Solaris 10 OS for SPARC platforms. However, there are some subtle differences that need to be addressed for correct operation. This document provides the steps and explanations necessary to set up a JumpStart server for Solaris 10 on a Sun x86/x64 machine, along with configuring JumpStart for two or more clients."

Ian Murdock says he drew a lot of puzzled looks from his colleagues in the Linux community when he joined Sun Microsystems in its newly created position of chief operating platforms officer. 'What's a Linux guy doing at Sun?' he was asked. After all, Ian Murdock is the 'Ian' in Debian Linux, the distribution he created with his wife, Deb. Only eight days on his new job, Murdock spoke at a Software Developers Forum Tuesday in Santa Clara, California, where Sun is based. Murdock, 33, outlined what he thinks needs to be done in his new job in an interview with Robert Mullins.

Sun has announced a new set of products and services targeting developers, startups, and internet companies seeking to build and deploy their web infrastructure on Solaris 10. The three offerings are Solaris Express, Developer Edition, Solaris + AMP (Apache/MySQL/PERL or PHP), and an expanded Sun Startup Essentials program.

Simon Phipps writes on his weblog: "I'm in Berlin today opening the very first OpenSolaris Developer Conference. I'll be announcing that the new Get.OpenSolaris.org site that allows anyone in the world to order a kit containing DVDs of OpenSolaris distributions, documentation and source. With a nod towards the good folks at Ubuntu, Sun is sponsoring the kits so that they are completely free of charge, including global delivery. Hopefully this will mean even folks without the bandwidth to download DVD ISOs will be able to join the OpenSolaris community."

Sun has announced a series of updates to its flagship Solaris operating system. Solaris 10 11/06 OS enhances efficiency, safety, and reliability. New security features include Solaris Trusted Extensions, which protects sensitive data and applications using labeled security technology. Secure By Default Networking automatically configures a system to be impervious to network attacks by disabling many unused services, thus reducing the network exposure, while leaving the system fully functional for typical use. In the meantime, HP will be supporting Solaris on its systems.

"This DVD release includes all of the 0.5.1 Live CD and adds JDK 1.6, OpenOffice 2.1, Netbeans 5.5 with Visual Web Pack, C/C++ Pack, Profiler and Glassfish AppServer 9, all the OpenSolaris Developer and Administration docs available from the OpenSolaris Documentation Community, and Desktop shortcuts for all these."

"So, you're tired of Windows and thinking of trying Linux. There are lots of good distros, RedHat or Novell have all the enterprise cred you might need. And there's a support community too, it's a no brainer... Well, that's all true enough – but why not try Solaris - in its OpenSolaris form - too? It's just as available, at Open Solaris.org, where there's a pretty active community going."

Sun Microsystems is set to license OpenSolaris under the upcoming GNU GPLv3 in addition to the existing Common Development and Distribution License, sources close to the company have told eWEEK. "The next version of Solaris will include things like GNU Userland, which is already being attempted with OpenSolaris, while open-source solutions from other communities for things like package management also look very promising. Dual-licensing OpenSolaris with GPLv3 could make this even easier," said a source who declined to be named.

"Solaris Cluster provides high availability and global disaster recovery to suit the evolving needs of virtually any datacenter in any industry: across local distances, campuses or metropolitan areas, and across the world, ensuring business continuity without compromise. With out-of-the box support for the largest number of commercial and open-source applications, open and flexible configurations for both horizontal and vertical scaling, integration with the Solaris kernel and support on both SPARC and x64 platforms, Solaris Cluster provides industrial-strength high availability to your applications." There's documentation too.

"Sun has released Solaris 10 11/06 today. Internally, we called this 'Update 3'. The biggie features for this update are Trusted Extensions and Secure by Default. Yes, all of the security features you loved back in Trusted Solaris, are now standard as part of Solaris 10. This isn't just for the feds either. Banks love it. Wall St. loves it. Corporations that need to follow Sarbanes-Oxley love it." Get it here, a what's new guide is also available.

Get inside the Solaris FS by looking at physical I/O, latency, top end activity, caches, and statistics.

The UFS file system is the general-purpose, disk-based file system that is shipped with Solaris today and has been the default file system since early versions of SunOS 4.x. This sample chapter covers its history, architecture, and some basic administrative concepts.