Archive
Posts from 2008
SCSI Enclosure Services
Eric Schrock has done some really cool work with integrating disk (SMART) /platform monitoring (IPMI) information into Opensolaris. Just recently, he has extended FMA with a new technology called SES (SCSI Enclosure Services) into build 93 of OpenSolaris. This looks like some really cool stuff. The following was taken directly from his blog on the examples of using the new fmtopo utility to map out an external storage array.
$ read more →dennis' experience with opensolaris 2008.05
Dennis Clarke blogged about an introduction to opensolaris 2008.05, IPS, and how using ZFS (and beadm) as your root file system provides advantages with system upgrades and multiple root file systems. Take a look at his IPS-on-OpenSolaris post if you haven't yet seen IPS on opensolaris. A lot of people are really glad to see the Solaris package / patch system being revamped as its needed some attention for some time. Speaking of Dennis and opensolaris, if you haven't ever performed a complete build, he has another OpenSolaris build walkthrough showing the entire build process of opensolaris…
$ read more →Bash's built in commands
If you're a frequent user of the bash shell, I would suggest taking a peek at the GNU reference guide next time you have a chance. There are a lot of cool built in functions/commands within bash that are pretty neat. To get an idea of what these built in commands are: Some of these do have binaries within the /usr or /bin namespace, while others do not. Bash's internal built in definition of these commands is what actually gets executed…
$ read more →Cleaning up failed package installations
While attempting to install a Sun package this week, I encountered the following error: After a bit of truss'ing, I noticed that the pkgadd commands were checking for the existence of files with the name .ai.pkg.zone.lock. in /tmp. Based on a cursory inspection of the package utility source code, it appears these files are used as lock files to prevent multiple package commands from running at the same time. Since this was the only package installation running on the system, I logged into the zone and removed the stale lock file: Once I removed this file, the package installed like a champ…
$ read more →OpenSSH's VPN
Most SSH clients have the ability to perform local and remote port forwarding. This is a pretty neat use of SSH if you haven’t ever seen it before. OpenSSH can take it one step further and provide a full VPN solution encrypting all network traffic on all ports between two machines. This is pretty powerful stuff…
$ read more →