Disable Hardware on SPARC Platforms from the OBP
You can disable hardware directly from the OBP with “asr” commands. If it’s a production critical machine, and it won’t boot because of a failed component, you can disable the hardware from the OBP and get the machine back up (although crippled) to minimize your production downtime impact. Rebooting with command: boot Boot device: /pci@1e,600000/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0/disk@0,0 File and args: -rsv Loading ufs-file-system package 1.4 04 Aug 1995 13:02:54. FCode UFS Reader 1.12 00/07/17 15:48:16…
$ read more →x86 / linux boot process
There is quite a bit of documentation around the internet on the linux boot process, but Gustavo Duarte I think did an excellent job describing this in a clear and concise way. He also has several links to the Linux kernel source code and describes what is occurring step-by-step through the bootstrap phase all the way to the execution of /sbin/init. His first entry lays the foundation of the basis of the x86 Intel chipset, memory map, and logical motherboard layout. This provides a basic understanding about the traditional hardware motherboard implementations…
$ read more →Viewing the changes that have occurred to an RPM package
I recently encountered a bug in one of the Linux utilities I was using, and upgrading to the latest version of the utility appeared to fix the issue. Being the curious guy I am, I started poking around the web and various release notes to see when the issue was fixed. While digging through this information, I came across the SUPER handy yum changelog plugin. This nifty plugin will display the changes that have occurred to a package, along with the version those changes were incorporated into…
$ read more →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…
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