Last year, I decided to upgrade my computer to Solaris 11 Express. Unfortunately, I updated one of my partitions to the newest version of ZFS. This was a mistake.
Solaris 11 Express did not support the Sun Ray. For almost a year now, Ele has had to boot up her computer just to check her e-mail. After an interminable wait, Oracle finally announced an update to Solaris 10, as well as Solaris 11 Early Adopter. So, I tried them. First was Solaris 10; after 10 months, the update to Solaris 10 did not even include the version of ZFS in Solaris 11 Express. That made Solaris 10 a nonstarter.
So, onto Solaris 11 Early Adopter. I really don't know how Oracle could have released this as an operating system. It is so bad that, if I was still working, I would refuse to install it even in our test lab.
First off, I've installed it four times on my server. Each time, the network has behaved a little differently. This aside, the network is the first biggest problem with Solaris 11. NWAM cannot be turned off. This is Solaris' "network auto magic" functionality. It is basically DHCP. The SMF service that is supposed to turn it off, doesn't. The network tools meant to give you a static IP address don't do anything. ipadm and dladm do nothing but spit out error messages. The only thing they did tell me was that Solaris 11 does not know how to assign networks. The pseudo-driver net0 points to the real driver e1000g1 and net1 points to e1000g0. Not that this matters, with the inability of the tools to operate on either the pseudo-driver or the real driver.
Next comes DNS. The XML file for SMF for setting up your system as a DNS server does not exist. Neither does the file for the DNS client. Since you can tell the system to be a DNS client (and it works, at least through sysconfig--the new name for sys-unconfig), this means that Oracle has already broken the SMF model. Based upon a previous discussion online about SMF, involving a question that was never answered, DNS does not appear to be the only thing broken here. SMF appears to keep some of its data in a database somewhere, a database that you cannot back up because nobody is saying where it is. Perhaps I am being a bit harsh here, but the lack of response to that thread, combined with Oracle's silence around everything else, leaves me very disheartened.
I have also been unable to compile software on Solaris 11 Early Adopter. It seems that the C preprocessor is unable to compile executables. This means that I can't build MediiaTomb on the system, which has been the server's main role since last year.
There are also other tools missing. I won't get into listing them all, but combined with the first three they leave a very bad taste in my mouth.
I have spent almost a week backing up my data, with several more days to go. When I am finished, I will install OpenIndiana. This is built on the last version of OpenSolaris, but it uses the Illumos kernel. This attempt to take all of the proprietary pieces in the Solaris kernel and replace them with open-source variants. OpenSolaris supported the Sun Ray software, but I know that OpenIndiana probably won't. I'm willing to live with that. Even being two years old, OpenSolaris was a much better operating system than Solaris 11 will probably ever be. I strongly suspect that Oracle will do the same thing with Solaris that it does with its unbreakable Linux. That is, take the updates provided by the open community, roll them into Solaris, and self the final product. Ellison will prove once again that he has no interest in giving back to the community. Him being a capitalist, this makes sense and is understandable. However, he should at least acknowledge that he's making his billions by riding on the backs of others.
I will keep a sharp eye out for what's happening at Joyent. Some of Sun's top engineers have left Oracle and joined Joyent. Their recent release of SmartOS shows that they will continue developing good product. Much of their work is being funneled into OpenIndiana, since it is all open source. And that's a good thing.
Rainer

Greetings, everyone.

My apologies that I haven't continued telling you about our holiday, but it has been so hot here that we have had little motivation to do anything. That, combined with my operation, has meant we've gotten little of anything done. The weather has suddenly cooled off significantly, however, so we are now struggling to catch up.

On August 26, I got my deep brain stimulator put in. It was a very interesting operation in which I was awake for half of it. I needed to provide the doctor with feedback as he tested the deep brain stimulator, sliding it into my brain. This was interesting, as I could hear the comments that he and an observer were making to each other. Apparently, the lesions from my MS actually do look white. They are readily visible against the gray of my brain matter. There were many other interesting comments; apparently, I have a beautiful skull. Once this was done, they put me under for the next step. They then made get cut high on my left chest, and put in the controller. They then fished the wire up my neck and across my skull underneath the scalp. I don't even know how long the whole operation took.

On October 7, I have an appointment to turn everything on and do the initial adjustments. I'm really looking forward to it. From the testing when they put the stimulator in, I have a feeling it will help a great deal. Perhaps they will eventually put in one to control my left side tremors as well.

Now that my skin has been healing up quite well for a while, I can restart the exercises that my physiotherapist gave me. I was worried at first, because some of them involve stretching and opening up the chest. That would not have gone well with my chest having been sliced open for the controller. I have been working on my balance, however. I have been out almost every day to whipper-snipper the weeds in the field behind our house. This is the common area septic field. The unevenness of the ground has been very good for my balance; I have to really work at keeping vertical. It has also been very good for my muscle strength in my legs. I'm probably better than I ever have been since I shattered my leg.

Thanks to Constantin for letting me know about the Solaris 11 Early Access program. I have been waiting since I installed Solaris 11 Express for an update to either Solaris 10 or Solaris 11. That was last December. Now, an update is (finally!) available. I am hoping to install it soon, and to find out whether the Sunray software will work. (It doesn't work at all under Solaris 11 Express.) I have been quite disappointed by Oracle's long delays on Solaris, but have not had a spare box to test whether SmartOS would support the Sunray software.

I am hoping to get another update or two to our travels in Europe this weekend, as Ele will be playing in a bridge tournament. That gives me time to update the blog, and e-mail a friend I finally heard from this past week.

Rainer

While I did not take the Lady Ada Lovelace Day blog pledge, I have found time to make a quick comment.

One of my women heroes is Hedy Lamarr, the beautiful actress who, together with her musician neighbor, created some of the basis for spread-spectrum technology. They were far ahead of their time.

As a telecom grad, there will always be a spot for Ms. Lamarr in my world. :-)

Rainer

The server move is almost complete. Some cleanup work needs to be done, and then I can focus on getting the theme the way I want it. Note that all entries below this point have been copied across from my old blog. Until I find a bit of time, they will all show today's date instead of the original dates going back to February 2009. Rainer

Greetings, all. In the next while, I will be moving to host my domain at a hosting company. With the fun I had being off-line, I've decided that managing my own server at home, while mostly fun, is too stressful when dealing with the poor quality of ISP companies in Canada. So, I'm moving to a hosting company.

So I took the first wireless access point back to Memory Express and got a replacement. The second Linksys Wireless-G Set up like a charm. I configured it three times to be sure; each time, the web site came up right away. The problem each time however, was that I could not log in. A call to Memory Express didn't help, but did suggest calling Linksys directly. Which I did. Despite all of the documentation, there actually is no user name. That field is left blank. So much for the docs saying the user name to use being "admin."

Apologies for the silence--the last few updates were private emails. I decided, for a few reasons, to take the plunge into wireless networking. So far, no joy. I started by getting a wireless router. Yes, I forgot that at this end of the market, a "router" strictly means something to connect to a DSL/Cable modem. No good. So today, I had it exchanged for a Linksys Wireless-G Access Point.