Somewhere out there!

Running Asterisk on an Apple TV is clever. I wonder if Ubuntu would run, maybe the Apple TV is something that could replace my SLUG. Will have to stop in the Apple Store and see how noisy it is.

I’ve reinstalled Code Snippet. It definitely is the best. Shame the original author’s blog has gone offline.

I’ve been hacking a like bash code to build a replication offline backup system for zfs. Bit of a rough job, but some people might find it useful. Seems though that the iscsi target in Solaris is in a worse state that I realised, so I might have to reconsider Plan Linux. It would be a shame as being able to do stuff like the below is very nice and creates a whole new level of sysadmin ease.

Elektronkind » More Linux/Solaris FUD wars

No breadth? Just what is the breadth that Mr. Zaitcev thinks is missing? Is breadth in this case even quantifiable? Is his supposition based solely on the age old (and aged) driver count argument? Does Mr. Zaitcev think that all Solaris is, is an ancient kernel which happened to have a few new concepts tacked on top of it?

I would bet that if Mr. Zaitcev sat down and tried to use Solaris in a real-world environment, he’d soon learn that Solaris has everything one needs in a data center environment… he just hasn’t discovered them (or read about them, natch) yet for himself. Who knows, perhaps he’d even appreciate them.

Calling this FUD is unkind.

Problem is that Solaris has to convince people to use it, not the reverse. Fancy tech like good marketing gets the eyes balls on the game, but unless the first 30 seconds give people enough to ride out the next 30 days using Solaris then there is going to be lots of comments like Pete Zaitcevs.

I know, I’ve spend the last several weeks learning Opensolaris while putting together a zfs iscsi storage server. It is not easy. I feel like I’m stuck in the 90s compared to the easy at which I can set up any Linux solution.  Even with the new tech it is not all plain sailing, zfs on Opensolaris is cutting edge code. The core system of course are stable, other the interest new bits flaky constantly.  Unfortunately these are the bits that make Solaris worth looking at, without a good stable iscsi on zfs system its better for me to look at DRDB on Linux.

Technorati Tags: solaris, zfs, linux

I just install the 3.2-beta of XenEnterprise by PXE. It was a faultless, follow the instructions process.  It is even possible to do an unattended installed. Even though XenEnterprise is a commercial product it has a certain linux-like quality which I find fits my preferred way of doing things.

Technorati Tags: xen

I’m going to be in Vienna in May and I was looking at the wifi situation as our rental apartment does not have broadband. Why searching around I discovered Freewave who provide free wireless internet. While hunting out hotspot locations in Google Maps, I discovered I could create my own map. They are even searchable. Very cool.

Would be even cooler if I could layer maps. So combined other people’s maps, my unlisted private maps, etc. So I could combined say a list of cafes I like, against a set of cafes I’d like to try. Or a list of interest locations vs a walking path I want to take.

Update: Another free wireless in Vienna page.

Technorati Tags: google maps

By default Windows Terminal Server is quite annoying when dealing with shortcuts and applications mount from a local file server. A per usual with Windows there is quite a lot of documentation out there with information, although it not all clear.

1. “Site to Zone Assignment List” GPO = trusted site?
2. Site to Zone Assignment List – best method here
3. Behavior of Site to Zone Assignment List
4. The Site to Zone Assignment List policy prevents Internet Explorer from using other zone configuration settings when the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration feature is enabled on a Windows Server 2003 SP1-based computer
5. How to lock down a Windows Server 2003 or Windows 2000 Terminal Server session

Regardless of the above I found the best way to deal in Windows 2003R2 with the GPO was:

Edit the GPO object you wish to apply these settings too. Select [User Configuration\Windows Settings\Internet Explorer Maintenance\Security]. Then double click [Security Zones and Content Ratings], click [Import the current security zones and privacy settings], and then click [Modify Settings]. It should be pretty straight-forward from there. I added my file server sites into Local Intranet, using the form file://uncserver. I found this easy than the “Site to Zone Assignment List” GPO method.

Some notes for doing a BFU in Opensolaris. I find the best way to try a BFU is by combining with a Live Updated slice then can be a useful way for testing new functionality while still keeping the existing system as a fall back. The information below is summarised from Ben Rockwood and Omer Faruk Sen.

BFU: Blindingly Fast Update or Bonwick/Faulkner Update (or sometimes called as Big F* Update) which is a set of cpio archives that directly installs contents of cpio to / without UPDATING package database. So it will break pkg environment and you can’t and shouldn’t use patch* or pkg* commands because you get LOTS of mismatched md5sums.

First thing is to download, unpack and install the build tools and current BFU archive from the opensolaris site. At this point you are looking for SUNWonbld-20070409.i386.tar.bz2 and on-bfu-20070409.i386.tar.bz2.

zfs create ztank/bfu
cd /ztank/bfu/
bzcat SUNWonbld-20070409.i386.tar.bz2 | tar xf -
cd onbld/
pkgadd -d . SUNWonbld
cd ..
bzcat on-bfu-20070409.i386.tar.bz2 | tar xf -

Then run the BFU tool:

export FASTFS=/opt/onbld/bin/i386/fastfs
export BFULD=/opt/onbld/bin/i386/bfuld
export GZIPBIN=/usr/bin/gzip
export PATH=/opt/onbld/bin:/opt/onbld/bin/i386:$PATH
bfu /ztank/bfu/archives-20070409/i386/

Finally at the bfu# prompt run the ACR (Automatic Conflict Resolution) tool:


bfu# /opt/onbld/bin/acr


After that is complete you should check in /bfu.conflicts/ to see if there are any files that the ACR missed. Then reboot with:

sync;sync;sync;shutdown -y -g0 -i6


Some clever tips for using

Samba with ZFS.

DeepBurner is the best way to burn an ISO in Windows.