Will Sun set and never rise again? Here is my encounter of the hot Sunny affair.

In October 2006, I installed Solaris 10 on an Intel box code-named, Pyxis1 (I love to name my computers after the name of a planet, a star or a constellation). The installation was successful but I could not get it to configured to work correctly. Some of the configuration would disappear every time I restarted the server. I could not find the reasons and I was on tight schedule to get the server up and running. I replaced Solaris 10 with Debian and eventually with Ubuntu. Read the story here.

Solaris 10, in my opinion, is by far a better and more robust operating system than Linux. The fallback was the lack of installation information on older machines. That’s the bottom line of the configuration problem I had three years ago.

Last May, I began the virtualization of my MacBook and I had Ubuntu installed and ran parallel with Mac OS X. I tried to install Solaris 10 on VMware Fusion. Installation was successful but I never got it to boot after the installation. Again, I gave up and went on with Ubuntu.

On Sunday, I upgraded VMware Fusion 1.1.3 to 2.0.2 and read about successful installation of OpenSolaris on Mac. I decided to give it another try.

OpenSolaris is a community-driven open source version of Solaris. Solaris is a proprietary UNIX operating system by Sun Microsystems. Sun plays an active role in open source software such as OpenOffice, MySQL and OpenSolaris.

VMware Fusion 2.x has many major improvements. One obvious change is the Virtual Machine Library window. It shows you the snapshots of your virtual machines.

The Virtual Machine Library window showing the snapshots of OpenSolaris and Windows XP

Ok, ok. I have a Windows XP installed. For those who know I have ditched all Windows since 1998, I have some inevitable reasons. First, I need it to support my clients on some hardware and software configurations. Second, I needed it to support my Garmin GPS device. And thirdly, I need it for some non-appealing reasons. I have it installed to avoid having the need to hunt for a Windows desktop for some petty simple jobs. I used the Windows virtual machine under 10 times since last May. Simple put it, I just need it to get some simple jobs done, otherwise it is just a piece of shit occupying 5GB of disk space on my MacBook.

Installation of OpenSolaris was quite pleasant and simple (although it took about half hour). During the installation, I was surprised to learn that OpenSolaris has something called Time Slider which is an automated backup software similar to Apple’s Time Machine.

My hardware configuration:

1. MacBook White, 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2. 2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
3. 160GB hard disk
4. Mac OS X 10.5.6

My virtual machine configuration:

1. VMware Fusion 2.0.2
2. 2 virtual CPU, 720MB RAM
3. 15GB hard disk space

Installation screen showing Time Slider

I will never need Time Slider on my Mac Book but I may need it after I switch from Ubuntu to OpenSolaris on Pyxis1. Until then, I am unable to tell if Time Slider is as good as Time Machine.

There are a few patches and manual installation after the first boot to solve some problems:

1. The sound is not working.
2. No networking (you may not experience this).
3. The Apple’s menu bar is not appearing when virtual machine is running in full screen mode.
4. Need some packages from OpenSolaris repository in order to get the Ada compiler working (for Ada programmers only).

OpenSolaris running at full screen on MacBook White.

First thing after restarting from installation is to install VMware Tools. At window mode, click on the Virtual Machine menu bar and select Install VMware Tools. A CD icon will appear on the OpenSolaris desktop. Open it and copy the zipped file to the desktop then extract and follow the steps below:

# cd Desktop/vmware-tools-distrib
# ./vmware-install.pl

OpenSolaris virtual machine running in window mode

After installing VMware Tools, you will be able to access to Mac OS X menu bar when virtual machine is running full screen mode. Move the mouse pointer to top of the screen and the menu bar will drop down.

If the two networking icons on the top right do not show green badge as in the screenshot below, then make sure your Virtual Machine Network Settings is connected and set to NAT (share the Mac’s network connection). The network should also work in Bridged mode. Also make sure the OpenSolaris network interface is connected to e1000g0 and is active.

Two networking status icons with green badge

Otherwise, click on System > Administration > Network to set it to auto configure. Your network should be up and running. 

Next is to activate the sound. Download OSS (Open Sound System) driver at http://4front-tech.com/download.cgi and install it as follow:

# pkgadd -d oss-solaris-v4.0-123-i386.pkg
# osstest

After the installation, run osstest to test the sound system. You will hear a tune playing on your speakers. You may need to reboot your system to allow the driver to properly load.

There are a few more packages to be downloaded and installed from OpenSolaris.org repository. To install gcc4ada from BlastWave, you will need SUNWgnu-libiconv and SUNWarc. Start Package Manager to download and install them from OpenSolaris repository. If you need source code management, you will need SUNWsvn as well.

The OpenSolaris repository does not have Ada compiler (gccada) and only supports gcc 3.4.3. You will have to install Ada compiler from another repository at Blastwave.

To download and install software packages from Blastwave, you need pkgutil. Download and install pkgutil and other necessary packages by following the instruction at Blastwave site. You can obtain a list of software packages that you need from Blastwave. After installing pkgutil, you may want to include /opt/csw/bin to your path.

If you need an Ada 2005 compiler, then download and install gcc4ada:

# pkgutil --install gcc4ada

Include /opt/csw/gcc/bin to your path and the Ada compiler is ready. I checked out a project from my svn repository and compiled. Viola! I am happy with the performance which I find is better than Ubuntu and any other Linux distros. One drawback of OpenSolaris or Solaris is the limited software packages. There are more than a thousand ready-built software packages to download in every Linux distros. That means you will have to build some of the software you need on Solaris (and OpenSolaris).

I removed and re-installed OpenSolaris yesterday after I found some broken links due to not following the instructions correctly. Always read installation instructions from various sources carefully before installing. I find the trouble is worthy otherwise I will not have a clear summarized steps to write about here.

With the recent IBM’s announcement to acquire Sun Microsystems, I hope Sun will not be cannibalized after the acquisition. And I hope that Sun is not setting but if it must, it will rise again. OpenSolaris and UltraSPARC processors are one of the leading technologies available.

I hope to find time on a weekend to install OpenSolaris on the Sun Blade 100. It is still running Solaris 9 since 2003.

Another criteria is that I want a phone to look like a phone. The 6300 has got a classic phone look after Nokia releases so many garbage. Deciding on a model is never easy. I listened to many live user experience from friends and relatives and even youngsters who own phones as a hobby. Reading comparison and comments on Internet is never as good as listening to real people talking straight out of their minds.

Apple’s iSync and Nokia do not support this model for syncing via Bluetooth. I did some research and found the 6300 is using Nokia’s Series 40 software and there are many similar phones have been supported. I need to do a hack to iSync so I referred to the following sites:

1. Koos Kasper.nl: How to iSync a Nokia 6300
2. dabgotra.com: Nokia 6300, iSync, and Contact Photos…

By following Koos’ hacks, I managed to setup Bluetooth link and iSync away in less than 2 minutes. Now, my 6300 is populated with so much data from my Calendar, To-do and Contact. I have yet to try dabgotra’s hacks to iSync contact with photos.

I was a Nokia user before switching to SE because I read about how seamlessly SE K700i syncs with Apple’s Mac OS X applications via Bluetooth. The SE K700i is a very nice phone with many features I love about. One of them is K700i can be used as a remote control for Apple’s Keynote presentation software. The control is via Bluetooth as well.

Soon when I realized it was not in my waist pouch, I quickly dialed the number using another phone. The phone had been switched off. Total silence. It’s gone! A phone which has been my friend for almost 3 years is now gone.

I went back to the outlet after taking Dmitry from school and the staffs told me they didn’t see it. Disappointed.

Time Machine is a repository with version control system to keep track all the changes to your files and directories. When you plug in a FireWire hard disk, Leopard will automatically version all your files and directories onto the external hard disk. You are able to go back in time to look for a file (or directory), which you have deleted or modified, and to restore them.

Desktop Space gives you more desktop spaces to organize your works on the screen. It makes switching from task to task simple and easy with a click of the mouse.

It will be a nice upgrade but if you are developing software with Ada, unfortunately, you have to wait for a while. Ada does not come with xcode yet. The folks at MacAda is still working on a stable and working version of Ada compiler.