Experiences with OpenSolaris

As most of you already know, Sun Microsystems had released Solaris's source code, under CDDL as OpenSolaris distribution. The company is very busy these days promoting Open Solaris in Universities, on the net, to create a community; and has been quite successful in doing that as well. A one-hour login to #opensolaris channel at irc.freenode.net, is enough to prove to you that there is surely a strong community working on the OS. One of their best endeavors was to kick start Solaris University Challenge.
Quite obviously, I am participating in it. Well, think of it! That's the whole point of writing this post. These are the things I've come across:

1. Couldn't get Solaris to install on my Pentium III machine, as it required more RAM than my 256MB wd provide. This is owing to Java Desktop System being quite heavy.

2. Solaris comes with Star Office 7, and Mozilla 1.7 (yup! No OpenOffice, and Firefox?!). I still can't understand the reason behind their opting against these two most popular Open Source Softwares; going with things people have forgotten or not known at all, buried in history books (or blogs :-D).

3. There is no Software Package Manager. The default one that comes is a pkgadd command. The essential packages are provided in 4th cd of Solaris, their names prefixed with SUNW (for e.g. man pages - SUNWman). I inserted the CD, and there was no automatic mounting. I tried to use my easy linux ways to mount, but no use. After finding no way to mount it, and checking online for an hour or so, got this command:

#/etc/init.d/volmgt stop
#/etc/init.d/volmgt start

There is no 'restart' option?! However, these commands restarted the volume management which is responsible for mounting the devices. Once restarted, it recognized my cd, and mounted it. So, I cd into the packages directory, and tried to install the package:

#cd /cdrom/sol_11_x86_4/Solaris_11/Product
#pkgadd -d SUNWman
pkgadd: ERROR: no packages were found in

Wao! Now what to do? So, after some searching, I came across this:

#pkgadd -d /cdrom/sol_11_x86_4/Solaris_11/Product SUNWman

And exactly opposite of my expectations, the command worked, and the package was installed!! I've no clue why on earth wd someone have a *constraint* like this one.

4. Thankfully someone has taken these problems in account, and created a centralized package system online at http://blastwave.org. You can download 'pkg-get' package, which provides similar functionality as apt-get, retrieving packages from the blastwave packages list. Though it has a very primitive way of 5-6 step installation, but it surely does _work_ after that. Helped me to install my saviour firefox, and vim editor.

#pkg-get -i vim

Ya! Solaris only has the old vi editor. For those who dun know why vim is better; imagine you can't use your arrow keys to browse thro the code, or use your backspace button to delete. Though backspace still doesn't work fine for me even in vim :(.

5. Crap fonts!

6. _Amazing kernel_. The solaris kernel code is very neat. The more I'm understanding filesystem implementation in solaris, the more I'm appreciating it. I'd like to mention here that ZFS is beyond doubt the most advanced filesystem available today.

Conclusion: Solaris/OpenSolaris is powerful Operating System with amazing kernel and fs, though its ages behind becoming a desktop OS.

Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris

Too techy for lecs

Its long I have been to lectures...
Its even longer that I've gone to lecture, and listened to the prof...
Its ages I've felt bad about bunking them...

So, where does my life revolve arnd? Here are top priorities:
1. Sit in canteen, with a cup of tea, and jobless friends.
2. Check, Double Check, Check if I double checked mails, blogs and engadget while listening to music from the music server running on my _ubuntu_ machine through library computer (for those who know what I generally use _hint:gen2_, yea! I switched to ubun2!)
3. Look at my mobile, new sms, old sms, contacts, and alarm clock.
4. Work on cool projects involving C/C++, Python, Ruby, kernel; dream about working in techhie companies.

Lately I've also been calling up people to tell them about the Portable Media Player that I'm buying soon. Just to let you know, the date falls today. Enjoy 'friends' in MRT. Wao! One more reason to sustain life. I'm loving it!

Flickrfs crosses 10000 mark

Flickrfs got itself tagged by 10035 photos, an indication of how many photos are uploaded using this virtual filesystem. So, that makes 10035 photos within 4 months of its release, which calculating linearly comes to be 2508 photos per month. Isn't that great!

Another interesting news is that two people has joined as developers, R. David Murray and Fabio Spelta; both members of flickrfs-users group. Flickrfs is now undergoing major bug fixing, and thorough testing. The code is uploaded into cvs, and is available through CVS anonymous access, so you can have a quick browse through the code. Enjoy!

The IT Crowd - First Impression

There has been a lot of buzz about UK's Channel 4 sitcom 'The IT Crowd'. The sitcom focuses on the life of a 3-strong IT Team, where a computer-illiterate becomes the head of 2 geeks, all working in an untidy basement of a 34 storey building. Its being made available on the internet for download 1 week before the original telecast on TV. Learning that, I tried to download it from the main website, but strangely was disallowed access. Reason being that I was accessing from outside UK. The second approach, of using bittorrent to download the episodes also failed, thanks to NTU proxy and firewall. Seeing no other way out, just thought of giving google videos a try, and whoa! It had all the five episodes available, along with download access. So, with lots of hopes and visualizations about the geeky stuff, I started up the download of all 5 episodes, but due to slow connection, finally managed to get only one episode 'The Red Door'.

My expectation of the geek characters was completely thwarted, when they showed 'Roy', the main geek, without any computer on his desk! The only electronics item present on his desk was a telephone. Even the room didn't seem a 'typical geek' room. On the background, there were some brand new monitors laid out very neatly, which deluded the whole concept of dark, stingly and untidy. No hanging wires, no opened up gadgets, screwdrivers, printers, anything! The comedy lacked common sense, originating from childish actions, rather than intelligent taunts. Though I liked some of the dialogues where Moss, the second geek in his 'computerized voice' talks to Jen, the IT head. Concluding the post, the show makes a good time pass, and surely will improve in the coming episodes.

Don't rape her!

Quoted from Xenoflare:

A lot has been said about how to prevent rape. Women should learn self-defense. Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. Women shouldn't have long hair and women shouldn't wear short skirts. Women shouldn't leave drinks unattended. Fuck, they shouldn't dare to get drunk at all.

Instead of that bullshit, how about:

If a woman is drunk, don't rape her. If a woman is walking alone at night, don't rape her. If a women is drugged and unconscious, don't rape her. If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don't rape her. If a woman is jogging in a park at 5AM, don't rape her. If a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you're still hung up on, don't rape her. If a woman is asleep in her bed, don't rape her. If a woman is asleep in your bed, don't rape her. If a woman is doing her laundry, don't rape her. If a woman is in a coma, don't rape her. If a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don't rape her. If a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don't rape her. If a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don't rape her. If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don't rape her. If your step-daughter is watching TV, don't rape her.

If you break into a house and find a woman there, don't rape her. If your friend thinks it's okay to rape someone, tell him it's not, and that he's not your friend. If your "friend" tells you he raped someone, report him to the police. If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there's an unconscious woman upstairs and it's your turn, don't rape her, call the police and report him as a rapist.

Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, and sons of friends that it's not okay to rape someone.

Don't just tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape. Don't imply that she could have avoided it if she'd only done/not done x, y, or z. Don't imply that it's in any way her fault. Don't let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he "got some" with the drunk girl. Don't perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can too help yourself. Rape is not about sex, it's about control and power, and what kind of power comes from taking advantage of others? No power anyone should ever desire.

If you agree, repost it. It's important.

This is the most strong fabulous statement I have come across. Hats off to the author!

Dhruv hatyara hai!

Super Commando Dhruv's a killer?!


Profile.
He was my role-model when I was kid, my all time favourite. That time I didn't know any other brand than Raj, all the popular ones, Nagraj, Doga, Bhokal were Raj's. I didn't like them so much as they boasted of super-natural (or un-natural) powers which I didn't believe in. On the other hand, Dhruv was a perfect human, with his amazing brain, fast reaction, and strong punches. And ya! Never forget the way he cud ride the bike on a rope! Which he learnt owing to his murdered parents being part of a Russian(?) Circus.

The most interesting part was his equally brilliant team, and his sister, who without Dhruv's knowing abt it, was also a super-woman(?). That was the best part when she wd suddenly pop into action whenever Dhruv was in danger.

Am remembering all these again, and feel like enjoying them once again. This time when I am back, will surely go and order at least a dozen comics to make up for the missed episodes. Almost forgot abt him!!!

2.0 web!

"They are the crux of it, whatever it is."

Just found this 2.0 link: http://web2.0bingo.com/

Forces me to do a checklist upon myself, so here it is:
tags: Got a flickr account!
Ruby on Rails, AJAX: Will surely(adamant) use in next project!
Integrates with Flickr: haha! All over me!
Beta: will soon release one!
Adsense support: emm! no visitor, no money!
Candid Blog: Highly partial towards technology
OTHERS: Dun understand! OOPS!

haha! love this! :)