Going to the server physically just for the serial number could be a pain. So I was looking around and see if there is any tool that can make this process more joyful. I found a Sun tool which can store/retrieve the CSN in/from the EEPROM. How cool is that!

Starting from OpenSolaris Nevada Build 37, you can mount / as ZFS. Here is a detailed procedure on how to do it, and here is another one. It's ugly but it's just the beginning. It shouldn't be long when we see grub understands ZFS.

For a long time I have never realized that I have been living a geek life ever since I touched a computer. I run to the computer first thing after I get up in the morning, I run to the computer first thing after I am done with eating (lunch, dinner, I haven't had breakfirst for a long time), I run to the computer when I finally get some mood to watch TV but it's on commercial break, I run to the computer after I come back home from work, I run to the computer when I get to the office, I run to the computer after I get back from the bathroom… I can stay as long as I can sit in front of a computer and never get bored.

As a UNIX zealot, for a long time I have been trying to collect all kinds of UNIX hardware and OS'es: IBM Power/AIX, Sun Sparc/Solaris, HPPA/HP-UX, SGI RISC/Irix, DEC/Compaq/Tru64, FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/DragonflyBSD, Linux, GNU Hurd, OpenVMS… Did I miss anything there? I think I forgot mentioning the Apple stuff. I have also been long hoping to buy a PowerBook (now MacPro) but I have never got to a point to buy it. Why?

Hey, life is different when you start your own family. Now you have to have a family meeting to discuss about the budget you can spend on buying new stuff, and life is even more different when you start having little one(s). Time has slowly become a luxury thing to get. Where does the time go? A lot of other places such as changing diapers, feeding food, playing with kids, cleaning house, washing dishes (_NOT_ disks)…

Today my wife sent me some pictures that her co-work (a sysadmin) sent to her. I felt like: isn't this what I have been hoping to get?

This isn't any professional site or the like. It's just somebody's playground, really impressive though. I am sure the power bill will be very impressive too. Other than that, don't you think it may be a good idea to move OpenBSD's server farm to this place? :)

I was browsing through opensolaris's website and noticed a blog entry that mentioned Sun's Security Coordination Team now has been putting up security alerts as RSS feed. This is really cool and very convenient for those who don't want to subscribe to the mailing list.

All of our unix sysadmin's workstations reside on a network where a Windows DHCP server is in charge (AKA authoritative). So jumping start a machine isn't easy with either DHCP or BOOTP anymore. With BOOTP, the RARP broadcast cannot even reach the jumpstart server. With DHCP, it's a little different. The DHCP requests can get to the jumpstart server and the jumpstart server is also nice enough to hand out the IP address and other jumpstart-related stuff. But the client always favors the offer from the Windows DHCP server which is authoritative for the whole network. Changing that is out of question, so I am thinking it's time to explore the wanboot option.

I went over the installation guide and it looked very easy to set up the jumpstart with wanboot. If I hadn't heard that JET 4.2 would be out in mid April, I would probably have followed the installation guide and manually set up the wanboot server already. I will just wait for a little longer and if it isn't up for download by early next week then I will probably just follow the guide and manually set up the wanboot server.

Tim Rightnour – our new netbsd-prep portmaster – sent an email to port-prep mailing list reporting his work progress on improving the NetBSD/prep port. One of the most exciting thing he mentioned in his email is that the sysinst should work and hopefully we don't have to play with the partition tables every time when we upgrade the kernel on a prep machine! Here is the install notes and check here for new snapshot builds (4/6/2006 or later).

Will definitely try out the new sysinst on my 43p-140 when the snapshot is out.

This week I decided to try out JET with DHCP mode to jumpstart a client. JET by default uses Sun shipped dhcp server (/usr/lib/inet/in.dhcpd, dhcpconfig, dhtadm, pntadm etc) for this purpose. Here is the steps we followed to configure the DHCP with JET:

1. Copy out the make_dhcp from JET to a temporary place:

# cp /opt/SUNWjet/Products/base_config/solaris/make_dhcp /var/tmp

2. Modify /var/tmp/make_dhcp and change variables NETWORK, NETMASK and ROUTER to suit our environment:

NETWORK=192.168.1.0
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
ROUTER=192.168.1.1

3. Run /var/tmp/make_dhcp

Then we run "make_client transam" to configure a jumpstart client transam:

# /opt/SUNWjet/bin/make_client -f transam
Gathering network information..
        Client: 192.168.1.205 (192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0)
        Server: 192.168.1.244 (192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0, SunOS)
Solaris: client_prevalidate
         Clean up /etc/ethers
Solaris: client_build
Creating sysidcfg
Creating profile
Adding base_config specifics to client configuration
Adding sds specifics to client configuration
SDS: Configuring preferred metadevice numbers
Adding flash specifics to client configuration
FLASH: Modifying client profile for flash install
FLASH: Removing package/cluster/usedisk entries from profile
Solaris: Configuring JumpStart boot for transam
         Starting SMF services for JumpStart
Solaris: Configure DHCP build
         Adding install client
         Supporting VENDOR=SUNW.Sun-Blade-1500 SUNW.Sun-Blade-1500-S SUNW.Sun-Blade-100 SUNW.Ultra-5_10 SUNW.Ultra-30
         Configuring transam macro
         Using local dhcp server
         Setting up Network on dhcp server
         Macro: 192.168.1.0 Netmask: 255.255.255.0 Default Router: 192.168.1.1
Added network macro to dhcptab - 192.168.1.0.
Created network table.
         DHCP configuration complete
Running '/opt/SUNWjet/bin/check_client  transam'
        Client: 192.168.1.205 (192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0)
        Server: 192.168.1.244 (192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0, SunOS)
Checking product base_config/solaris
Checking product custom
Checking product sds
Checking product flash
FLASH: Checking nfs://192.168.1.244/export/flasharchives/umuc-solaris10.flar
Checking product san
--------------------------------------------------------------
Check of client transam
-> Passed....

And that's it. Easy, isn't it?

I also tried out ISC's dhcpd with JET and it worked fine too. But the downside is that JET won't be able to automatically configure the DHCP settings like it does with Sun's dhcpd when you run make_client. So I had to hand craft the dhcpd.conf for the ISC dhcpd. Here is a working copy of my configuration:

default-lease-time 6000;
max-lease-time 6000;
min-lease-time 6000;
ddns-update-style ad-hoc;

option space SUNW;
option SUNW.root-mount-options code 1 = text;
option SUNW.root-server-ip-address code 2 = ip-address;
option SUNW.root-server-hostname code 3 = text;
option SUNW.root-path-name code 4 = text;
option SUNW.swap-server-ip-address code 5 = ip-address;
option SUNW.swap-file-path code 6 = text;
option SUNW.boot-file-path code 7 = text;
option SUNW.posix-timezone-string code 8 = text;
option SUNW.boot-read-size code 9 = unsigned integer 16;
option SUNW.install-server-ip-address code 10 = ip-address;
option SUNW.install-server-hostname code 11 = text;
option SUNW.install-path code 12 = text;
option SUNW.sysid-config-file-server code 13 = text;
option SUNW.JumpStart-server code 14 = text;
option SUNW.terminal-name code 15 = text;

subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
        option routers 192.168.1.1;
        option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
        option domain-name "mydom.org";
        option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.3;
        ddns-updates off;

host transam {
                hardware ethernet 0:3:ba:c4:d8:ea;
                fixed-address 192.168.1.205;
                option host-name "transam";

		vendor-option-space SUNW;                

		option SUNW.sysid-config-file-server "confucius:/opt/SUNWjet/Clients/transam";
                option SUNW.JumpStart-server "confucius:/opt/SUNWjet";
                option SUNW.install-server-hostname "confucius.mydom.org";
                option SUNW.install-server-ip-address 192.168.1.244;
                option SUNW.install-path "/dhcp/OS_10";
                option SUNW.root-server-hostname "confucius.mydom.org";
                option SUNW.root-server-ip-address 192.168.1.244;
                option SUNW.root-path-name "/dhcp/OS_10/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot";
                next-server 192.168.1.244;
        }
}

I have been pretty much sick all last week, runny nose, sore throat, coughing… I don't know where I got it from, but most likely either from my daughter or my wife. They were pretty much sick last week too. Fortunately they have recovered and I am left to be the only one being sick.

I don't usually get sick very often, probably just once every year. So I don't feel like to see a doctor unless I am really really sick. And even when I get sick, I don't remember to check the temperature or drink more water. My wife does all that for me, except when it comes to drinking water she comes to me and forces me to drink it :) I have been behaving like this for basically my whole life. Sometimes I realizes that I am not that young anymore. Being sick like this once again reminds me of that :)

I am having a fever again today, so I stayed home sick in hopes of getting some rest and recovering faster…

It's Friday, but I had to stay late and reset a Sun StorEdge 6320 array used by the developers. We had a planned power outage on 1/7 and some of the trays on this array had blue lights on them for whatever reason we didn't know. I opened a case with Sun but they didn't figure out what caused the blue lights since they couldn't telnet to those trays from the SSP to gather logs. So the only thing we could do is to reset the whole array and make the blue lights go away. The array has just been reset and all the blue lights went away. Not that exciting, but at least I can go home and enjoy a good weekend!

Here is a another patch I made for FreeNX againt the SVN rev 204. It fixes 'egrep -q' and 'ls –time-style' that are not supported on Solaris. I have just submitted the patch to the FreeNX mailing list for review.