Security: A Linux Server Exploit

Why do people want to hack your server? Maybe it is to mine BITCOINS!
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/12/anatomy-of-a-hack-what-a-successful-exploit-of-a-linux-server-looks-like/

Like most mainstream operating systems these days, fully patched installations of Linux provide a level of security that requires a fair amount of malicious hacking to overcome. Those assurances can be completely undone by a single unpatched application, as Andre' DiMino has demonstrated when he documented an Ubuntu machine in his lab being converted into a Bitcoin-mining, denial-of-service-spewing, vulnerability-exploiting hostage under the control of attackers.

Processor War: Google to Manufacture ARM?



[Datacenter Image, courtsy ARS Technica]

 Google maybe thinking about making their own ARM central processing units
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/report-google-contemplates-homemade-arm-chips-to-power-its-servers/

We've already seen consumer technology companies like Apple and Samsung become more vertically integrated in the last few years—Apple designs its own phones and tablets, the chips that go in them, and the architecture that goes into the chips, for example. Just as Apple's software benefits from tight integration with Apple's hardware, Google is reportedly eyeing chip design as a way to "better manage the interactions between hardware and software."

[Sun Microsystems Logo]

Of course, Sun (and now Oracle), have seen a similar benefit with SPARC, over the years. Sun Microsystems was able to drive volume in their market, but as manufacturing costs rose, the market needed to grow accordingly. The UNIX market had found ways to differentiate themselves from the consumer market, but that market shrank as the consumer market canibalized it. There needs to be a large enough market to make the investment profitable in this high-cost and high-risk arena.

[Sun Ray Terminal]

Google is large enough, to make such an investment profitable, and they have a large enough investment in ARM hardware software with the Mobile consumer market. This does not guarantee survival, however, as Oracle demonstrated their desire to exit the desktop appliance market with the discontinuing of their Sun Ray product, when they could have invested in SPARC or ARM for the Sun Ray to make an additional consumer for their SPARC processor investment, hedge the investment in SPARC processor in skilled programmers, and created a new market driver for Oracle's Cloud offering using Sun Ray appliances.

Android: Incompatibilities - Hacking & Coding Practices

[Courtesy: Android Authority]

Some people have been discussing Android compatibility recently.

Most of the incompatibilities surround screen size and camera size.
http://developer.android.com/.../pract.../compatibility.html

Sometimes, people can just code their apps differently, in order to make their apps compatible across more devices.
http://stackoverflow.com/.../android-app-is-incompatible...

There have been hacks created, so people can download incompatible apps... but there is generally a reason why these apps are generally tagged as incompatible.
http://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-install.../

Hope this short note is helpful!

ARM: Calxeda Runs Out of Money

[Calxeda ARM processor, courtesy ComputerWorld]

The developer of 64 bit ARM processors closed down, the week before Christmas. Calxeda is going through restructuring. The world may still see a 64 bit ARM from this company, yet. Previously, their 32 bit ARM processors were well received by the market. In 2011, Calxeda announced the development of a 480 core low power server, to be consumed by Hewlett Packard. The "Moonshot" servers from HP may be negatively impacted - HP's attempt at resuming RISC processor platform production may be in chaos.

Malware: Targeting Linux Platforms



[Screenshot courtesy ARS Technica]

This is not the first case of such worms, targeting Internet devices, in this case Intel based only.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/11/new-linux-worm-targets-routers-cameras-internet-of-things-devices/

Researchers have discovered a Linux worm capable of infecting a wide range of home routers, set-top boxes, security cameras, and other consumer devices that are increasingly equipped with an Internet connection. Linux.Darlloz, as the worm has been dubbed, is now classified as a low-level threat, partly because its current version targets only devices that run on CPUs made by Intel

[Screenshot courtesy Symantec]

A short article from Security company Symantec discussing the latest WORM targeting The Internet.
http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/linux-worm-targeting-hidden-devices

Symantec has discovered a new Linux worm that appears to be engineered to target the “Internet of things”. The worm is capable of attacking a range of small, Internet-enabled devices in addition to traditional computers. Variants exist for chip architectures usually found in devices such as home routers, set-top boxes and security cameras. Although no attacks against these devices have been found in the wild, many users may not realize they are at risk, since they are unaware they own devices that run Linux.

MacOSX Server: Mavericks Edition

[Apple OSX Server Screenshot, courtesy ARS Technica]

A review of MacOSX Server for Mavericks.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/12/a-power-users-guide-to-os-x-server-mavericks-edition/

Despite a version number increase from 2.X to 3.X, OS X Server is finished with the major overhauls. The software has been changed from an enterprise-targeted package to one better suited to power users and small businesses. Now that the transition is complete, it's clear that slow, steady improvement is the new normal.

Development Methodologies: Testing Code

[A Real Man]

The Reality of Network Management: Every Vendor, Model, and Firmware Combination normally means slightly different interface characteristics from the Network Management Cluster. Most of the time, every combination is not available in a lab. Testing such combinations in production happens to be true, more often than not.

Network Performance and Security: InfoVista and Bluecoat

Abstract:
Management of The Internet traditionally includes Fault, Performance, Configuration, and Security management. The business has traditionally experienced consolidation, but more recently the industry has been going private. Network Performance is often measured by software and enhanced by hardware. An short update on a few vendors.

WAN Acceleration Morphs into Security:
This market is dominated by the likes of Riverbed. with other vendors such as Cisco with WAAS and Ipanema. Bluecoat was one of the dominate vendors in this arena - on February 2012, Blue Coat Systems (web security and WAN Optimization) was acquired by Thoma Bravo LLC., a private equity firm. The conversion to a Security Company is well underway.

Performance Management Monitoring:

InfoVista has been in the Performance Management business for over a decade. The provide the core performance management infrastructure for Ipanema. InfoVista was purchased by private equity firm Thoma Bravo LLC in April 4, 2012. InfoVista provides the performance management for Blue Coat competitor Ipanema - which is quite interesting.

Application Performance Monitoring:
Network Instruments (network and application performance solutions) had a controlling interested taken by Thoma Bravo in April 2012. The products include an a lineup from software to probes to switches and network management for it all.

[3D map from InfoVista's Mentum Planet]

Self Organized Networks:
InfoVista's push into SON continued with the InfoVista purchase of Mentum on November 28, 2012. The expertise in carrier based wireless networks continues to grow, with wireless and back-haul expertise adding to InfoVista's portfolio. Mentum Planet is a powerful addition considering it is "the only RF network planning and optimization tool that embeds MapInfo professional GIS" and provides complete life cycle management for all things wireless.

[Keynote Logo]

Cloud Testing:
Thoma Bravo purchased  KeyNote Systems Inc. in August 28, 2013. Keynote provides cloud-based tools for testing mobile applications. "With Keynote, companies know precisely how their Web sites, content, and applications perform on actual browsers, networks, and mobile devices."

Testing & Forecasting:
Thoma Bravo also purhcased Empirix in August 2013. This testing tool provides for forecasting customer experience. This Massachusetts U.S. company provided mobile wireless services to banking and financial industries. "Empirix is at the forefront of holistic quality assurance solutions that preempt technology issues, ensure peak level performance, and predict the smartest actions for delighting customers, controlling costs, and optimizing business processes."

Network Planning and Analytics:Malaysian telecommunications software developer Aexio was acquired by InfoVista on  October 23, 2013. Network planning, service assurance, and geo-analytics will be added into InfoVista's portfolio of capabilities, with an Asian footprint.

[Aexio Founders]

Conclusion:
In the carrier wireless space, Thoma Bravo seems intent on providing management capabilities from carrier back-haul all the way up the wireless stack to the handset - bundling network, application, analytics, and forecasting into a performance management portfolio. It will be curious how security and WAN acceleration from Bluecoat will play into the mix and whether this will place any additional market pressure on Ipanema or whether their hardware will become an appliance basis only for security focus to remain disjoint from InfoVista mobile management market.

Android: Viruses, Worms, Trojans, and Malware

[Courtesy: Android Authority]

Abstract:
Sometimes the term "virus" generically, but there are really many kinds of "malware", of which Virus is a specific type. I categorized a few Android malware incidents from 2013 for friends. Please be aware of the "Apps" you buy, what you download, install, and even the web sites you go to.

A Brief 2013 History:
The Android ecosystem is not as "tight" as other ecosystems, such as Apple or Blackberry - as such, it is vulnerable to many more exploits... which may cause you money in bandwidth, future purchases, text messages, etc.

2013-01-09 --- Android users hit by scareware scam
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/android-users-hit-by-scareware-scam/9960

2013-01-13 --- “Bill Shocker” Android malware hits China, infecting 620K smartphone users
http://e27.co/bill-shocker-android-malware-hits-china-infecting-620k-smartphone-users/

2013-01-20 --- New variants of premium rate SMS trojan 'RuFraud' detected in the wild
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/new-variants-of-premium-rate-sms-trojan-rufraud-detected-in-the-wild/10165

2013-02-08 --- Researchers spot a fake version of Temple Run on Android's Market
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/researchers-spot-a-fake-version-of-temple-run-on-androids-market/10257

2013-02-27 --- Android drive-by download attack via phishing SMS
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/android-drive-by-download-attack-via-phishing-sms/10422

2013-03-26 --- First-Known Targeted Malware Attack On Android Phones Steals Contacts And Text Messages
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2013/03/26/first-known-targeted-malware-attack-on-android-phones-steals-contacts-and-text-messages/

2013-04-01 --- Evidence Mounts That Chinese Government Hackers Spread Android Malware
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/04/01/evidence-mounts-that-chinese-government-hackers-spread-android-malware/

2013-04-03 --- Android malware: A new avenue for Chinese hackers
http://www.citeworld.com/security/21669/android-malware-chinese-hackers

2013-04-12 --- Malicious version of Angry Birds Space spotted in the wild
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/malicious-version-of-angry-birds-space-spotted-in-the-wild/11520

2013-04-18 --- Warning: Fake Instagram app on Android is malware
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/warning-fake-instagram-app-on-android-is-malware/11597

2013-04-26 --- Warning: Fake Biophilla app on Android is malware
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/warning-fake-biophilla-app-on-android-is-malware/11715

2013-05-02 --- A first: Hacked sites with Android drive-by download malware
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/a-first-hacked-sites-with-android-drive-by-download-malware/11810

2013-05-15 --- Android malware families nearly quadruple from 2011 to 2012
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/android-malware-families-nearly-quadruple-from-2011-to-2012/12171

2013-05-21 --- Malware charges users for free Android apps on Google Play
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/malware-charges-users-for-free-android-apps-on-google-play/12245

2013-07-09 --- New Android malware infects 100,000 Chinese smartphones
http://www.zdnet.com/new-android-malware-infects-100000-chinese-smartphones-7000000497/

2013-08-13 --- Google messaging service hacked, sends malware to Android users
http://rt.com/news/google-messaging-hacked-malware-451/

2013-08-26 --- Android Malware: 44 Percent Of Android Users Vulnerable To Attacks According To U.S. Government
http://www.ibtimes.com/android-malware-44-percent-android-users-vulnerable-attacks-according-us-government-1399347

2013-08-27 --- Nearly 7,000 Malicious Android Apps Infest China's Appstores
http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/mobile-security/315218-nearly-7-000-malicious-android-apps-infest-china-s-appstores

2013-09-12 --- Email Spam Campaign Spreading Android Malware
http://threatpost.com/email-spam-campaign-spreading-android-malware

2013-10-25 --- New Android Banking Trojan Targeting Korean Users
http://thehackernews.com/2013/10/new-android-banking-trojan-targeting.html

2013-11-07 --- Another zombie 'bogus app' bug shambles out of Android
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/07/another_zombie_bogus_app_bug_shambles_out_of_android/

2013-11-17 --- New Voicemail Notification - WhatsApp - Malware
http://techhelplist.com/index.php/spam-list/314-new-voicemail-notification-whatsapp-malware

2013-12-02 --- Nexus phones carry SMS crash bug vulnerability
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/02/nexus_phones_carry_sms_crash_bug_vuln/

OpenSolaris Successor: OpenSXCE (Part 2)

[OpenSXCE Mascot with Illumos Logo]

Abstract:

Solaris, once the standard in workstations, became the standard for datacenter server. Sun Microsystems had open-sourced Solaris, referring to it as OpenSolaris. Oracle, purchased Sun, released Solaris 11 upon the OpenSolaris foundation, and closed OpenSolaris. Various forks were made from the OpenSolaris code, Illumos being one of the most popular across various commercial businesses, but only OpenSXCE was successful in creating multiplatform SPARC and Intel editions. As of May 2005, Martin made his second release. The first article discussed the history of OpenSXCE, the first release, the test platform, and second release using the text installer. This second article will discuss the GUI installer.

[Sun Microsystems UltraSPARC 60 Desktop]

Third Impression

The Test Platform

The Ultra 60 workstation with 2x Gigabytes of RAM, 2x 450 GHZ processor, and 1x DVD on-board, had it's video card repaired and a Gigabit Ethernet Card added - for the use of installing OpenSXCE 2013.05.

[SPARC International Logo]

The Installation Process

The OpenSXCE full install DVD booted reasonably well on the UltraSPARC platform, bringing up a desktop. By default, an command line was opened, but the terminal needed to be moved in order to reveal the Installation icon on the desktop. For new users, this might catch them by surprise.

The menus were well defined and the platform came up reasonably quickly. A simplification from the OpenIndiana installation included a single username & password combination. The root password could be changed later, after installation, using "sudo ksh".

I would have liked to have seen an option to mirror the root disks in the GUI, as the latest version of Solaris 10 offers.

The DHCP worked great, the platform picked up an IP Address after install, but only on my built-in 100 MBit hme0 card. The Gigabit card was not detected.

[SunRay running FireFox under SPARC Solaris 10]

Post Installation Process

Sampling Applications

In the Application Menu, it should be noted that Apache Open Office is bundled. The included version was 3.4.1. This is a welcome usability enhancement to any desktop! The writer applications seemed fairly snappy, even on my 10 year old desktop. I was copying large quantities of text from an xterm to the Open Office Writer application and it seemed to respond more quickly on my dual 450 MHz SPARC than similar operations using Microsoft Word on my Dell Laptop with a modern Quad-Core Intel processor. During this time, about 25% of the CPU was being consumed while the Open Office Writer application was scrolling to accept the text from the copy-paste buffer.

Firefox was also included in the Applications menu - version 21. It was not as snappy as Apache Open Office was, but it was usable, and worked fine on the Network Management blog. Normally, Firefox on a V240 over a SunRay is more snappy than this dedicated workstation. The Adobe Flash plugin was required (and not installed by default) - but somehow the system switched into HTML5 mode and played a video, albeit very slowly.

The System Tools Performance Meter is an abysmal CPU sucker! Once the Gnome tool is brought up, nearly half the CPU capacity on the dual-processor desktop is sucked up - scrolling graphs, which do not need to be updated nearly as quickly! When one clicks off the resource tab, the CPU time drops way down - the issue appears to be with the scrolling of the 3 graphs. I would suggest defaulting the poll & scroll to every 1-5 second, instead of multiple times a second. A tool to measure performance should never impact system performance.

The calculator was usable. A user could tap the keys with a mouse - even the numeric key pad on the Sun Type 4 Keyboard worked correctly.

[Protocol for remote desktop]

Sampling System Utilities

If the user did not already change the root password, this should be done via "sudo ksh" and using the "passwd root" command, before trying to access the standard system utilities. Many of these utilities require the root password.

When checking the System -> Preferences -> Display, it failed with "Could not get screen information" and a sub-error of "RANDR extension is not present". I suspect this has to do with running the the capabilities of "openXsun" that is required for the UltraSPARC system.

There was an interesting "System -> Preferences -> Desktop Sharing" application. When selecting the "Allow other users to view your desktop" - it very pleasantly described the IP Address which was now sharing. When trying to attach to the Ultra60 from my iPhone via a VNC Viewer, a pop-up appeared on the Ultra60 desktop requesting permission. After providing permission, it worked, but my iPhone app was not very good at controlling it.I tried "vncviewer" on my V240 over a SunRay - and it experienced the same problem of the commands going to the desktop but the remote viewer not reflecting the changes. A restart of the Ultr60 forced a disconnection, so I could be sure that I could run my next tests cleanly.

I brought up the System -> Services Application and thought the layout of the tool was very user friendly. I was surprised not to see the SNMP daemon in the list. This is something I was specifically looking for. The /usr/sbin/snmpd and /usr/sbin/snmptrapd binaries existed, but no default service available. This is, perhaps, the most important piece of network & systems management - yet it is the most overlooked piece, by most vendors.

Final Thoughts

This was an excellent release, so far. As more progress is made, from a networking perspective, it will be posted to the Network Management blog. Kudos to making OpenSXCE happen - I look forward to contributing to the project!

OpenSolaris Successor: OpenSXCE (Part 1)

[OpenSXCE Mascot with Illumos Logo]

Abstract:

Solaris, once the standard in workstations, became the standard for datacenter server. Sun Microsystems had open-sourced Solaris, referring to it as OpenSolaris. Oracle, purchased Sun, released Solaris 11 upon the OpenSolaris foundation, and closed OpenSolaris. Various forks were made from the OpenSolaris code, Illumos being one of the most popular across various commercial businesses, but only OpenSXCE was successful in creating multiplatform SPARC and Intel editions. As of May 2005, Martin made his second release.

[OpenSolaris Logo]

History of OpenSXCE

Sun used to distribute a Solaris Express Community Edition (SXCE) and Solaris Express Developers Edition (SXDE) - but when Sun was preparing to drive towards Imaging Packaging system, these were canceled. OpenSolaris's final release supported both SPARC and Intel. One of the early forks from OpenSolaris was Illumos. Their premier distribution was OpenIndiana. OpenIndiana promised to also support SPARC and Intel, but people waited for years. Martin Bochnig invested the time into releasing an initial SPARC release of OpenIndiana, called MartUX. The Illumos and OpenIndiana team did not integrate his work, the wiki pages associated with his effort were purged, but Martin eventually released OpenSXCE - a fully SVR4 compliant SPARC and Intel release! At first, there was 2013.01 release, next came 2013.05. Martin was encouraged to possibly rename his distribution, to remove his name, and choose a more fitting title - OpenSXCE was born.

First Impressions

Considering the complexity & effort, the first 2013.01 DVD was impressive. The booting on SPARC actually worked, but the disk was only a live DVD. Clearly, he was close, and the community was amazed that he was able to do what former SPARC engineers from Sun Microsystems, who found their way to Illumos & OpenIndiana, were unable to accomplish!

A Pause and Moving Ahead...

Personal concerns forced me to severely curtail my community activity, much of the SPARC test equipment was placed into storage. As responsibilities started to clear more recently, the resurrection of SPARC equipment resumed.

[Sun Microsystems UltraSPARC 60 Desktop]

The Test Beds

A Microsoft Windows XP laptop with Hyperterimnal became the serial console for all servers.

Populating V120's with 15K drives began. Initial installations of SPARC Solaris 10 Update 10 had started, to ensure the platforms were functional. A single slim-line CD-ROM drive on a V120 platform with 3 Gigabytes of RAM would make a reasonable test-bed for a CD based Text based installer.

An Ultra 60 workstation with 2 Gigabytes of RAM was running a multi-terabyte file service using flash to accelerate the ZFS performance, but it's video card drop dead about 1 year ago. The Ultra60 has 2 Gigabytes of RAM and a DVD on-board, so it would still be reasonable for a DVD installer test.

[Solaris Logo]

The control case: Solaris 10

Solaris 10 can no longer be installed from a CDROM, but only from a DVD drive. Many older Sun platforms do not have DVD drives, and some DVD drives which fit those platforms are not always recognized.

Solaris 10 Update 10 has a nice feature where identical drives can be installed as a mirrored ZFS root during installation. This functionality was thoroughly tested by pulling drives out of the V120 while running an application which was performing constant writing writing to the disks, and a second application which was performing constant reading from those same disks - no indication of any hardware issues were noted by the applications, except error reporting on the console. The applications did not experience any degradation, even when drives were re-inserted, and resync'ing.

The resync'ing process for ZFS drives in a broken mirror takes seconds for short breakage durations, in contrast to other platforms where re-syncing a broken mirror would take hours, or sometimes days with larger drives. The applications on the Solaris 10 platform continued to operate flawlessly. during the operation.

[ZFS: The Default File System for OpenSXCE]

Second Impressions: OpenSXCE and Text Install

Windows Client Setup

If the terminal selection was not set to VT100 from the start, or Hyperterm was not correctly set to use Vt100, then the GUI might not operate as expected. Once the terminal was properly set up to use VT100 and Hyperterm was supposedly set up to use VT100 emulation, The installation went quickly. Most of the most common defaults were pre-selected, to make installation much easier.

SCSI Disk Drive Format

One of the two SCSI disks were not formatted, so I needed to drop out to a command line and format the disk. The "format" command was well known by my, but most people who use IDE, ATA, SATA, and USB drives are probably not familiar with the process. The process to conduct the format would have been nice had it been documented, but honestly - I don't remember seeing any recent UNIX operating system take people through that process automatically during the install process. The format command indicated it would take a little over 1 hour to format the drive - it took close to 24 hours to format the 72 Gigabyte 15K drive! (I am glad I did not have a 900 Gigabyte SAS drive, since even a hardened user might have thought there was a problem when such a format could have taken a week!)

Installation Notes

The installation documentation and process inform the user that the mirroring of the ZFS hard drives could be done after installation. This is a nice touch, since Solaris 10 Update 10 does this from the start as an option in the installer. This gives the user an opportunity to provide parity with Solaris 10 Update 10, without adding the complexity to the installer.

Install Experience

The installation was extremely quick - much faster than what I was expecting! I walked away during the install and it was completed when I returned. I will watch during my next install to time it properly. This truly beat Solaris 10 Update 10 install, hands-down.

There is an option to review the installation log, at the end of the install. The Hyperterm vt100 emulator appears to have been lacking since the screen split into 2 sides, where the left hand side seemed to scroll correctly, but the right hand side did not. Die-hard UNIX administrators would know that the [control][l] could be used to perform a refresh when the text screen became corrupt. It would have been nice to have such a warning, for new-be's - but I have not honestly seen such warnings for many years with textual installers.

Post-Install Experience

Pressing the [F8] key from the Hyperterm emulator did not initiate a reboot, at the final screen, as expected. There was a warning during the installation that function keys occasionally do not work from the emulators, and a user could revert back to using [ESCAPE] with a numeric aterwards. This worked flawlessly, the reboot started immediately after pressing [ESCAPE] followed by an [8].

Another thing which caught me by surprise, the root user was not allowed to log in from the serial console after installation, but the additional user specified during install MUST be used. I may have missed this during the installation warnings, perhaps it should be more clearly noted on the install screens.

There were some odd errors noted, with an "ldom" service, which did not surprise me since I was running on older SPARC hardware which did not support LDom's (or more recently known as Oracle VM for SPARC.) This functionality should only work on modern processors.It would be nice to have a check for old hardware and silently exit, or at least indicate that this is expected behavior on this class of hardware.

Amazing to me, there was no problem with the installation coming up in a fully functional way, with networking operating the way it was supposed to. This was some nice attention to detail.

Full Internet-Based Upgrade

The root user automatically provided a note which offered to upgrade the text installation from an external internet based repository. This was a wonderful addition, being able to use System V Revision 4 standard packaging formats for upgrading the OS from the internet! People may have noted that Sun (and later Oracle) decided to move from SVR4 packaging to a proprietary packaging format to get this feature, when clearly moving to a proprietary format was never needed for this functionality.

The internet upgrade time was 1 hour and 55 minutes, which was provided by the SVR4 packaging system. This was very nice forethought by the distribution! The command to boot into the new boot environment was provided by the upgrade process - kudos again to the distribution! The instructions were not as clear as they could be, for the process to reboot into the new boot environment, for new users.

Everything was not perfect. I lost my network functionality after the network upgrade from the internet. The process for mirroring the root disks with ZFS was not as clean as I had hoped.

[Sun Microsystems UltraSPARC IV Systems]

Final Thoughts

My first impression of the new system can be summed up in a single word: impressed. How could a part-time programmer from Eastern Europe do what was promised and could not be delivered by former staff of Sun Microsystems? Truly, this is "hat's off" time to Martin, I hope OpenIndiana or Illumos take some of his work "side-stream" or "upstream", and someone hires him to work on Solaris based engineering project!

OpenIndiana: Build 151 Prestable 8 Released

[OpenIndiana Logo]

OpenIndiana Build 151 Prestable 8 Released

[OpenSolaris Logo]

Abstract:

Sun Microsystems had open-sourced it's Solaris operating system during the process of building Solaris 10. The open source project became known as OpenSolaris, with the first Intel & SPARC distributions being also known an OpenSolaris. Oracle purchased Sun and updates to OpenSolaris stopped. A fork called Illumos was created, containing some of the source code. OpenIndiana became well known with their oi_151a0 distribution. In August 2013, the OpenIndiana team had released their latest update: oi_151a8.

[OpenIndiana Build 147 Screenshot]

First Impressions:

The OpenIndiana & Illumos teams have been unable to deliver on their SPARC commitment, but they were able to get their 9th binary Intel based release out. The installation was done against a Gateway Desktop with 1.5Gig of RAM. A pair of dual enterprise grade 250 SATA drives were recognized. No option was noted during the installation to create a mirrored pair, as was available with the most recent Solaris 10 updates. The GUI installation was marvelous, installing on the 32 bit Pentium 4 platform. The hyperthreading normally available in the Intel Pentium 4 did not look like it was available, as a second virtual CPU. A USB keyboard and mouse from a SunRay was recognized without any problems. The network card was not recognized, making the distribution less useful that I hoped.

[OpenIndiana Build 147: Package Manager]

Final Thoughts

The inability to use the built-in Network Card on the Gateway was problematic. Honestly, the reason this platform was being spun up was to test some Network Management software, normally run on SPARC platforms. This will start the process of determining what can be done next, to build out a supportable Intel platform. Off to the mailing lists!

Third Annual Solaris Family Reunion (Part 1)

Abstract:
Deirdre at Joyent helped to organize The Third Annual Solaris Family Reunion sponsored by Joyent on September 23, 2013.Attendees ranged from former employees at Sun to current employees at Oracle. Each discoursed a short 10 minute presentation as to what they have been doing over the past 3 years. This includes sessions 1 through 6.


Session 1: Opening with Bryan Cantrill of Joyent


Session 2: Visualization & Medieval Medicine with Brendan Gregg since 2010
DTrace, Performance, Observability, and Visualization in SmartOS
System Tap, JDB, KVM, freezing, and crash dump, in Red Hat Linux: .
Introducing: Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud


Session 3: VP Eric Schrock & CTO Adam Leventhal of Delphix since 2010
Formerly worked on FishWorks in Sun, cared about all workloads.
Delphix specializes in building virtualized databases, snapshots, and clones.
Improved ZFS for low space, fragmentation, small record conditions, and write throttle.
Tremendous innovation with Java Management Stack for OpenSolaris, Linux, HP-UX, IBM AIX.
Famous Quote, "The AIX Documentation completely outstrips the implementation" and "We use COMSTAR alot... it still sucks... love to rip it out"


Session 4: Nexenta, Illumos, and DEY Storage Systems Garrett D'Amore
Founded Illumos while at Nexenta, moved to DEY Storage Systems.
Generate analytics with DTrace. Crossbow can be used to virtualize storage service, uniquely under Solaris.


Session 5: Oracle employee Blake Jones
Revisited Virtual Memory System in Oracle Solaris, released in Solaris 11.1.
The 36 page paper in 2011 had a small number of papers implemented.
Free List Management was implemented with Dynamic Reconfiguration and memory retirement.
The M6-32 was released at Oracle, with 32 Gigabytes of RAM.
Large Shared Memory algorithms which do work with large pages.
Famous quote, "Now at Oracle, we still are building  the hardware, building the Operating System, and we are building stuff on top of it that really doesn't suck."


Session 6: Bill Moore
New startup with new high-capacity flash modules, new product to be released in a number of months.