New Stuff in OpenSolaris 2008.11

OpenSolaris 2008.11 is coming soon. Build 101 is the stabilization build before it, and as usual, new features are excluded from this build. So we can say pretty certainly what features are in, and what are out.

While there are a lot of new features coming in this release, there are some in particular that I've been more involved with.

  1. SDcard support. Numerous laptops can now use SDcard and MultiMediaCard media directly. A good way to know if you're laptop is one of them is to search for pciclass,0805 in the output of prtconf -vp. While it isn't completely conclusive (in particular some models from Texas Instruments are schizophrenic here), if you see this, there's an excellent chance it will work. I'd always like to hear feedback about this feature -- if your unit works, or doesn't work, let me know. (Also, of course, the Tadpole SPARCLE models are supported. )
  2. AudioHD improvements. Notably, many more laptops will now have working audio. The audiohd driver is also updated to support Suspend/Resume.
  3. Fast Reboot. I participated as a consultant. I'll also be updating (post OpenSolaris 2008.11) additional drivers to support this feature. The upshot of this project is that a healthy system can reboot much more quickly now.
  4. Brussels (NIC Administration). I've participated in converting several drivers to Brussels, and in generally improving Brussels (I'm also the ARC sponsor for this work.) The upshot of this project is greatly improved manageability for network interfaces.
  5. Suspend (S3) Support. I helped review the conversions of several drivers, and provided fixes for several NIC devices.
  6. Bug Fixes. I've worked on a number of them, and of course, there are huge numbers of bugs that have been fixed in this release.
All said, I think OpenSolaris 2008.11 is going to be great -- I confess that I was skeptical about the earlier releases, but this release is shaping up to be really awesome.

Comments

CA said…
Great stuff! that release will great, and about openSound integration, or suspend/resume support on openSound drivers? any news?

CA,
October 4, 2008 at 7:58 AM
Unknown said…
My team is working hard on integration of OpenSound technology in Solaris, including addressing major feature issues like suspend/resume. Unfortunately we won't have this done in time for the 2008.11 release, but I expect that sometime late this year, or very early next year I should have bits for folks to test with.

I'll publish more on my blog as it evolves.
October 4, 2008 at 6:56 PM
.:: AuroraUX ::. said…
Hi Garrett,

Great work.
But sadly the audiohd driver makes this HP dv6129TX kernel panic!

I filed a report on bugs.opensolaris.org and here is my blog with a picture:
http://ultravioletos.blogspot.com/2008/10/panic-on-boot-of-install-dvd-sxce-snv99.html

Best Regards,
Edward O'Callaghan.
October 9, 2008 at 7:14 AM
Unknown said…
Can you give me the bugid assigned to your bug? Or, the exact synopsis you used? I'm trying to locate the bug in our database and I can't find it.

Thanks.
October 9, 2008 at 7:43 AM
.:: AuroraUX ::. said…
Hi Garrett,

Thanks for the quick reply !
CR 6757777, I just filed it and it took a few min to come though..

Thanks,
Edward.
October 9, 2008 at 9:11 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An important milestone

Yesterday, with very little fanfare, illumos passed an important milestone. This milestone was the integration of  195 Need replacement for nfs/lockd+klm This is work that I originally tasked Gordon Ross and Dan Kruchinin to work while we were colleagues at  Nexenta .  Gordon started the work, picking up bits from FreeBSD as a starting point and gluing it to the illumos entry points.  Dan continued with it, and fleshed out a lot of the skeleton that Gordon had started.  It was subsequently picked up by the engineers at Delphix , and -- after some important bug fixing work was completed -- was integrated into their product quite some time ago -- reportedly its been stable since December in their product. The reason this is such an important milestone, is two fold: First, this represents a substantial collaborative effort, involving contributions from parties across several organizational boundaries.  The level of collaboration achieved here is a w...
Read more

GNU grep - A Cautionary Tale About GPLv3

My company, DEY Storage Systems , is in the process of creating a new product around the illumos operating system.  As you might imagine, this product includes a variety of open and proprietary source code.  The product itself is not delivered as a separate executable, but as a complete product.  We don't permit our customers to crack it open, both from the sense of protecting our IP, but also to protect our support and release engineering organizations -- our software releases consist only of a single file and we don't supply tools or source for other parties to modify that file. One of the pieces that we wanted to integrate into the tree is an excellent little piece of software called Zookeeper , produced by the Apache organization.  Like illumos, Zookeeper has a nice non-viral copyleft license, which makes it nice for integration into our product. However, I discovered that as part of our integration, one of my engineers had decided to integrate GNU grep. ...
Read more

The Hand May Be Forced

Well, as you may have read , Oracle has decided that at some point very soon, we're going to lose normal regular access to the source code for OS/Net. (I.e. the Solaris kernel and supporting programs.) While I would have vastly preferred for Illumos to have a cooperative and collaborative relationship with Oracle , it appears that Oracle doesn't value this. In fact, the exact words were from the management at Oracle were as follows: Solaris is not something we outsource to others, it is not the assembly of someone else’s technology, and it is not a sustaining-only product. While I understand the need to own the technology, there are few things that could be stated that show a stronger NIH attitude than this. Its unlikely that there will ever be a way for Oracle and the greater community to have a collaborative relationship. This is a dark day for OpenSolaris -- its effectively dead now. (Its parent, Solaris, lives on however.) How unfortunate. For Oracle that is. Because...
Read more