Its Official

I'm no longer a Sun Microsystems Employee, since Sun no longer exists. Hopefully I'll get to keep my job at Oracle, but I've not seen any e-mail yet. I expect I will before day's end.

Auto Install Finally Working For Me!

Some of you may know, I've been struggling (and failing) to make auto install work for me. I've had challenges, because my network is not routable, and due to other issues (bugs!) in OpenSolaris Auto Install.

However, it seems that I've finally hit on a successful recipe. I want to record this here for others.

First, in order to use AI, you will need your installation server to be running a recent build of OpenSolaris. The release notes indicate b128 is sufficient. I just ran "pkg image-update" to update to build 131. If you fail to do this, there won't be a warning at all, its just your clients will simply not boot.

The next thing you'll need to do is download a full-repository and the AI image.

Unfortunately, there are not public versions of the full repo ISO file available that are "current". (No, I can't get you a copy, and no I don't know why they haven't posted a more recent update.) Hopefully this problem will be corrected soon.

Setting up the local repository can be done following these directions. (Note that you will have to change the paths to reflect your system. I stash ISO images in /data/isos, and install images under /data/install. These are separate ZFS filesystems.

# where do ISOs live, without leading /
ISODIR=data/isos
# where does the repo live, without leading /
REPO=data/install/os131_repo_full
# AI service name to use
NAME=os131_x86
# parent directory for installations, without leading /
INSTDIR=data/install
# port to use for install server
PORT=8181

mount -F hsfs -r /${ISODIR}/osol-repo-131-full.iso /mnt
zfs create -o compression=on ${REPO}
svccfg -s application/pkg/server setprop pkg/inst_root=/${REPO}
svccfg -s application/pkg/server setprop pkg/readonly=true
svccfg -s application/pkg/server setprop pkg/port=${PORT}

You'll need to edit the ${REPO}/cfg_cache file, changing the origins entry to match your system. I used a value like this:

origins = http://192.168.128.11:8181

Then you'll want to use installadm to setup an initial boot service. Here's the recipe I used:

zfs create -o compression=on ${INSTDIR}/${NAME}
installadm create-service -n ${NAME} -s /${ISODIR}/osol-dev-131-ai-x86.iso /${INSTDIR}/${NAME}

Now you need to change the default manifest file. This is the tricky part, that IMO was not terribly well explained anywhere else.

cp /${NSTDIR}/${NAME}/auto_install/default.xml /tmp

Then edit default.xml file in /tmp, changing the value of "main_url" to point to your server. I used a value like this:

<main url="http://192.168.128.11:8181" publisher="opensolaris.org"/>

Then apply this manifest to the default manifest:

installadm add -m /tmp/default.xml -n ${NAME}

Finally, I did some tweaking in my DHCP configuration. I have a macro for each service name, that provides the defaults. For example, my "os131_x86" macro looks likes this:

Include pepper
BootFile os131_x86
GrubMenu menu.lst.os131_x86

My "pepper" macro (pepper is the name of my server) sets some shared defaults, but most especially it sets BootSrvA to the IP address of the server (192.168.128.11 in my case.)

Then I just configure individual addresses for which ever version of OpenSolaris (or SXCE) I want to install using the the correct configuration macro. (For SXCE there are very different DHCP options to use. Also the SPARC version of OpenSolaris uses different options as well.)

Six Years & Counting

Its hard for me to believe that six years ago today at this hour in the morning I was getting myself ready to meet my bride. We had a wonderful wedding on the beach in front of the Del Mar powerhouse in San Diego, with our friends and family in attendance.

Looking back, its been the best six years of my life. I've truly been blessed. I'm looking forward to spending the next sixty together with my beautiful bride Deborah.

Interesting device driver work

So there are a couple of "closed" drivers that are not part of OpenSolaris, and might never be because of redistribution restrictions. However, this represents an opportunity for an enterprising software engineer to contribute. The drivers are

glm - Symbios 53x810 and similiar devices
qus - QLogic ISP 10160 and similar devices
adp - Adaptec AIC 7870P and similar devices
cadp - Adaptec AIC 7896 and similar devices

There are open source drivers for these from FreeBSD and NetBSD, which could be used as a starting point for a port. I'd probably be interested in trying one of these out myself, if time allowed -- but alas it does not, my plate is already quite full.

The best part of these drivers is that there are few, if any, "political" or "business" restrictions on integrating replacement drivers. Indeed, at one point recently each of these was considered for an EOF simply because they weren't considered strategic anymore. (The EOFs were rejected, but these will only be delivered via an extras repository or somesuch.)

So, what are you waiting for? This is a good opportunity to learn about SCSA, and provide us with superior replacement drivers. (The glm replacement looks like it could be done in as few as 2 or 3 KLOC; that is all the NetBSD version of the driver uses.)

A "modern" elxl driver

I undertook this past weekend an effort to "port" the NetBSD "ex" driver to GLDv3, as an open source replacement for "elxl".

It took a bit over 2 days.

The new sources are on line in a webrev format. I'd really appreciate feedback. I'm hoping to integrate these changes soon (and I could use help with testing!)

This new version, apart from being Open Source, also has with it:

1. Full support for VLANs (including full-MTU frames)
2. Full support for link notification on twisted pair (and hopefully also fiber)
3. Full integration with Brussels for MII and media selection.
4. Full support for Suspend/Resume (S3)
5. Full support for Quiesce (fast reboot)
6. Support for additional devices

It can also be extended fairly easily to support Cardbus and MiniPCI variants, and hardware checksum offload. (The checksum offload part is basically written and #ifdef'd out until I find a newer card to test with personally.)

What is missing is "automatic" media selection based on active probing. The old Solaris driver would "autoselect" which port (BNC, AUI, twisted pair) to use based on some active probes to look for link. These were rather complex, and not something I could take from the closed driver. These days everyone just uses twisted pair anyway, right? (The fiber and TX4 cards don't offer any choices, so there is no probing needed for them.)

If you have such a COMBO card, you can force the media using a new "driver private" property called "_media", which you can set to various values. See the driver sources in the webrev for more information.

I've done enough work on this driver that there is probably as much of my own code in it (at least) as was in the original NetBSD code. Nonetheless, I'd like to than the NetBSD Foundation for making these sources available.

I'll be posting binaries soon, stay tune. (Sun internal users can grab the binaries from /net/temecula.sfbay/data/work/gdamore/yge/yge/usr/src/uts/intel/elxl/ -- at least for now. That path is likely to work until I get the code integrated.)