System board for ZFS NAS

I'm thinking about creating a home storage server, like many, and I want it to be performant enough to host work spaces for compilation over NFS, and efficient enough to reduce my current power consumption somewhat.

I'm thinking of a new Intel D510 system board, and looking at several, I found a board from Supermicro that looks ideally suited to the task. Does anyone else have experience with this board? It looks like its all stock Intel parts, so it should Just Work.

I'm thinking that with 4 or more SATA drives combined with RAIDZ, and dual Intel 82574 gigabit Ethernet (which I could use in an Ethernet link aggregation), I should be able to get excellent performance. (I might even set up jumbo frames, to further bump NFS performance -- if they really are 82574's then they support up to 9K MTU).

Kindle Converts a Skeptic

Recently I bought my wife an Amazon Kindle (the new international unit), at her request. Personally I was rather skeptical -- trying to read book material on computers, even laptops or netbooks, has always felt very awkward to me. I always believed that there was something about holding a paperback (or even a hardback) which would never be replaceable by technology -- maybe for others, but at least not for me.

I have to recant. Debbie has read something like a dozen novels already on her unit. I decided to try it out... and I have to say, I was surprised. I was reading H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds (not for the first time of course), which was a free download, and wow, was I surprised. After 10 or 15 minutes of reading, I almost forgot I was holding something in my hand that isn't printed paper. (The form-factor, which is quite similar to a book, works quite well here. I don't think I'd like the larger DX, as it would destroy the "illusion" of reading a paper back book.)

Not only did the technology not "get in the way", the reading experience was actually more pleasurable, largely because I was able to bump up the font size up to a more comfortable reading level. Last night I read about 1/3 of the book, before I got too tired, but I'm sold on the concept -- and I was a die hard skeptic before.

I don't think I'd like to use it for other things ... but for the primary purpose of reading novels, it settles in quite nicely bringing some technological advantages without letting the technology get in the way of reading.

Will Apple's newer iPad compete here? I'm skeptical. The Apple product is a fancier device, with its backlit screen, and probably will feel more like a hybrid between a laptop and an iPhone (of course I still have an ancient model of phone that is used pretty exclusively for making phone calls -- call me a Luddite.) I suspect that the combination of screen glare, snazz, and lower battery life (iPad users will need to be lot more cognizant of their current battery status), means that its going to be a poor replacement for a Kindle, and an even poorer replacement for the printed materials that the Kindle is meant to replace.

When I go on my round-the-world sailing trip (not any time soon!), would I want a Kindle with me? Absolutely (or something similar) -- along with a solar or wind based charging system. (Product idea... a case for the kindle that integrates photovoltaic solar charging system, so your Kindle is always charging when its closed.)

An iPad? Not likely -- if I'm going to be working or sending e-mails, sure, but then one of the netbooks is probably a better option.. with a "real" keyboard.

Reprehensible behavior from a monopoly

Misbehavior stemming from lack of competition is apparently not unique to the IT industry.

I saw this post today, and couldn't believe it. And then a bit of additional research shows this is not unique -- a number of people complained about actions on the part of Greyhound that would never be tolerated in market where there is true competition.

Forcing a grandmother to wait out in cold, while there's still snow on the ground, may not be in violation of the letter of the law, but it is certainly in violation of the basic tenets of human decency, and the management at the Memphis location showed they have none.

Its been over ten years since I've ridden a Greyhound (or any other long-haul bus for that matter), and after reading this, I am unlikely to ride another Greyhound again. Instead I'll stick to air transport where lively competition means that even the worst airlines understand that they have to at least pretend to care about their customers.

If you're reading this and thinking about taking a Greyhound somewhere, don't.

While there may not be much competition for Greyhound for long-haul ground travel, there is at least some. And there is always air transport for those able to use it.

I'll be interested to hear if Greyhound corporate does anything to fix the problems they obviously have. A good start would be firing most or all of the staff at their Memphis location (especially the management and security guard in question) and refunding the tickets of each of the passengers who were stuck there.

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.)