My South

(Open)Solaris: Getting the serial number of the motherboard?

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:53:50 +0100

Easy:

pascal@pgt02:~# smbios -t SMB_TYPE_BASEBOARD
ID    SIZE TYPE
2     202  SMB_TYPE_BASEBOARD (base board)

  Manufacturer: Sun Microsystems
  Product: Sun Fire X4200 M2                     
  Version: To Be Filled By O.E.M.          
  Serial Number: 1005LCB-0807GB0U08              
  Asset Tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.          
  Location Tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.          

  Chassis: 3
  Flags: 0x9
        SMB_BBFL_MOTHERBOARD (board is a motherboard)
        SMB_BBFL_REPLACABLE (board is field-replacable)
  Board Type: 0xa (motherboard)

Just in case you need it...

OpenStorage: It rocks.

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:58:01 +0100

I'll write an article about configuration and possibilites of OpenStorage the next day(s), but as an appetizer here are two web configuration screenshots (click on them for original size):

First, the status dashboard, showing system/disk activity:

Our new OpenStorage arrived

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:45:31 +0100

We just installed our new OpenStorage from Sun, consisting of an X7310 RAID (zfs) Storage Controller and a 4400 JBOD case (for SAS).

The X7310 has a 10 GE Ethernet card installed additionally, the lower half is filled with 11 1TB SATA disks and a 16 GB log flash device.

Sun OpenStorage appliances are special OpenSolaris versions installed with a web (and terminal) interface to configure ZFS file systems and block devices (ZVOL) to share them via iSCSI, NFS and CIFS to other SAN members.

UNIVERSAL serial bus...

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:53:32 +0100

(found on a Dell Blade Chassis, KVM Module - USB for mouse and for keyboard - color coded with colors for PS/2 hardware).

Frostiness is back...

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 11:47:56 +0100

I am back after two weeks in Cameroon. At Zurich Airport "my" town was already shown at the display auf the airport train station - telling me that the frostiness is back.

It is snowing, people are silent, everybody looks down. They don't talk to each other, the white faces are showing a mix between frustration, boredom and unhappiness.
Ok, there are no thieves trying to aggress me, there's no ague (Malaria), there's no chaotic traffic and no "motivation money" or boodle as well - but there isn't a warm family, no beautiful women with their special smile and no lust for life either. Not to mention the extraordinarial food which we substitute here by industrial products.

I thought this time it will be easy - not as last year when I returned from Ivory Coast - but I was proved wrong. It's even tougher. I am back in frostiness - where all seems to pe perfect, where everybody's telling to me that I should be lucky because I am in Europe and I have all I need. But that's not true, I am cold. Frostiness is back.

Pascal

CFA Franc != CFA Franc !

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:15:06 +0100

1 Euro (EUR) has the value of 655,957 Francs CFA (XAF). This conversion rate is fixed.

The banknotes however differ:

Banknotes in central african states like Cameroon are issued by the banque des états de l'afrique centrale (BEAC).

The ones used in western african states like Ivory Coast are issued by the banque centrale des états de l'afrique de l'ouest (BCEAO).

It won't work to buy something in a central african CFA state with western states CFA money and vice-versa.

Orange Internet in Cameroon ...

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:26:29 +0100

Many internet connections in Cameroon are done via Wimax as there are not many fixed lines available - the structure of the cities are not made for that. Communication is done mostly wireless - as in our case.

Orange offers a "high bandwidth" connection with 512 kbit/sec downlink and 128 kbit/sec uplink for 75000 CFA francs per month (approx 100 euros).

Orange, Cameroon and the Livebox...

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:19:54 +0100

In Cameroon Orange (France Télécom) offers a "high speed" connection (with 512 kbit/sec download rate and 128 kbit upload) for 75000 CFA francs per month (approx 100 euros!).

A "Livebox" device has to be bought separately which is in fact a simple NAT/WLAN/DSL/Ethernet router. The Wimax antenna (which forms the primary internet interface) is connected to the ethernet WAN port - yes you heard right, here internet connections are done via Wimax - there are nearly no fixed lines at all in most of the parts of the country).

Turning the livebox on it flashes. I managed to take photographs of it (see above, click on the images to get bigger ones).

The Wimax connections works but roundtrip latency is between 350-400ms which is very high and noticeable. The livebox itselfs crashes often - once a day for sure :(

More on this tomorrow!

I'm in Cameroon until Jan 30th

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 06:45:33 +0100

so answers to your questions will be delayed.

Pascal

Happy new year 2010!

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:09:51 +0100

To all my dear readers:

I hope you will pass well to the new year 2010 and that your expectations, projects and lucky feelings will succeed in the new year!

Yours, Pascal

Merry christmas!

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 13:08:53 +0100

In Germany, we begin to celebrate Christmas at the evening of Dec 24th, as opposed to many other countries (celebrating Christmas due to Christianity).

On 24th, children get their presents which are put under a christmas tree, which is decorated with glass balls and (mostly electric) candles.

Dec 25th and 26th are national holidays.

Windows dynamic disks and Sun xVM

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:51:48 +0100

The dynamic disk feature of Windows Server is quite efficient when it comes to work into a Sun xVM environment. The 30 GB disk "Disk 0" is handled by the OpenSolaris Dom-0 as a ZFS block volume:

dladm: VLANs with OpenSolaris (and Sun xVM)

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:55:49 +0100

"dladm" also allows to define VLAN trunking and VLAN usage with OpenSolaris.

You may assign specific VLANs to xVM virtual domains/machines (DomU) as well as use them in Dom0 or in your bare OpenSolaris using zones or not.

The physical interface (e1000g0) will act as the native vlan interface in this example, producing packets without a 802.1q vlan tag.

Defining VLANs with dladm is simple:

http://127.0.0.1:8795/?id=

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:51:24 +0100

What's that? From time to time I see this referrer in my log statistics. Which application is causing this? I found nothing on the net to solve this puzzle.

dladm: Virtual networks with Sun xVM

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:57:23 +0100

Solaris has a nifty utility named "dladm" which creates "dynamic" links.

It can be used to:

work with virtual network interfaces
work with wireless interfaces (WiFi)
work with virtual switches (named etherstubs and bridges)

For our Xen-based xVM environment, a virtual switch to connect DomU's to an internal network is a common configuration. This virtual switch may even have an interface to the Dom0 system - the path to the outside world.