Archives for December 2004

A lot of people are dissing DTrace, saying “Bah, Linux has had that for ages” (wrong) or “So, when will it be ported to Linux?” (not any time soon, you putz), simultaneously telling the developers of DTrace they’re stupid, Sun sucks, and clubbing them about the head with Linux. All of which is a stupendous failure to recognize the utility of this thing, in the context it was intended to be used, at least initially. Yes, there’s the occasional “Yes, this is good stuff” line but it’s almost always dwarved by the following “but it’d be so much better in Linux” paragraphs of crapola. Do these people think Mr. Torvalds would approve of their behavior? I don’t.

I’ve been using Linux in daily life since version 0.9.1 (circa 1993/4 I think) so obviously I like it. I make my living as a system admin for Linux and Solaris. I’m also no fan of many of Sun’s business decisions over the last several years; but, I’m just geek enough not to give a crap about that as long as they’re producing and making available good technology of some kind and not being unacceptably evil in the process. ZFS, containers, and DTrace, just to repeat the three of several dozen that everyone is focusing on, qualify not just as good technology, but also freakin’ innovation, a fact that no one outside of Sun is really recognizing at all.

Just because something is not already in Linux does not make it invalid, uncool, a waste of time, or whatever other negative you can think to give it.

Linux is good, yes; but it is not the only good, and never will be. Period. Were it not for things like Microsoft, Sun, HP, Novell, etc, to compare Linux to, it would suck just as much as they do because something better would come along in fairly short order. It’s about choice, not dominance or l33t haX0r, or even necessarily about the GPL (although that is likely the very reason Linux is what it is). Microsoft got to where they are because they made the world believe they were the only choice — anyone remember GeoWorks, Microsoft’s competition back in the Win3.1 days? GW was a far superior product but they didn’t have MS’s marketing budget so they’ve been relegated to the embedded OS market. If Linux were the only choice, it’d be the same game with different players.

If Sun were really clever, and they’re decidedly not that, they’d do what companies have done for decades when faced with declining PR value: change the name, either of the company or of the products it sells. Solaris 10 is going to carry, like it or not, the baggage, real or perceived, of all previous versions; and, believe me, there’s plenty of baggage. So, if S10 is such a departure from previous versions, maybe they should have named it something else. In the geek world of version numbers, S10 is nothing more than a minor upgrade because, in the OS itself, its version number is “5.10” — the previous version, Solaris 9, was “5.9”. If it’s so different, make it look different or no one will know they should look more closely at it. It’s not the sysadmins/geeks you’re selling to here as much as everyone else. We in the choir appreciate the sermon, especially when it has so many interesting bits to it, but you really should be preaching to the non-admin/geek audience in terms they can comprehend. If you can do both, all the better; but if you have to pick one, the latter is likely the better choice right now.

Now, for some juicy geekness about DTrace please read the blog this link points to:

The Observation Deck
With my explanation of a demo gone wrong, several people have asked me the more general question: how does one demo DTrace? This question doesn’t have a single answer, especially given that DTrace is best demonstrated with ad hoc queries of the system. Indeed, the best demos are when someone in the audience shouts out their own question that they want to see answered: answering such a question instantly with DTrace nearly always blows away the questioner — who has presumably suffered in the past trying to answer similar questions. Of course, saying “why, there are many ways to demo to DTrace!” is a useless answer to the question of how one demos DTrace; while there are many ways that one can demo DTrace, it’s useful to get a flavor of how a typical demo might go. So with the substantial caveat that this is not the way to demo DTrace, but merely a way, let me walk you through an example demo.

GROKLAW
Finally, we have legally obtained the settlement agreement [PDF] between USL and The Regents of the University of California settling their 1990s lawsuits, thanks to Groklaw’s dburns, who figured out that California has a Public Records Law, under which he made persistent application to obtain this document. Finally, after dotting all the i’s and crossing all the required t’s, he received the document from The Regents of the University of California’s Office of the General Counsel, with a cover letter that reads in pertinent part:

“This is in further response to your request for legal filings, deposition transcripts, court orders and settlements in the California Superior Court case no. 717864-3. We have determined that the confidential 1994 settlement agreement between UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. and The Regents which was not filed with the court, may be disclosed to you under the Public Records Act.”

And so the bullying by secrecy is over.

Wired News: How Long Is Your Digital Trail?
One of my deepest-held beliefs about sex in the information age is that we all must develop a deeper respect for each other’s privacy. An honor system, if you will, where we do not seek vengeance online, we do not succumb to the temptation of the midnight e-mail, and we do not post fierce comments in our exes’ blogs when they start writing about their new lovers.

We intersect with each other now in so many protocols, it’s only fair that we develop an etiquette that helps us all maintain our dignity — no matter which side of the breakup we’re on.

Solaris 10: a collection of great, new, unique features :: The Jem Report :: The Internet’s Best Computer Review Site
Here are some of the “quality of life features” in Solaris 10:

* Dynamic Tracing (DTrace), a program and framework with an Awk-like command syntax that allows a sysadmin to quickly examine the behavior of the software environment from userland applications down to the most basic level
* ZFS (formerly known as the Zettabyte File System; the term “zettabyte” has nothing to do with this file system, so its official yet meaningless name is now simply ZFS), which was written from the ground up to accommodate modern storage devices and redundancy solutions
* Solaris Fault Management (also called Predictive Self-Healing), which is an integrated framework and analysis system that monitors data for abnormalities, then can isolate the malfunctioning device that is causing the corrupted data and route around it if possible. Since hardware failures are rarely instantaneous, Solaris Fault Management can detect failing hardware before the results become apparent to users.
* Upgraded security: Instead of offering a separate distribution of Solaris for the Trusted Solaris product, Sun has added 80% of the integrated security features of Trusted Solaris to Solaris 10. Trusted Solaris 10 will still be available as a group of add-on packages to the standard Solaris operating environment.
* Vendor-neutral support offerings: This means that, on the high end of its service plans, Sun will support Solaris, all software written for Solaris natively, and all LSB-compliant Linux binaries that users might run on Solaris 10 through the Linux Application Environment (formerly known as Project Janus).
* Process Rights Management: This is a revised and updated permissions structure that allows specific users to have specific root permissions, so if several admins are controlling individual services on the same server, they can be given complete control over their processes and programs without having full root access to the system.