<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
    xmlns:admin="http://webns.net/mvcb/"
    xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
    xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/">

    <channel>
    
    <title>Dibbler&apos;s Net</title>
    <link>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/index/</link>
    <description>Nagios, Unix, Security, Opensource, and all things Internet</description>
    <dc:language>en</dc:language>
    <dc:creator>dbennett@anei.com</dc:creator>
    <dc:rights>Copyright 2010</dc:rights>
    <dc:date>2010-08-15T00:05:28+00:00</dc:date>
    <admin:generatorAgent rdf:resource="http://expressionengine.com/" />
    

    <item>
      <title>Goodnight Sun</title>
      <link>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/goodnight_sun</link>
      <guid>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/goodnight_sun#When:23:05:28Z</guid>
      <description>Oracle has now declared Opensolaris is dead. http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=133043

Sun Solaris has already been renamed to Oracle Solaris. The Sun support site is now rolling in to OTN. The letter states that they want to make Solaris the premiere Server OS and by dropping the desktop/ home user version this will help. Well that logic seems a bit off. Most servers are either Microsoft, Linux, Solaris, BSD, HP&#45;UX, or AIX. You see more and more shops moving to Microsoft and Linux, the two vendors who support the desktop environment. If your sysadmins use your product at home they are more likely to use your product at work. Part of the reason why I had an Opensolaris and Solaris x86 installed at home (both of which are now deleted).&amp;nbsp; Solaris used to be the . in .com but nowadays it&#8217;s more like the ?. Why would I use Solaris over any other OS ? The virtualization features are interesting and ahead of the pack, ZFS is great, but I can get working versions of those things for less cost from other vendors. It may not be the &#8220;best&#8221; but we are looking for the best overall OS that can be supported at the lowest cost. Solaris experts are getting more expensive and just because you have the best virtualization doesn&#8217;t matter when others have decent virtualization that works.

Enterprises use Oracle, but the new Enterprises do not. Look at facebook and others. Those are enterprise applications where not only did the software not work but the idea behind the software failed. Those sites have moved from relational databases to NoSQL and other innovative ideas. Ideas and products which did not come from the database master Oracle. Why is that ? Why is it the biggest companies with the most R&amp;amp;D are no longer the one&#8217;s innovating ? They would rather sue companies over software patents (which much like many taxes should be outlawed) instead of investing in thinking up new ideas.&amp;nbsp; When companies get bought their soul and culture change. We have now seen Sun&#8217;s culture change and it is a sad day. Much like Oracle had the idea to call their Linux distro &#8220;unbreakable&#8221; they seem to think that with their new purchase they are now automatically in the OS and hardware game. Sorry Oracle but I am done with Solaris as an OS, Oracle as a database, and your culture as a company. Good luck with that federal lawsuit for stealing our tax dollars.

~D</description>
      <dc:subject>Blogging,</dc:subject>
      <dc:date>2010-08-14T23:05:28+00:00</dc:date>
    </item>

    <item>
      <title>Long time no post</title>
      <link>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/long_time_no_post</link>
      <guid>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/long_time_no_post#When:22:43:26Z</guid>
      <description>Random updates to get past the long slump of no updates.

Yep, it&#8217;s been awhile. As most personal websites are. You get busy or something comes up and things keep getting put off. Today marks the day google killed google wave. An interesting project that I saw great promise for in a work environment but no way to set it up in a work environment. Like many others I think it was too ahead of it&#8217;s time but we should see alot of it&#8217;s technology and ideas in Google Me, whenever that comes out.

Oracle: Well the lawsuit against Oracle by the US Govt is interesting http://bit.ly/b0wCPz. At the same time the frustration and apparent death of Oracle working with the Opensolaris community is just sad. I have seen alot of oracle users leave blogs.sun.com, or leave the company all together. Much like when Symantec bought Veritas I think the end has come for Sun as a meaningful anything. I already uninstalled my personal opensolaris system at home and installed the newest Ubuntu (which is really nice).

Android: Still love the android OS and have now written 1.5 apps for it. Need to finish that second one. I am a bit annoyed by the Vendor supplied apps ( Nascar on Sprint) that you can not uninstall without rooting. We finally get this bloatware to stop on PC&#8217;s and now we have to fight it on phones ? Also when is audible going to be done with the Beta of their app for android and release it ?

Kindle: Finally ordered a Kindle. Why now ? Because I have the kindle app on my phone so books I buy I can read on either device. I like it when I can use something I paid for once in multiple places.

Zektor: One of my new favorite Vendors. Bought one of these for the new house. http://www.zektor.com/prowler8x8/prowler8x8.shtml . I had planned this out early by only running Cat 6 to the TV Drops. I must say that the picture quality and features of this device are amazing and I would recommend it for any tv fanatics out there.&amp;nbsp; Yes I really have 8 tv&#8217;s (well 5 now but 3 more planned) so all outputs will be in Use.

Upgrades: I have upgraded the servers, the software, and my nerves. Some upgrades are done, some are almost done, and they have all been more difficult then they should have. 

So full details coming soon, no more 1 year stops in between.</description>
      <dc:subject>Blogging,</dc:subject>
      <dc:date>2010-08-04T22:43:26+00:00</dc:date>
    </item>

    <item>
      <title>Hello Google Voice</title>
      <link>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/hello_google_voice</link>
      <guid>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/hello_google_voice#When:16:30:47Z</guid>
      <description>So after many many tries I finally received my invite for Google Voice.

First impressions: I really like it. I am a firm believer that voicemail is a dead medium. Leave me a voicemail and I get it as text, email, sms, or just shows up in my G1 voice app and I finally start to see how technology helps make life better. 

Second thoughts: This is an area of huge growth potential for google. With features like call screening, rules based on contacts, selective call forwarding with schedules, and phone numbers for almost any area code. This is something that the small business, and contractor or going to really have an interest in and google can excel. With some basic additions, and a few voip phones this can be the perfect solution for so many small businesses. When you look at the massive growth of applications like asterisk small business pbx&#8217;s are still a major cost and companies are doing what they can to reduce that overhead. Plus with the google voice call widget it shows the potential of where this can really go. Sure it&#8217;s great for the home user but nobody can deny where the growth and profit area is for both Google and developers.

Many years ago (a real long time ago) I was around when pagers were great and everyone had one. But what the small business needed was that personal touch. Virtual voice mail systems that advertised making your company sound like the major companies with voice menu&#8217;s and extensions, when really it was a computer doing software voicemail and call forwarding. Along with that you had pager services where the pager company would answer with your company name and take messages and then page you. All these services were sold to make small companies look big as image was everything and image was by phone. Now it&#8217;s about your website. On the Internet all companies are more equal and now it&#8217;s a matter of your graphic designer and not your complicated voice mail. In reality business today is not about your phone system or even your website. Today businesses have moved back to where they were when my grandfather was growing up. It&#8217;s about knowing someone and knowing their reputation. This is where the Internet has really changed the landscape. Companies google search employees before hiring them. People search for sucks.com before buying an application. In today&#8217;s Internet connected world we can now instantly complete a search and determine if we trust them or should stay away. With all the mergers, buyouts, and major mega companies it&#8217;s not so much about the large company anymore but about the people you directly work with. Customer service is what matters now. Being able to manage all the information, responding to customers in a timely manner is what matters most. So seeing a service like this come out from google reminds me of those days long ago and the cyclic cycle that this industry is always in. back then it was about people being able to reach the person you needed to and pagers made that happen. Now with Google voice we are coming back around. You no longer need my home phone, cell phone, work phone, instead you need my one number and it takes care of finding me. And it doesn&#8217;t depend on a server in the office, or trying to program some keypad entry on your local telephone providers crippled features.

D~</description>
      <dc:subject>News, Personal,</dc:subject>
      <dc:date>2009-07-24T16:30:47+00:00</dc:date>
    </item>

    <item>
      <title>Solaris adds Failsafe boot option for Sparc</title>
      <link>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/solaris_adds_failsafe_boot_option_for_sparc</link>
      <guid>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/solaris_adds_failsafe_boot_option_for_sparc#When:09:23:25Z</guid>
      <description>Sun has added a much needed feature to the Solaris Sparc baseline and ass usual no one even knows it really exists. You can find the documentation here regarding Failsafe boot. This was something that I ran into while first using Opensolaris on X86. Just after they first started adding in ZFS support I ran into issues. Since the X86 side of solaris usually uses a GRUB startup they had the ability to put in place a failsafe or &#8220;safe mode&#8221; boot. This replaced the old method of booting from a cdrom in single user mode. 

This feature recently made it to the Sparc side of Solaris. I am not sure the exact patch level that added it but it wasn&#8217;t too long ago that I found that I can now run a &#8220;ok&gt;boot &#45;F failsafe&#8221;&amp;nbsp; or &#8220;reboot&#8212;&#45;F failsafe&#8221; command on sparc machines. This gives you the base functionality of booting a system, mounting the local drives, fix problems and then boot normally. This is of greay use as booting from CDROM was difficult as bootable CDROMS tend to get lost, and the process is very slooooow. This also works well as most critcal Solaris commands like patchadd and other kernel tweaking items usually have a &#45;R option to specify that your root mount is not on /. The two problems I still have with failsafe are basic issues. First as far as I have looked it is still not documented in the man page for boot. Second, I really would like a flag to tell it if I want networking or not. Right now the failsafe boot checks every ethernet interface and attempts to dhcp the thing. That does delay the bootup a bit even for disconnected interfaces. This can become annoying when all you need to do is edit a vfstab file.

Glad to once again see good features make it from opensolaris to the main solaris distro. Now the big question is why Apple dropped ZFS from the next mac os ? FreeBSD figured out how to get ZFS working how come Apple couldn&#8217;t ? And don&#8217;t tell me it&#8217;s because ZFS is no good. I have yet to find one thing about it that I don&#8217;t like compared to the other filesystems out there today.

Derrick</description>
      <dc:subject>Blogging, News, Unix,</dc:subject>
      <dc:date>2009-06-21T09:23:25+00:00</dc:date>
    </item>

    <item>
      <title>Oracle Buys Sun, better option than IBM</title>
      <link>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/oracle_buys_sun_better_option_than_ibm</link>
      <guid>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/oracle_buys_sun_better_option_than_ibm#When:14:49:28Z</guid>
      <description>By now everyone knows about Oracle buying Sun. My opinion on this is as a customer and not an employee or competitor. For a great read on an employee view I recommend visiting c0t0d0s0.org. I currently feel that this is better than an IBM buy. Right now I am a customer of Sun for both their hardware and software. With an IBM buyout I was concerned that the hardware portion of Sun would be killed completely. The part I am a bit scared about is the software side of the house. Having recently lived through the purchase and transition of BEA by Oracle I have seen what a pretty bad buyout can do. I can be hopeful that for the next year or so Oracle focuses on the redundancy portions of business which means a hit to Sun&#8217;s core internal department staffs like HR, Sales, and probably then Support. I can be hopeful that Oracle leaves the Hardware Division pretty much the way it is and just works on making software work better with the Sun hardware and it&#8217;s push to have Oracle and Application appliances. I am hopeful that Oracle is careful to keep the true Sun innovators and developers on staff that have really made great strides in the past years. I hope to see oracle adopt ZFS, Sun&#8217;s clustering, and virtualization, and continue to improve opensolaris and many of Sun&#8217;s properties. It would also be nice if Oracle left the current opensource properties alone and doesn&#8217;t try to kill off mysql or other open projects. I don&#8217;t see them doing this but at the same time I have seen Oracle make some pretty bad decisions with some of their other recent purchases. If I had my choice I would love to have seen Sun stay Sun. But for reasons beyond my understanding it seems that someone had to buy them for Sun in any form to survive. I am curious if this will pass regulatory review as it seems that Oracle did not spend the same amount of time that IBM did going over licensing, patent&#8217;s and other details before announcing the deal. I guess it&#8217;s time to sit back and see what happens over the next 6 months.

Derrick</description>
      <dc:subject>Blogging, News, Unix,</dc:subject>
      <dc:date>2009-04-20T14:49:28+00:00</dc:date>
    </item>

    <item>
      <title>Lenovo T500 local review</title>
      <link>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/lenovo_t500_local_review</link>
      <guid>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/lenovo_t500_local_review#When:15:08:51Z</guid>
      <description>It was finally time to upgrade the old Thinkpad Notebook. It was still working but was over 5 years old and just wouldn&#8217;t do everything anymore. I looked around to see if I wanted to get another thinkpad or try something new. There are some specific features about the Thinkpad&#8217;s that I really like and I just don&#8217;t seem to find them in other notebooks. Now for this upgrade I had decided to take a step up in view size as the last one was a bit smaller and lighter. I also new I wanted a notebook with a discrete graphics and built in wireless modem. People just don&#8217;t realize how convenient it is to have Internet almost everywhere you may go. So I ordered online back at the end of March. With discounts and savings I got a respectable price. Being that I sill love my XP I also ordered it with the XP downgrade from Windows Vista Business. 

It showed up earlier than the promise date (which was 20 days from order but it was also a custom order). In fact it arrived about 14 days after order. The packaging wasn&#8217;t much bigger than my notebook bag. But overall all you are getting is a notebook, power supply, and some paperwork. First item was to backup the XP install onto DVD&#8217;s using the built in backup software and install Vista Business. I wanted the XP option but also wanted to see life on a notebook with Vista. The Vista install went well but the bad news was that Lenovo went and did something very cruel. In the past they have had system update for Lenovo machines. This software would download and install drivers and check for updates. Something I think all vendors should have. Well this month Lenovo killed that service and said to wait till next month to see the replacement. With that sad bit of news I spent the next many hours downloading individual drivers, patches, updates and installing them manually. 

With that done I applied the Windows updates, installed critical applications and setup the basic functions. I am a fan of the Lenovo Fingerprint security. I am sure it&#8217;s breakable but it&#8217;s better than most for basic bios and windows security. Now I chose the Lenovo T500 with many custom options. It had a good size without being a back&#45;breaker. It had discrete graphics with the built in wireless card, fingerprint scanner, web camera and other useful items. One item I was happy to see was the 200GB hard drive with drive bios encryption option. This tied in with software security means that pulling the drive on this notebook is useless without having the notebook with it. Again not foolproof security, but it means that should the drive be taken out someone will be sending alot of hours to get to my data. The system is just fast, after having the same notebook for 5 years I had gotten behind in cpu improvements. I know part of it is the fresh install and de&#45;clutter but it does run alot faster.

Overall I am still really happy with Lenovo and how they have kept Thinkpads they way they should be and how they really do work as a business computer. I did also receive the smart dock which is a docking station that works off a single USB cable. I am curious to try that and see how well it works for desk video, kb, and other options.

D~</description>
      <dc:subject>Blogging, Personal,</dc:subject>
      <dc:date>2009-04-19T15:08:51+00:00</dc:date>
    </item>

    <item>
      <title>Is the Sun shining once more ?</title>
      <link>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/is_the_sun_shining_once_more</link>
      <guid>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/is_the_sun_shining_once_more#When:14:07:17Z</guid>
      <description>From the NY Times Story it looks like IBM buyout of Sun is off the table. With that comes new rumors of Cisco, HP or Dell buying the company. The question is why ? Looking at the quarterly statements I don&#8217;t see where Sun is going to go bankrupt. They are showing growth in their hardware business since last year which is based on the fact that Sun hardware is now cost comparable to their competition and in some cases the hardware is better. Sun also introduced ZFS for fie systems. With this they introduced their new storage line. I have seen enough storage products to say that this is something Sun has done right and done very well. Now give them time to capitalize on these items. Any competitor that wants to buy Sun right now is doing it to end competition with them not to enhance or grow these products.

So now is the time where I end the Fanboy bit above. Am I a die hard Fanboy that believes Sun can do no wrong ? Of course not. Any large company will have problems and will have issues. However I am a technical person. I like the software and hardware. I am also all about the most bang for the buck. When people ask why I am using a Sun server and OS over windows and VMware it&#8217;s an easy argument based on cost. The HP, or Dell server may be marginally cheaper but then you have software costs. The OS, along with VMware is a massive initial and ongoing cost compared to Solaris OS and LDOM&#8217;s with Zones. Where I am the fanboy is in the people and the pricing. For a majority of products Sun charges either nothing, or a flat cost fee. This is the software purchase structure I believe in. As someone who has written and sold software I have always despised the user based or CPU based pricing model. The software takes a set number of hours to code and then maintain, why does the number of users I have or the cpu&#8217;s in the box change the cost ? I would really like if software vendors would end this charade. The sales technique they are working on is that if you have more users or CPU&#8217;s then you have more money so give them more. How we as consumers ever allowed this cost cycle to exist in software is beyond me. But that is what bothers me most about many other vendors and what I find relaxing about buying from Sun. It reminds me of how small software companies work that don&#8217;t have lawyers for sales reps. When I buy my tv I don&#8217;t get charged for how many people live in my house and are going to watch it so why is software so drastically different ?

Innovation is the other area where Sun in many ways reminds me of Google. One of the few large companies out there where I see new ideas coming out. New hardware and software that is truly new in design and thinking. Got some time, go read up on ZFS and the drastic changes to thinking it really is when talking about disk formatting. It&#8217;s what Microsoft wanted it&#8217;s new file system to be but they never figured that out. When you look across the Sun hardware line going back 2 years you see real changes not the same chasis with bigger hard drives that you see from the others. Why is it that Google, Sun, and Apple have figured out how to innovate and in reality motivate their consumers and so many other companies have failed so horribly. I am happy to hear that for a little while at least Sun will not be changing and the many employees there can continue with the good work they are doing.

The last part is that of corporations and how they are harming us. Growing up everyone&#8217;s parents worked at a company and had done so for 10,20,30 years. Companies actually lasted and people believed in their name and legacy. It saddens me how now companies are nothing more than colored cards when playing life. They are a commodity traded by the CEO&#8217;s and with names that change a day after bad news hits. What happened to a company being a business for the right reasons. A business is something where you are there to serve your customers, produce happy employees, and be a partner in your community, state, country and world. The sham of an individual investor having any part to do with a company, and a company having any respect for it&#8217;s investors is just sad. Many people say that as a generation ages they always complain that the next generation lacks respect. This is a strange time where to me our elder generation and their abuse of the companies they manage is a far worse disrespect than the kid who forgets to say thank you.

Derrick</description>
      <dc:subject>Blogging, News, Personal, Unix,</dc:subject>
      <dc:date>2009-04-05T14:07:17+00:00</dc:date>
    </item>

    <item>
      <title>Open letter to Sun&#8217;s Jonathan Schwartz (don&#8217;t kill Sun)</title>
      <link>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/open_letter_to_suns_jonathan_schwartz_dont_kill_sun</link>
      <guid>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/open_letter_to_suns_jonathan_schwartz_dont_kill_sun#When:16:32:32Z</guid>
      <description>If the WSJ and other reporting outlets are to be believed then Monday may be the last day of SUN as we have known it. This is an incredibly sad rumor if IBM does buyout Sun. When I first started in computers I was surrounded by IBM with AIX, OS2, and mainframe&#8217;s. Over time we saw more Sun systems make it into the corporate world. Over the years I have worked on just about every variety of Unix made. 10 years ago this story wouldn&#8217;t have surprised me and might have made sense. However in the past 5 years Sun has really turned around and has become a company of real innovation and growth. Almost daily I visit blogs.sun.com and click on all to scroll through what&#8217;s new from an employees perspective. Sun has been continually releasing new software with the new mindset of free or opensource with cost for support, training, or enterprise features. This seems to be working well for them. My fears are similar to what I saw when Symantec bought Veritas. At the time Veritas was king of the hill on many levels of the datacenter. Then when Symantec bought them we saw features drop, employees let go, and the product line ransacked to the point of being a joke. There is no doubt in my mind that if IBM buys Sun we will see the parts that IBM wants folded in and the other 2/3&#8217;s be dropped along with the strong talent that Sun has working for them. With the release of opensolaris, free virtualization in both zones and LDOM&#8217;s, and a low or no cost software baseline that covers almost every aspect of enterprise needs, there is just nothing that IBM can bring to the table. Sun has been making large leaps in their hardware options as well, becoming highly competitive with almost all other computer makers for the business market. IBM stopped innovating long ago and instead has stuck to a profit line of over charging for old software and weak service. 

I don&#8217;t see the benefit of this buyout. In the past 5 years I can&#8217;t think of any real benefits that have come from the two large company buyout story. It makes sense when the large company buys the small new technology company. That is usually done to help put resources behind a good idea trapped in a small company. However in the cases of large companies it&#8217;s more of one company wanting a small part of the other large company and mainly wanting the customer base. There is a big issue with this thinking. IBM and Sun are both large companies that customers already know of. If customers wanted to buy from IBM they would already be customers. Buying the competition does not mean you will get the customers, it only means you will have them for about a year or two as they move to find a new vendor that will meet their needs and not try to buy them. 

For the last week I have been thinking about this story, each day I think of another part of Sun that I will miss. I don&#8217;t know which vendor will come in to pick up the pieces but in the end I see this as just putting IBM in a more dangerous financial situation and will bring about the conversations about how Sun used to be much like we talk about how UUNet used to be. I have no belief that this comment of mine will make any difference and I was really hoping that this rumor turns out to be false but at this point I have accepted the rumors as true and have started to think about what vendor will I be moving to next. I use Sun hardware and software every day and I will miss the amazing people and the products. Hopefully IBM will not destroy the Sun image and will let it die peacefully but somehow I doubt it.

Sun I will remember you for the company I have known for 20 years. I have seen you beat IBM toe to toe, I have watched you truly morph into a company that had to change to stay alive, and now just when it seems that you are finding your new place in the world it looks like you will be sold, stripped, and left for scrap on the side of the road. To all those Sun employees who I have met and work with I wish you the best and hope that you will land softly. I truly predict that if this purchase goes through we will see 2/3 of the employees let go in the first 2 years and the Sun that we know today will be dead in 3 years. I hope that this doesn&#8217;t happen and that this turns out to be a bad rumor but I gave up on lofty dreams in the business world many years ago.

Sun &#45; Feb 24, 1982 to April 6, 2009. Rest in Peace, You will be missed but not forgotten. Timeline

Derrick</description>
      <dc:subject>Blogging, Personal, Unix,</dc:subject>
      <dc:date>2009-04-03T16:32:32+00:00</dc:date>
    </item>

    <item>
      <title>A defaultrouter for Zones</title>
      <link>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/a_defaultrouter_for_zones</link>
      <guid>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/a_defaultrouter_for_zones#When:03:54:48Z</guid>
      <description>Virtualization is the next big thing that we have already done before (think mainframe&#8217;s and clock sharing). Sun Solaris has 2.5 versions (Zones and LDOMS) of this that  I have been working with a lot lately. When your looking for quick application isolation but full resource sharing and control you use Solaris Zones. The one big issue I had that kept causing me problems was that of routing. If I created a zone that was not on the same subnet as the global zone I had routing issues. Now Sun said you could add multiple entries to the /etc/defaultrouter file but that just didn&#8217;t work well. You still needed to have the global zone have an IP on the other subnet or do some more interesting interface tricks to make it work sometimes. Finally with Solaris 10/08 Update 6 they have added a new option. In your zonecfg file you can now specify defrouter as part of the network config portion. This made me smile for a couple of reasons. One it fixed one of the biggest issue I had with zones and usability.&amp;nbsp; Second it was the fact that this was an issue for a relatively short time period before we saw a fix in the main baseline. It&#8217;s because of the opensolaris project and testing that I feel we are seeing these critical fixes and enhancements making it to the commercial baseline so quickly. Thanks to the Sun team and I look forward to seeing more new features soon.

Derrick</description>
      <dc:subject>Blogging, Unix,</dc:subject>
      <dc:date>2009-01-31T03:54:48+00:00</dc:date>
    </item>

    <item>
      <title>End of Year Updates</title>
      <link>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/end_of_year_updates</link>
      <guid>http://eluted.net/index.php/blue/end_of_year_updates#When:17:38:51Z</guid>
      <description>End of year thoughts, links, and general ramblings.
It&#8217;s that time of year again. The time when the major care and feeding of servers, notebooks, and desktops gets done. Cleaning up the hard drives, checking on software updates and finding time to install new items.

First I saw over on my favorite Solaris blog that LDOM 1.1 is now out with nice new features I have been waiting on.

Then Hsphere (or Psoft or Parallels) Finally released hsphere with support for FreeBSD 7. That then spawned the process to update one of my FreeBSD boxes to FreeBSD 7 Release. I tried a new way of upgrading. That failed horribly. Won&#8217;t try that way again. Ended up doing a build world and portupgrade by hand to get the upgrade completed. Did learn about a cool FreeBSD feature called libmap. This was a great bit of help and something to remember in the future. I also used the /rescue/cp and ls which are nice non&#45;linked files which are good if you accidentally break your elf library.

I am thrilled to see the ZFS support in FreeBSD but the push that you use 64 bit and a good chunk of memory makes me a bit concerned about how ready it is for everyday use. I am thrilled with ZFS on Solaris 10 and am glad to see it moving to other platforms. Now the big question as to if it will move to Windows.

I also updated a home machine to the new Opensolaris 2008/11 update. It&#8217;s working great and the gui for zfs snapshots is cool. I was kind of forced to do this as I broke the previous config. With Opensolaris and coming soon to Solaris is the removal of Root as an actual account. It is changing to a Role instead. This means that if you break you one and only admin account and accidentally remove the root role then you kind of ruin your own day. Word of advice, we were all used to having the root account as a backup, now it&#8217;s time to create a secondary account for your backup.

Rumor is that Syngress has finally fixed the web site for the online book information (which I now see under Companion Website when you login). Most of this was due to the timing of our book release happening at the same time as http://www.elsevier.com was moving everything from syngress to them. This caused some issues which is why we created the www.nagios3book.com&amp;nbsp; website just so we could get the data out there promised in the book. Along with that is the VMWare image as well.

Along with all this is the whole end of year time of reflection. What have we learned this year, done this year, and what get&#8217;s bumped to the list for next year. I am still a true believer that we are rapidly closing in on the 15 year mainframe cycle. As we see more systems and applications move to the cloud, or virtual systems, and away from the dekstops we are moving back along the circle of computer management. As we come back closer to where I started it is interesting to see how the lessons we learned from the days of mainframes are still applicable today and how so many people have forgotten what we learned back then. I have no doubts that as we move past this renewed mainframe era back to the desktop era it will look nothing like what the first desktop era did, but it will be fun to experience.

In an effort to cover all the subjects at once there is the issue of Security. The past year has been nothing but security nightmares. I personally believe that we are about 1&#45;2 generations away from true personal security making a comeback. It seems that while today&#8217;s youth are more technically inclined they are also too willing to sacrifice their entire personal life without due regard. I am curios to see how the first true Myspace generation does when they become the majority of the workforce. We hear small stories every few weeks about employers that check possible applicants online. How will people react when that becomes the norm for everyone. How will we react when half the political candidates are fighting archives of their myspace and you tube videos from 10 and 20 years in the past. We haven&#8217;t had a generation yet that truly demanded the right to delete their content off the Internet and it&#8217;s now a question of will that even be possible or are we already too late.

It brings to light the numerous books, movies, and futuristic stories about everything online. Will this truly divide people between those who are online and those who avoid it out of fear or desire to maintain privacy. Shows like Ghost in the Shell, the Foundation Series of books, and pretty much half the stories you read in Analog deal with this in some form or fashion. What side of the fence will you land on. I recently read Oath of Fealty  and I think it poses a very interesting view of some of the initial issues that a combined society will see.

So with that we end 2008. We welcome 2009 with an understanding that there will be more of the same, and at the same time some new and interesting times. The fun and gadgets should start early with CES but at the same time it will show us how bad the new recession is on the gadget hunters and on Vegas itself.

Derrick



&amp;nbsp;</description>
      <dc:subject>Blogging, Nagios, Security, Unix,</dc:subject>
      <dc:date>2008-12-28T17:38:51+00:00</dc:date>
    </item>

    
    </channel>
</rss>