Haim's BLOG

Updating my friends Linux based TV

2011-11-20T14:15:00.000-08:00

Well the story goes like this -

My friend called me and told me that she is having some troubles connecting her small home theater system to the TV using HDMI interface.

As an experienced technician I arranged a spare HDMI cable and left my Nikon D7000 camera in my car in case another HDMI device is needed for testing HDMI connectivity.

I got to my friend's house and started testing. At first, it seemed that there is no connectivity so I changed the HDMI cable but still I got no HDMI connectivity. So I took my Nikon D7000 camera and connected it using a dedicated HDMI-miniHDMI cable but still there was no connectivity. I then new for sure that there is a problem with their TV.

So I told my friend that there is probably something wrong with their TV and almost went out overmatched by their problem. But then at a glance of tinkering I saw a 'software update' possibility in one of the TV menus. So I started to search a bit about their TV and found that their TV which was Philips 42PFL7422D indeed had a firmware update available in Philips web site.

To make a long story short, It seemed that their TV had a known bug displaying HDMI output through all their HDMI outputs. This was also documented in the release notes fixes of the new firmware release of the TV.

So after downloading the new firmware and extracting it to an empty USB having only one file named autorun.upg I connected the USB to their TV and turned on the TV. It recognized automatically that there is a USB connected and begun the firmware update process automatically.

I was happy to find that after the firmware update all the HDMI devices begun to work successfully.

But still their HDMI cable was faulty (!) so I left them my spare HDMI cable till they'll replace their faulty cable.

After searching for a little while I found that their TV was Linux based for more info check here, which took me by a bit surprise. But after searching for a bit more, I found that nowadays most of Sony Bravia line of TV is also Linux based not to mention Samsung and some other respectable TV vendors which are also using Linux for their line of TV's and as well for other embedded systems. Well indeed gladly to say that Linux is gaining much more popularity in the embedded market all around...

IOSUG new meeting 6 December 2011

2011-11-20T06:09:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

I am happy to announce that Israeli Oracle Solaris User's Group is back again under iLOUG activity.

IOSUG next meeting is going to be at 6 Dec 2011.

The event is ofcourse free and open to all Solaris enthusiasts but requires registration.

For registration and more details click - here.

Latest OpenSolaris news

2009-06-24T09:08:00.000-07:00

Update on my current OpenSolaris installation:

Bluetooth - is installed and working.

But still need to be hacked for improving timeout and reconnection after lock screen.

ntfs support - since I'm using build 111, I do not have ntfs built in support inside opensolaris

but I've grabbed latest fusefs,libfuse and ntfs-3g and compiled and installed to have ntfs read/write support.

In order to support for logical partitions (built inside an Extended partition)

I am using this guide.

If you would like to try source juicer pending or contrib packages,

(packages which didn't their validation process to enter inside pkg.opensolaris.org repository)

You may want to continue reading here.

I have used it to grub opera and blender(which is slightly broken)

ZFS bash and tcsh completion

2009-06-14T03:51:00.000-07:00

Well,

A lot of people ask me about having completion for zpool and zfs commands.

Well here are two links for bash and tcsh zfs completion.

The tcsh completion was made by Cyril ;-)

[ http://www.mail-archive.com/zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org/msg08803.html ]

Just copy the file to your home directory and source it.

Enjoy !

zfs bash completion: http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/scripts/sunScripts/zfs_completion.bash.txt

zfs tcsh completion:

http://www.mail-archive.com/zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org/msg08803/zfs_tcsh_completion

Guidelines for Migrating old Solaris applications to Solaris 10

2009-04-06T09:17:00.000-07:00

Just recently, I had an opportunity to migrate an application from Solaris 2.5.1 to Solaris 10.

Here are some guidelines to a successful migration.

The guidelines do not include migrating an application in a package format but only where the installation is script based. I also assume you don't have the source code of your application.

If you have the source code to your application, then the best way is to recompile it using Sun Studio 12 or later with all relevant flags you may need.

Please be reminded that there is also the ability to migrate a whole Solaris 8 or 9 environemnt to Solaris 10, using branded zone technology.

Checking library compatibility

The first thing to do is to check that all your application binary files do not include any access to unsupported shared objects (dll's in windows language).

You may also want to do this on any process belongs to your application, by issuing: pldd .

Then after you have the list of shared object on the older Solaris system, compare this list to check that these shared objects still exist in Solaris 10.

In case you don't have them on Solaris 10, one way to overcome this obstacle is to copy these object files to the newer Solaris system (But beware from unexpected consequences).

Checking scripting compatibility

Most csh/tcsh and sh/ksh/bash scripts will run smoothly on higher Solaris versions with no need to touch anything.

Checking Device naming compatibility

Serial connectivity -

In case your application uses serial connection no need to panic here.

tip is still the command to use serial connections even on Solaris 10.

SCSI devices -

In case your application uses tapes for backup, there is also no need to be in panic since /dev/rmt/n (where n represents the number of the devices exist on your system) is still the device for tapes in Solaris 10.

You may also use a compatible pci hardware in the newer system. (pci and sbus devices are represented as the same logical device name) so even sbus cards can be replaced with pci cards with no naming changings.

This also applies for other scsi devices providing that you have the right cabling to connect your newer system to your older hardware.

NFS to the rescue

Well NFS works just fine on older Solaris versions(at least on Solaris 2.5.1). Solaris 10 supports nfs version 2/3/4, so you can always mount or share your older Solaris directories with the newer Solaris system directories, if you need to move some data from here to there.

Installing and Testing

Now, after checking what ever needed to be checked, it is recommended to get your application installed inside Solaris 10 and tested to see if all is running.

Good Luck !

Dtrace future

2009-02-25T13:58:00.000-08:00

Here is my comment to a dtrace related thread:

From its definition Dtrace is a dynamic tracing compiler and tracing utility.

I don't see any reason why an ordinary sys-admin should develop with such a framework at a daily basis, Unless he has a problematic environment. But I do find developers and specifically system interface and kernel developers use this utility at a close tendency.

We just recently had one customer that had to change all his TNF tracings into dtrace probes inside his software. We had to provide the knowledge on how to do so. For the first phase - it involved changing almost 700 probes into one dtrace provider we have created, and 700 probes (although most of the probes were already covered by the function boundary tracing[FBT] provider.) in this process we have even came across a dtrace bug when using dtrace inside C++ applications. For the second phase the customer prepared an automatic script to change thousands of TNF probes into dtrace probes.

I suspect dtrace will gain much more popularity inside [Open]Solaris itself.
Instead of /usr/demo/dtrace and the external dtrace toolkit, I expect dtrace to replace all 'stat' commands and even exceed over their limited capabilities.
I expect to see much more GUI interfaces using dtrace other than dtaz, Dlight for sun studio,Systems Reliability Manager (a SunMC addon), Chime visualization tool and maybe some others.

dtrace main power is not for the common people, I will not explain dtrace for anyone. Some will use dtrace without understanding it at all, some will use it and will continue to utilize it to enrich their capabilities. As a new framework I suspect dtrace to gain it's popularity as time goes on.

Linux or Solaris ?

2009-01-01T08:04:00.000-08:00

Ben Pashkof Has asked this question and I thought it would be good to share this with my readers.

Please comment !

Posted by Ben Pashkoff on February 17, 2008

I hear all too often that Linux is XXX and Solaris is not, or vice versa. I would like to see if a comparison discussion is even a relevant question. It may well be that in the field that two are never really in competition, so a comparison is useless. What are YOU recommending Linux for and what are you recommending Solaris for? Do you see them as competitors, complementary, or different applications all together?

Reply by Haim Tzadok on March 12, 2008

From a social prespective,
In my opinion, Linux as a project was a very good initiator for reviving the OpenSource movement.
Linux raised the awarreness that opensource is not only a way of programming, but is also a social movement.
Infact, the reason I've started using Solaris came from using Linux and getting involved in the opensource movement in Israel(Hamakor and before it was established). Many of the Israeli Opensource community members I know in Israel, are not only Linux geeks but are people that are contributing to the Community from their time and effort, they are doing this using Linux only because currently this is the only option that they see close to their hands. For that I think Linux is a project that gainned a respect.
Moreover, IMHO, Linux made big companies like IBM, Oracle, Sun(!) and some others(yes, even microsoft, although they still don't admit it), realize that opensource is a better model than a closed one. This is why we see many of this companies take the opensource idea and implementing it in their organization and sharing ideas with their customers, some more and some less.

Solaris which has started from BSD - which is in fact a pure programming opensource project(from licensing prespective), but somehow didn't attract social movement around it. (Although Sun was always considered to be a leading technology company who has shared it's technologies and opened it for public use), So from this prespective we can not neglect Linux triumph.

In the other hand from a technical prespective,
More than 3 years ago, Linux and Solaris had a fair chance of living together side by side in my arena. In fact I was training Solaris and Linux courses whenever I could, having no regrets.
But just after having Solaris opensourced along with the inception of Solaris 10, has put Solaris as my first OS of choice, this is because of the many great technologies I've found in Solaris that lack in Linux. (although Linux is still user friendly than Solaris but this is also going to be changed - Indiana ...).
But this alone will not attract people to use Solaris, since most people didn't have a chance to realy use and compare both OS'es side by side for many years like I've done.

If we want to seek for Solaris publicity, one will say, we need to attrack people to touch Solaris, this can be done by using cheap AMD HW along with improving it's user friendly capabilites, but this alone might not be the only reason for a strong Solaris adoption.

In My opinion, **only** by letting Solaris get into education and into Opensource social movements, where people have a chance to see Solaris users socializing with Solaris as a platform, will achieve a great increase of Solaris adoption.

Currently, Solaris is a better OS from a technical prespective, but lacks from a social prespective.