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There seems to be some confusion about what a Solaris Update release is, both in and outside of the company, so I'd like to take an opportunity to explain how we are currently generating Solaris update releases.
First of all, a reminder, I am the technical lead for just the ON Consolidation for Solaris 10 Update 1. All of Solaris, aka the WOS, is made up of various consolidations. ON, the Operating System and Networking Consolidation, is just one of them. I can speak about how we handle things in ON land, but cannot promise that the same things apply across all consolidations. Most of ON is now available in OpenSolaris, to give you an idea of what code base I'm talking about. Mike Kupfer gives a good background on the ON consolidation.
The other caveat: there are exceptions. I will lay out first the basic structures of an update. Later entries will talk more about the exceptions and more fancy things, like features.
My mantra throughout this release has been "the patch gate is the update gate is the patch gate is the update gate...". I even included that in the gate's README file.
Put another way, update releases are made up almost entirely of patches, most of which are released early on SunSolve to provide binary relief to customers.
The most basic things that an update release contains are bug fixes, which I'll cover in this entry. These bugs may have been found internally or may have been reported by an external customer who escalated the issue. When a bug is fixed, it is first integrated in the release under development, in this case Nevada, where it undergoes significant testing and gains exposure on our internal servers and desktops. We call that "soaking".
After soak has completed, the fix comes back to the sustaining gate, on10-patch, where we do milestone builds every two weeks. At the end of a build, we will cut at least one patch for each integration we took for each applicable architecture and deliver those for further testing. The final patches will typically end up on SunSolve and are also used to create what is known as a Freshbit image of Solaris. Essentially, we start with an GA version of Solaris 10 and install patches on top of that image, to create an update build. That is, if the fix was not included in a patch, it will not be part of the update release.
Patches are cumulative so if patch A-01 contains a fix for bug X, patch A-02 will also contain a fix for bug X + some other bug fixes. Therefor, update builds are also cumulative. If something was fixed in a patch applied to the freshbit image of s10u1_01 it will still be fixed in s10u1_02 and so on.
In theory, you can take a base Solaris 10 03/05 system and patch up to an update release. In fact, you may remember when Sun used to release MUs (Maintenance Updates) which would basicly install the base OS then spend a couple of hours automatically patching it. Those where the bad ol' days - now we do the patching for you, and you can just upgrade or do a fresh install, getting essentially Solaris 10 03/05 and all relevant patches for your hardware.
Of course, there are exceptions, but most of those are not relevant for existing install base for Solaris 10 03/05.
I hope this helps to explain things a bit. I will have more entries, soon, to explain how features and new packages are handled and tested. let me know if any of this does not make sense, or if you have any specific questions on the interaction of patches and updates.
Wow - we've had two great weekends with Godspell. I've never felt as in touch with the audience as I do singing Turn Back O' Man. There's just something about singing a song right there with the audience literally touching you that is so amazingly cool. The cast has really gelled and the response from the audience has been phenomenal. They laugh with us and cry with us. It's really amazing! There's only one weekend left - it will be really hard to let go. If any of you are in the South San Francisco Bay Area, please come catch our last weekend (Oct 21-22) with the Studio Theatre of California.
Today I got to do something that I rarely have time for: I went to *see* a show! For the first time, I made it to Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts and caught a matinee performance of Baby Taj. It's a new play about a female travel writer agonizing over whether or not to start a "family" by herself, when she is sent on assignment to India to write about the Taj Mahal, Baby Taj, and other monuments. While staying with her roomate's cousins, she discovers a new culture and even finds romance where she least expected. All of the actors did a great job, but Qurrat Ann Kadwani really stood out in the role of Chandra. After you've come to see Godspell, you should try to make time to catch Baby Taj.
Had a GREAT bike ride with Levi Leipheimer on Wednesday, a reward for being one of the top 10 fundraisers for last spring's American Lung Associations bike4breath. What a fun day! pictures will be posted soon!
And tonight Godspell opens! I'm very nervous, but I know we're ready. We've rehearsed hard, and last night's dress rehearsal went really well. Anyone in the South San Francisco Bay Area should come down and see us at the Sunnyvale Congregational Church. I'm working with STOC (Studio Theatre of California) for the first time, and it's been a great experience.
Wow, what a week I've had - several brushes with local and international celebrities. Today, Sun Microsystems hosted a townhall for Arnold Schwarzenegger on our Menlo Park campus, in the courtyard. It was *very* hot out today, but it was pretty cool to get to meet Govenor Schwarzenegger in person and get to shake his hand. I certainly do not agree with all of his politics, but that was the cool thing: attendees were not chosen by political affiliation, but just by business unit.
This past Saturday, I was lucky enough to get invited to a Wave Magazine VIP party at the Buddha Lounge in downtown Mountain View, to celebrate the birthday of Wave editor-in-chief, John Newlin. While there, I got to not only meet Mr. Newlin, but also Bill Hargreaves, VP of something cool, and feature writer Seanbaby. (OK, so I already knew Bill and that's how I got into the party, but still, it's the first time I've seen him since he was promoted to VP). The Wave really knows how to throw a party!
And next week ... I get to meet Levi Leipheimer! Oh, and my production of Godspell! opens in Sunnyvale. Please come see it if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area! Rehearsals have been a bear, but the show is totally coming together.
I know - I keep promising to blog more often, but Update 1 is keeping me INCREDIBLY busy! What a release - this will really be phenomenal when it comes out, if I do say so myself :-)
I ventured to Mountain View's Shoreline Ampitheater again last Sunday, Sept 11th, to catch Kasabian, Jet & Oasis. The one strange thing about the entire concert was the complete lack of mention by any of the performers that it was such a solemn anniversary. In fact, the only mention of the US by any of the performers was an insult by Noel of Oasis.
Kasabian had a *lot* more energy this time, and their stage presence was greatly improved since the last time I saw them. Still, they have room to grow, but there was a lot more connection to the audience.
Jet's psychedelic "thinly disguised phallic symbol" backdrop was interesting, to say the least. Their lighting and high energy made for a really fun set. We were up dancing for more than just a bit :-)
Now the headliner, Oasis. I've just recently started getting into their music, and Liam claims that not only are they bigger than the Beatles, but now they are even more important than Elvis. Huh?!?! Their lighting consisted of what looked like Christmas lights strewn over their various amplifiers and hanging from the flies, flashing red & blue lights with white spotlights that were reminiscent of being pulled over by a police officer, and some pale muted amber lights. Liam stood in one position (which looked incredibly uncomfortable - legs straight, bent at the waist towards the too low microphone with his head crooked up, thumbs through his beltloops) the ENTIRE set, only moving when it was his brothers turn to sing (when he left the stage entirely). The music was great, but there was zero interaction with the audience or even with each other, leaving much to be desired.
Well, I'd better run back to my never ending inbox.
Ok, so I've been out of town almost this entire summer, but... I did make it back to Mountain View to catch Coldplay on Friday.
The show was supposed to start at 7PM, but Janet & I sat in the cold until the opening act, Black Mountain, came on about 7:40PM. They were ok, getting better as they went on, but surprisingly went on for almost a full hour. Ok - we were ready to see Coldplay... waiting... waiting.... waiting ... more than an hour later, the band finally came on!
Coldplay was incredible - doing all of my favorite songs from each album, spicing up the lyrics with references to San Francisco and our major landmarks. Their rendition of the "Scientist" was amazing - Chris Martin sped up the ending to seemingly impossible speeds. He even managed to work in lyrics from Depeche Mode's "Somebody" later in another song. At one point, he came out to the middle of the audience to sing just a *bit* closer to us all.
All we could say as we walked away was "Wow." It was a phenomenal show - they really are better live than they are recorded.
Sorry it's been so long since my last update - I did a lot of traveling (favorite city just visited is a tie between Amsterdam, Holland and Bruges, Belgium). I even managed to make it to DefCon in Las Vegas for about 12 hours - it was intense, as always.
So much has happened since my last post! OpenSolaris - now that's very cool. More on that later!
Last Friday was Live105's BFD music festival. What a phenomenal day! We got there a bit late after a late lunch, just catching the sounds of Tegan & Sara as we approached the ampitheater. We spent a long time in the Sun enjoying Ash, Hot Hot Heat, the Kaiser Chiefs and many other small bands on the True Music Stage. My most annoying and disappointing act was The Bravery. They have one "hit" on the radio which is a completely different sound than the rest of their music. Appearing again at a Live105 event was the incredible rap sensation Lyric's Born, this time with a full live band and a more appreciative live audience - the resulting effect was an incredible 30 minutes of bliss. I was also most impressed with Sleater Kinney, though disappointed at their lack of a bassist (as a sometimes bass player, I have a softspot for people who can master the instrument)
After wandering out of the True Music stage area, we were checking out some booths and found a few reps from the Jerry Springer show, apparently running a contest for "be Jerry for a day". After a couple of beers, it seemed like a good idea to audition and sign my life away on the FIVE pages of disclosures. The audition was relatively easy for me, as I've done so much theater, but I was not as quick on my feet as normal at making up lyrics to songs (which is what we were asked to do). So... I instead started singing Violent Femme's Add It Up... and my audition was stopped. All the same, snippets of my audition may appear in commercials for Jerry Springer, as I also made fun of people from Indiana (where I am from).
The main stage was even better, although I was disappointed with Kasabian's low energy start, Jimmy Eat World stepped up and put on a great show. Things just improved from there, with one of my all time favorite bands, Social Distortion coming out and rocking HARD. I've been fans of these guys for more than 10 years, and they are just amazing live now as they were years ago. Amazing rifs, guitar solos in all the right places and great lyrics. Wow!
I thought Social Distortion's performance would be hard to beat, but Dave Grohl & the Foo Fighter's took it up a notch and did not disappoint. Full energy, full throttle, all the way. These guys rock harder in person than they do on any of their radio edits. Incredible! Dave Grohl even did a "jam session" which took him wandering through the pavilion, drinking other people's beers. Later, Dave mentioned they were going to do something they'd never done before, then put their drummer on the microphone. I first suspected that they were going to just swap instruments, since it's well known Grohl is an amazing drummer, but again Foo Fighter's surprised us. They brought out a very good friend to be a guest drummer: Stuart Copeland of the Police! Wow! They did "Next to You" and it was incredible. Copelands beats rocked just as hard as any of the punk bands I'd watched that day, yet he did it in such a subtle manner. A small flick of the wrist, barely perceptible, and the beats were hard and fast paced. Impressive!
It will be hard for next year to top this. Wow!
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