Time flies when you've got good music

I've been reintegrating myself back into the Solaris Security community over the last couple of weeks, and doing a bit of traveling. (note: Canada is very cold in January). I'm working on writing up some stuff for how-to on the crypto framework, and considering doing a submission for our internal tech conference in May.

Today I've been listening over & over again to the Dogs Die In Hot Cars debut album "Please Describe Yourself". The songs are incredibly catchy - I'm already humming along (thank goodness I have the door shut). "I Love You 'Cause I Have To" and "Celebrity Sanctum" are very fun. The bands website claims they are indescribable, saying they were influenced by Nirvana & Red Hot Chili Peppers. Well, they don't sound a thing like those other bands, but are incredibly reminscient of XTC with their melodic harmonies & bright guitar.

Yesterday's CD of choice was the soundtrack to SPAMalot. Wow - what fun! The is different than when I saw the show in 2004 in Chicago (before it "premiered" on Broadway), but every bit as enjoyable. I love all of the Diva songs - especially "The Song That Goes Like This".

I'm coming to the realization that my CD collection has reached well beyond the limits of what I can actually reasonably listen to. I'm constantly finding CDs on my shelf that I totally forgot I had purchased. It might be time to go more portable and get an MP3 Player. Of course, realizing how I can be quite lazy, I think I'd need to go for a very large MP3 player so I can hold most of my CDs. This may be a time consuming process, but will let me experience some old favorites like Carter the USM, Front242, Ministry, Shawn Colvin & Annie Lennox, that are currently gathering dust.

Of course, that would mean getting a decent home computer to drive the ripping... hmmm, this is getting expensive. For now I'll just keep rotating my CDs at the office :-)

Ah, a new year!

Back in the office again.  Having a "winter break" at Sun US is great. Time to totally unwind, and not too many emails when you get back. :-)

I ventured back to the midwest for the holidays to visit my family, and see a couple of friends.  The weather was much more mild than it is here in the SF Bay area and the gas was more expensive - not exactly what I was expecting!  As always, it was a great joy to see my family, especially my niece & nephews (who are growing like weeds)!  These kids are growing up in a completely different world than I did.  As soon as I'd take any of their pictures, they'd immediately run up to me and demand: "Let me see it now, ok?"  No more waiting to finish a role of film and sending it off for processing, just "now". It's a good thing they are so cute.

Now that Solaris 10 Update 1 is out the door, I will get to start focusing more on Solaris Cryptographic Framework stuff again. Yippee!  All the same, I know I promised to go into more detail about how Solaris updates are created and I will... really!

Solaris 10 1/06 (aka Update 1) is out!!

It's here at last! After nearly a year of hardwork, all of the teams pulled together an excellent update for Solaris 10. It feels great to finally get the release out to the masses. In addition to many bug fixes, there are loads of performance enhancements and new features. Solaris 10 1/06 supports all of the new hardware platforms released over the last year, including the Niagra Cool Threads machines and the galaxy boxes.

This release contains the metaslot support for the Solaris Cryptographic Framework which makes programming to the framework easier than ever before, new GLD interface and updated network drivers to take advantage of the performance gains, and GRUB for x64 boot architecture. There's so much more, too. Check it out - let me know what you think! Visit the downloads section of Sun.com.

Now I should finally be able to get some sleep :-)

What are Solaris 10 Updates made of: Patches and scripts and packages, too.

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.

Godspell & Baby Taj!

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.

Levi Leipheimer & Godspell!

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.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wave Magazine VIPs and More!

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.