Why did I boot up? Well, I wanted to install MySQL somewhere and thought I just might take a look at how opensolaris worked for this. The installation seemed quite flawless, bringing up package manager and installing the required packages. Actually worked like a champ. But to my surprise, when I opened up the services to activate MySQL it WASN’T THERE! AND when I tried to use svcadm I received the unwanted message of: "svcadm: Pattern ‘mysql’ doesn’t match any instances".

I actually needed to reboot opensolaris for MySQL to be recognized within the services.

Boy does this remind me of dreaded reboots when installing something, most everything, on Windows. Argh!

What’s all the hype about anyway?   Isn’t Windows 7 at least two years away? Guess since most of us are still on XP and probably won’t upgrade to Vista, we should really start thinking about Windows 7 as the next Windows OS to migrate to.

While I’m seriously thinking of moving, all but those Windows only applications, entirely to Open Source it’s nice to see some people are actually giving relatively serious concerns of this new Windows release.

Lee Gomes, in a WSJ article gave some things he’d like to see in Windows 7:

1. One stock keeping unit (SKU). I agree, let’s get rid of all those Vista releases. Or at least, like others, go to something the average Joe can understand. Something like Windows 7 Lite, Laptop, Desktop, Server, Enterprise, etc.. You get the picture.

2. Smart scalable graphics. While I can see the point here about being able to fine tune or have Windows smart enough to keep things readable I’m not too sure this would be #2 on my list.

3. OS snapshots and an undo feature. This would be nice if there was some very good and reliable software behind it. I personally don’t trust this form of a backup and recovery scenario for desktops. I would need something that kept extremely well track of every change I made to my system and files. This would mean not only a timestamp on files, I can change those, but also internal block changes to really understand what I’ve changed. I also have a real difficulty with my Mom and Dad being able to use something like this. They have a hard enough time finding the rewind button on the VCR…or is it a DVD…:).

4. Open it up. Probably the best of the 5 suggestions given by Lee but I can’t see Microsoft opening things up anytime soon. Although with the court rulings that have played out this last month, and the possible restructure of Microsoft, who can tell.

5. Make sure Windows 7 actually works. While this is a cheap shot by Lee I think we can all agree that it is the number one reason why we are reluctant to upgrade our XP machines.

Did you know there are only 8 states left in the U.S. that allow dot-coms the ability to not collect sales tax. The move to start collecting taxes in those last few states could bring, and will bring, huge amounts of cash. Reported by the WSJ, Kansas, after collecting sales taxes last year realized $35 million! That’s some serious cash my friend.

Amazon, probably the largest of those companies, is still holding out collecting taxes as they continue to declare distribution centers are not operated by them.

I just wonder, with the economy the way it is, will states risk loosing a distribution center that employs its residents. Will employees start causing an uproar to their state officials. And will one or two of these last 8 states hold out, hoping to draw all dot-coms and then stick it to them in the end for a larger than life tax bill?

©meshmar2

Traveling abroad? Want to come back into the country (U.S.)? Own a laptop? Have a business partner coming to the U.S.?

You just might want to re-think traveling with a laptop!

If you haven’t heard, travelers entering the U.S. with laptops or other storage devices could just have the device searched and potentially seized for fear of the traveler entering the country with information that doesn’t comply with U.S. laws. Unfortunately we just don’t know the policies around this — customs officials just haven’t made them public.

If this isn’t stupid I don’t know what is. Business travelers are being asked to somehow transmit company specific information to corporate servers so that they don’t potentially leak sensitive information during a customs search. BUT WAIT! Isn’t this the same thing the average traveler can do to get around customs. There are plenty of network secured file servers out there, free or through a subscription, that would-be-evil-information-movers could use. Maybe Customs should extend their role to that of Internet police. After all information is traveling abroad too.

I had really high hopes for Sun’s opensolaris. Everything was good until I needed to get an Internet connection.

While I was easily connected to my local network, which is interesting at best as I have a hacked a bridge between two wireless routers, I was initially unable to get an external Internet connection. After 4 hours of work, success! But today when I booted up the opensolaris box my connectivity was gone. Better yet opensolaris had changed my settings, AGAIN! For the record, I have a Linux CentOS machine configured the same way and it is working fine.

Now I’m not the only one who has experienced this issue. Just take a quick search on the Net and you will find plenty. Network connectivity seems to be the number one issue. What I can’t figure out is how these write-ups that tell a black story of not being able to connect to the Internet can, in the next paragraph, talk about opensolaris package manager. To fully try/utilize this new utility you have to have an Internet connection.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the port of Solaris so far. There are a lot of cool features to play with. But for now, I’m powering off my opensolaris box until the next release or until my contacts at Sun come through and give me a helping hand.

If you want to take advantage of the UltraSPARC T2 chip technologies but need an IBM blade server, this just might be the solution for you. Developed for both commercial and military, the UltraSPARC/IBM Blade will plug into the IBM Blade Center but offer all the advanced technologies from Sun we expect.

• Chip Multi-Threading (CMT) processor
• Running the Solaris 10 operating system
• Lights Out Management (ILOM) tools
• Eight cores each support eight threads, for a total of 64 "hot" threads per socket
• Capability to run Solaris 8 or 9 UltraSPARC applications

Pretty cool! But I wonder how the support contract looks.

Help

Wanted

JOB DESCRIPTION

Duration: 6 month(s)
Description/Comment:
Database administrator on the Satellite Control Network (SCNC) working on the Electronic Schedule Dissemination (ESD) 3.0 project. Position is responsible for administering 10g databases by establishing policies and procedures pertaining to its management, security, maintenance and utilization. Support the implementation of the project software by interfacing with software developers, building relations, developing stored procedures, developing ERD diagrams, and performing installs. Administer Oracle databases by managing data and user accounts. Act as project technical point of contact for database issues. Position is open to the next higher grade based on the qualifications of the candidate. No relocation assistance is provided.
Qualifications

Experience in the following areas is required:
• At least 6 years experience working on Windows 2000 servers
• At least 6 years experience administering Oracle 9i
• At least 1 year experience administering ORACLE 10g
• At least 5 years experience programming in PL/SQL
• At least 3 years experience programming PL/SQL packages, stored procedures, functions and triggers
• At least 2 years programming and executing scripts in KORN shell
• At least 5 years of ANSI SQL programming 

• A current Secret (or higher) clearance
The following experience is preferred:
• Experience with Erwin for ERD development
• C#/.NET, Visual Studio experience 

• Experience using TOAD version 8.* or later
• 2 years experience administering ORACLE master to master replication
• 1 year or more using ORACLE VPD
• 1 year or more using ORACLE security

been ONE of those days as it seemed like i was the only ONE around on a the last and only train out of town.

the day started out ok. i had my ONE egg, ONE piece of bacon, but not ONE cup of tea. i posted my blogs ONE by ONE but didn’t seem to get past the first ONE as ONE of my editors came back to me with ONE line that didn’t seem to convey ONE simple point. that ONE line quickly turned into ONE paragraph and ONE hour turned into another ONE and ultimately into ONE full day of work. it is amazing how ONE little thing can turn into ONE large project. after moving all of today’s tasks to tomorrow, i now realize, i have two days of work in ONE. anyONE know what comes after TWO?

have a great ONE!

In the last part of this series we re-visited methods on how to generate trace files. These trace files generated were in a raw format that doesn’t allow for us to read them very easily. This article will be the last in this series and will show how to take these generated trace files and produce reports in a more readable form.

Read more at: Oracle Session Tracing Part VI