New pictures!

A lot of months ago I said "next week pictures". I think I wrote this more than one time. This weekend I started to clean my machines to move my desktop and I decided to take some pictures. No fantastic ones but this is an start.


You can see my new pictures of my Octane2, fuel and the 1600SW in my Flickr account.

Solarspeed BlueQuartz "unofficial" BETA quality updates

Surfing the Solarspeed.net web site I found in the Knowledge Base a very interesting article: How to install a special updates made by Solarspeed. From a long time there is no a lot -or enough- official updates but there is a lot of things that must be updated/upgraded. Michael Satuber and his team published a lot of modifications for a BlueQuartz server and only a few tweaks are needed to install them. They said that are beta updates but enough stable to use in production.

A small list of improvements (from the original text):

1. Ability to switch from PAM based authentication to flat files again (minor performance loss, but a lot more stable).
2. Updated YUM GUI with the ability to exclude RPMs from updates.
3. German and Danish translation of the GUI.
4. Improved Active Monitor.
5. Removal of the defunct APOP checkbox from the GUI.
6. Ability to disable user owned webs (Example: http://www.company.com/~user/ )
7. Ability to render FTP usage of non site admin users unuseable (they can still login, but not do anything).
8. Strong password enforcement. On adding a user or changing his password, the new passwordis checked to see if it is strong enough. Only strong passwords will be accepted. Additionally it is no longer possible to use a password that is identical to the username. Furthermore the strength of the new password is shown while the new password is typed in.
9. Added the module base-phpsysinfo to the GUI.
10. Upgraded CMU package.
11. Various minor and major fixes to existing code.

I don't have a BlueQuartz server, but a Strongbolt one. and everything runs good!

The original article is here.

Sun Linux in a Cobalt LX50

Only for play a bit with may new server I installed the original Sun Linux 5.0 what was shipped with the server. First I did a clean install to see what happens, but the Restore discs didn't made the Service Partition.

After some reading of the manuals I found that the Service Partition has to be made from the Diagnostics CD. The seller sent all the originals discs with the machine and no effort of downloading nothing was necessary.

Once I had the service software loaded I played a bit and found a software called Service Partition Administration. I think this part is not in the handbook. After the software appears in the screen, a new menu is showed. It has some features like a hard disk partitioning software: View service partitions, create partitions, format, etc.

But when I selected Create a new Service Partition, it says that the hard disk must be empty. And now, What? Some more play and some reboots later I used the Go to DOS option of the Service Software. There is a DOS OS and it has FDSIK, not the usual MS-DOS FDISK but similar. If you delete all the partition of the hard disk, remeber to Save the changes (in the MS-DOS utility was not necessary.

After the hard disk is erased and the server rebooted, you can create the new Service Partition. One more reboot with the Diagnostics CD and the Software can format and install the diverse diagnostics and configuration programs.

When everything is ready, come the easy thing: install Sun Linux 5.0: Just boot up the server with the first restore CD and do an automatic install... tomorrow some updates will be applied and see what happens.

See you.

My Cobalt collection is growing...

Yes! I have a new Cobalt server. Really it's a rebranded Intel server but it has a nice blue face at front. It's (or she is) a Cobalt LX50. One of the first models of this series because later the LX50 lost the Cobalt brand from the front a was named only as Sun LX50.


At the beginning it was shipped with Sun Linux 5 but can run Linux, Solaris X86 or Windows. I'm thinking it will be a good server for BlueOnyx. I powered up this afternoon and I'm surprised with it's noise. It's loud but a lot less than my other 1U servers (V120, GigaByte, etc.). Maybe it has regulable fans.

This weekend I expect to have this machine running with BlueOnyx. Let's see...

Hey boys!!!

No much work done from the last post. Holidays, job and my children are getting me all my free time. This week my children started school and maybe now is going better!!!

Today I powered up my Strongbolt 2 RaQ 550 and I yum-updated it. I had two issues with yum:

1. First is what nuonce repo is gone. Easy: # rm /etc/yum.repos.d/NuOnce.repo
2. Second issue is not more difficult: There is a conflict between the kernel update and iptables. Really, in Strongbolt we are not using this kernel and we can set to not download it. But I'm not using iptables and, like this post in the forums says, we can forget the iptables update: # yum --exclude=iptables update

PD: Rumours and more: OSOffice had some problems and now seems they are reorganizing the company. More information here. I hop OSOffice return to the good way and finish this rare Strongbolt 2 update, maybe we finally can have a SATA installation disk?