The Mac Debate...

I have been a long time unix guy. As far as the desktop experience goes, I have been Windoze free for many years. My current favorite unix-based desktop of the day is Ubuntu Gutsy. It has held up well and been very flexible for all of my dynamic needs.

Several guys that I work with have been trying to talk me into getting a Mac. I personally had never played much with Mac until of late. So I thought I would jot down the pros and cons that relate to my personal needs and perceptions.

Before I get to my notes though, I want to throw out their once again that I am a total newbie to Mac land. Not knowing the Mac way of doing things my have put me at a disadvantage from an evaluation standpoint.

Pros:

• Very sleek, light weight and very quiet.
  
• Great native multimedia iMovie, iPhoto, and iDVD.
  
• Wireless profile and network management is very simple and easy to use.
  
• Auto sync with external displays (projectors in particular for presentations).
  
• Nice built in camera.
  
• Fusion's unity for integrating Windows applications seamlessly into the OS X desktop.
  
• Fusion 2.0's unity for linux for integrating Linux applications seamlessly into the OS X desktop.
  
• I like the magnetic power cord design.
  

Cons:

• Expensive relative to other Core Duo systems. I can buy from Dell a 15" 2GHz Core Duo Inspiron 1525N with 4GB of RAM, a 2Megapixel camera, bluetooth and a 250GB SATA drive for $944. A comparable 15" MacBook Pro costs no less than $2,699.
  
• Uninstallation is not easy. OS X needs serious help in this department. On ubuntu, I can effortlessly uninstall any program and the programs that depend on that program with apt-get or the gui equivalent. This blog post said that there basically isn't a good uninstaller tool for OS X.
  
• I am really used to the Gnome/KDE way of quickly getting to an application through a menu.
  
• No ability (that I have found) to add applications or applets to the top bar. For example, I really like the performance meeter that I have on my Ubuntu desktop.
  
• No page up, page down or insert keys.
  
• No right mouse button for easy copy/paste. I know its a Mac but that doesn't diminish the fact that the right mouse button is very convenient.
  
• The DVD player doesn't have FF or RR. Very disappointing.
  
• I am hooked on evolution v2.12 as a mail client. So it is hard to consider anything else. So the lack of a current version of evolution for mac is hard. Perhaps Fusion 2.0 will come to Mac's rescue. ;-)
  
• The Dock is cool but a bit annoying once it gets full. It can also be annoying when an application is below the Dock.
  

I am curious to know what others think. Please also feel free to give me pointers on the Mac way of doing things.

Thanks in advance,
Brad

DSEE6 SMF Fun...

I was recently asked how to configure the Solaris 10 Service Management Facility (SMF) to NOT restart directory server, should directory be stopped by dsadm, by kill or if DS quit on its own. In my pursuit of this configuration, I realized that there isn't a single resource that details some of my favorite uses of SMF relative to directory server. Toward that end, I decided to throw this blog entry for your benefit.

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Great SMF Resources
If you are just getting started on learning SMF, here are some great resources to get you going.

• Solaris Service Management Facility - Quickstart Guide
  
• SMF in a day
  
• SMF Deep Dive
  

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Where To Find SMF Templates For DS Directory Server Sample SMF Template:   /dsee6-install-dir/ds6/install/tmpl_smf.manifest Directory Proxy Server Sample SMF Template:   /dsee6-install-dir/dps6/install/tmpl_smf.manifest

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How To Disable SMF Auto-restart 1. Save frmi into variable # fmri="svc:/application/sun/ds:default" 2. Dump the fmri xml to a file # svccfg export ${fmri} > /ds-fmri.xml 3. Modify /ds-fmri.xml adding the following after the <stability... property. <property_group name='startd' type='framework'>    <propval name='duration' type='astring' value='transient'/> </property_group> 4. Delete the current entry with sccfg # svccfg delete ${fmri} 5. Import the updated fmri xml file... # svccfg import /ds-fmri.xml 6. Enable the fmri... # svccfg enable ${fmri} Note that if you stop or kill ds outside of svcadm (e.g. smf) the state will not change from 'online'. Here is sample output from my system. # svcs ds STATE STIME FMRI online 13:35:04 svc:/application/sun/ds:default Reference: Service Management Facility master restarter

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How To Partially Disable Auto Restart If you installed from native packages with the Java Enterprise System distribution, enable the server to restart when the operating system reboots. # dsadm enable-service --type SMF /ds_instance Note that that with this feature, "dsadm stop /ds_instance" will stop DS and disable the service so that the restarter won't try to re-start ds. However, if DS is killed or dies, the restarter will attempt to re-start DS. Reference: Creating and deleting a directory server instance

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How To Start DS Using libumem If for troubleshooting purposes, you want to switch to the object-caching memory allocation library (libumem), use the following to make the change in SMF: # svccfg -s svc:/application/sun/ds:default setenv LD_PRELOAD_32 libumem.so # svccfg -s svc:/application/sun/ds:default setenv LD_PRELOAD_64 /usr/lib/64/libumem.so Then, refresh and restart the DS instance in order for this change to take effect. # svcadm refresh svc:/application/sun/ds:default # svcadm restart svc:/application/sun/ds:default Use the following to see the changes:

# svcprop ds| grep LD_
start/environment astring LD_PRELOAD_32=libumem.so LD_PRELOAD_64=/usr/lib/64/libumem.so

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How To Start DS On Fixed Priority Scheduler If you would like to start DS with the fixed priority scheduler instead of the default fare share scheduler, simply insert the appropriate priocntl command into the exec_method string of the start method. Here is the excerpt of our working fmri example.

<exec_method
type="method"
name="start"
exec="/opt/SUNWdsee/ds6/bin/dsadm start --exec /dsAtt"
timeout_seconds="600">

Here is what it looks like after we have added priocntl:

<exec_method
type="method"
name="start"
exec="priocntl -e -c FX /opt/SUNWdsee/ds6/bin/dsadm start --exec /ds"
timeout_seconds="600">

To actually make the change, use the method described above in "How To Disable SMF Auto-restart" Now, you can see from the process listing that the schedule used is the FX scheduler.

# ps -c -p 6033
PID  CLS PRI TTY         TIME CMD
6033   FX   0 ?           0:00 ns-slapd

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Set NDD Settings On System Boot After installing DS, one of the first things that you need to do is optimize the system wide TCP/IP settings for directory server. You can determine the settings that make the most sense for your system by running idsktune. Take those settings and plug them into a script that will be called on system boot once by SMF. Details on this procedure are well documented in the Deployment Planning Guide. I hope that you find this information useful. Blessings to you and yours. Brad