Solaris 10 update 5 Released

Solaris 10 5/08 has been released.

Windows 2008 Server Backup

I must say I'm quite pleased with the new Windows 2008 Server backup. A full backup of the system disk (Windows 2008 Enterprise and a few tools, about 15GB uncompressed with 3GB of SWAP. Windows Backup shows the volume as using 14GB) takes 6 minutes. Overall, a great effort, considering I'm doing this over a Firewire 400 connection.



And the backup is done:



A larger backup:

Communigate Pro - Mail and Communications on OpenVMS

Communigate Pro is by far one of the best communications suite, and can easily replace even an Exchange / LCS / OCS suite (Unified Communications and all that). It can do clustering, VoIP, interface with Windows phones and has integrated WebMail, mailing lists, and so on.

The installation is pretty straight forward too. First, disable OpenVMS POP3 and IMAP services, and make sure nothing is running on port 8010 and 8100. Then unzip and proceed to install the POLYCENTER package.

$ PRODUCT INSTALL CGatePro

Once the installation is over, start CommuniGate Pro services and login to the administrative interface withing 15 minutes. Enjoy.

@SYS$COMMON:[CommuniGate]STARTUP.COM START



The WebMail is pretty nice too:



It also has Calendar function and a few themes (the XCHANGE one looks like OWA from Exchange).



By default, CommuniGate Pro supports the following features:

+ Mail + POP + IMAP + PWD + ACAP + WebMail + WebSite + Relay + Mobile + FTP
+ MAPI + TLS + S/MIME + LDAP + WebCAL + RADIUS + SIP + PBX + XMPP + XIMSS

Here's a screenshot of the WebMail SSL (HTTPS) interface with the XCHANGE skin:



So now you can have a fully encrypted, secure, highly available enterprise communications suite with E-Mail and VoIP features on your OpenVMS cluster :-).

Kicking it up a gear with Oracle Rdb Server on OpenVMS

$ show system
OpenVMS V8.3 on node DEIMOS 8-MAR-2008 16:15:25.04 Uptime 0 13:09:50

Time to install a database server on this box :-). And nothing says "database" quite like Oracle Rdb (ex DEC product btw).

Grab Oracle Rdb, unzip it (unzip SYS$SYSROOT:[SYSMGR.RDBKIT]rdbv72200kit_amv.zip;1), and install it :-).

@SYS$UPDATE:VMSINSTAL RDBV72200AM SYS$SYSROOT:[SYSMGR.rdbkit]

Now we can restart the service, and create our database.

$ @SYS$MANAGER:RMONSTOP72.com
$ @SYS$STARTUP:RMONSTART72.COM

$ UCX show services

Service Port Proto Process Address State

BIND 53 TCP,UDP TCPIP$BIND 0.0.0.0 Disabled
FTP 21 TCP TCPIP$FTP 0.0.0.0 Enabled
IMAP 143 TCP TCPIP$IMAP 0.0.0.0 Enabled
POP 110 TCP TCPIP$POP 0.0.0.0 Enabled
RDBSERVER 611 TCP RDB72 0.0.0.0 Enabled
SSH 22 TCP TCPIP$SSH 0.0.0.0 Enabled
TELNET 23 TCP not defined 0.0.0.0 Enabled

$ run SYS$SYSTEM:SQL$72.exe
SQL> SHOW VERSION
Current version of SQL is: Oracle Rdb SQL V7.2-200
SQL> DROP DATABASE filename PRODUCTS;
SQL> CREATE DATABASE filename PRODUCTS;
SQL> CREATE TABLE clients
cont> (
cont> ClientID char(9)
cont> CONSTRAINT CL_ID
cont> PRIMARY KEY,
cont> FirstName varchar(25),
cont> LastName varchar(25)
cont> );
SQL> INSERT INTO clients VALUES ('1','Some','Guy');
1 row inserted
SQL> INSERT INTO clients VALUES

('2','Other','Bloke');
1 row inserted
SQL> SELECT * from clients;
CLIENTID FIRSTNAME LASTNAME
1 Some Guy
2 Other Bloke
2 rows selected
SQL>

All we have to do now is fire up Phobos and cluster them :-).

If you install SQL Services on the database server, you can install the Rdb Client on your Windows box in order to administer Oracle Rdb on OpenVMS.

Play with a Cray

Want access to a Cray supercomputer? Ask Cyber-Cray for access.



Visit http://www.cray-cyber.org and request access to their machines.

$ uname -a
sn5176 sn5176 9.0.2.2 sin.0 CRAY Y-MP

Most Oracle Admins don't patch security flaws

As of January 2005, Oracle provides Critical Patch Updates on Metalink every quarterly schedule to address significant security flaws and recommended updates (required for security fixes). So, how is this all working out? Well, see for yourself...

"Complexity of task makes admins not want to bother":
This research shows that "Two-thirds of Oracle DBAs don't apply security patches"

2/3? IMHO it's more like 9 out of.. 8.

""In fact, a good two-thirds of all Oracle DBAs appear not to be installing Oracle's security patches at all, no matter how critical the vulnerabilities may be, according to survey results from Sentrigo Inc., a Woburn, Mass.-based vendor of database security products.""

Sun Project Caroline - load balanced VMs connected to a backend database

Sun Project Caroline is an interesting research project:

"Provides a dynamic virtualized grid of language-level virtual machines (VMs), networks, and storage. The principal VM is the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), but others can also be supported, such as for Perl, Python, and Ruby."

"The system makes use of multiple features of the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS): Zones are used for VM isolation and network binding control. Resource pools and the Fair Share Scheduler are used to manage processor allocations. IP Filter is used in network connectivity control. Extended accounting facilities are used to account for CPU time and network traffic. ZFS file system features such as snapshots and clones are available to developers."
(Sun)

Free Official Windows SteadyState - Rollback tool (like Deep Freeze)

Something cool for shared computers, Internet Cafes and such:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/sharedaccess/default.mspx

It's basically a free official DeepFreeze for Windows XP and Vista.

You can basically perform rollback an undo whole sessions.

Free Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) Simulator

Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) is a High Availability (HA) cluster software for Linux, UNIX and Windows systems.

Symantec (they have bought Veritas) offers a freely available VCS emulator software that lets you train your skills :-).

You can also use the freely available documentation. Here is the Solaris Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) manual.

Of course, you could just grab the trial and run 2 Solaris (or Linux) virtual machines in VMware Server :-).

Windows Automated Installation Kit - Unattended Vista installation

Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) lets you install, customize, and deploy the Microsoft Windows Vista. It lets you perform unattended installations of Windows, create Windows Images with ImageX and create Windows PE images. This is basically like vLite (Windows Vista Configuration Tool), but, well.. official :-).

Download the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) User's Guide for Windows Vista here.

Download the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) here.

Deploying Windows Vista TechNet.

You may also want to look at Business Desktop Deployment 2007 for Windows Vista and Office 2007 deployment scripting and tools.

Download Business Desktop Deployment 2007 here.

More tools and ways for Enterprise mass Windows deployment here.

For UNIX deployment tools and procedures go here.

Mondo Backup - GPL Bare Metal Recovery Solution

Here's an interesting alternative to using CloneZilla and the likes for Bare Metal Recovery:

Mondo Rescue is a free (GPL) powerful disaster recovery suite for Linux (i386, x86_64, ia64) and FreeBSD (i386). It's packaged for multiple distributions (RedHat, RHEL, SuSE, SLES, Mandriva, Debian, Gentoo). It's basically the Linux equivalent of the powerful AIX mkcd / mkdvd.

It supports backups to tapes, disks, network and CD/DVD. It also supports multiple filesystems (ext2, ext3, JFS, XFS, ResierFS, VFAT and even NTFS), LVM, software and hardware Raid.

Example of using Mondo Rescue:

Generate a bootable DVD that also backs up /etc and can recover files running mondorestore:

# mondoarchive -OVr -d /dev/dvd -9 -I /etc -gF

Another interesting tool worth checking out is System Imager (automates Linux installs).

PCA - Analyze, download and install patches for Solaris

Trouble with Sun Solaris Patching? Sick of all those tools (smpatch, getsolpatch, Sun Update Connection, Patch Manager PatchPro, PatchCheck, PatchDiag, patchadd) that get dropped or are poorly maintained, broken, etc? Well, here's yet another tool to "fix'em all".

"Patch Check Advanced (pca) generates lists of installed and missing patches for Sun Solaris systems and optionally downloads patches. It resolves dependencies between patches and installs them in correct order. It can be the only tool you ever need for patch management on a single machine or a complete network. Just one perl script, it doesn't need compilation nor installation, and it doesn't need root permissions to run. It works on all versions of Solaris, both SPARC and x86."

Seriously though, PCA rocks ;-).

Windows Server 2008 RC1 Enterprise with Hyper-V Beta x64 available for Download

Windows Server 2008 RC1 Enterprise is now available with a beta version of Windows Server Hyper-V, a key feature of Windows Server 2008 that will be included in Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter x64 editions.

An earlier Customer Technology Preview (CTP) of Hyper-V, is also available for download with Windows Server 2008 RC1 Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter x64 editions.

This version of Hyper-V includes high availability and quick migration features, and is installable under the reduced (no GUIs version) "Core Server" version of Windows Server 2008. It also supports Windows and Linux guests, and snapshots.

Sun Secure Global Desktop (Tarantella) - Enterprise Remote Desktop

Sun Secure Global Desktop (aka Tarantella) provides secure access (SSL - HTTPS) to centralized UNIX, Windows, Mainframe and Midrange applications from a wide range of popular client devices, including Microsoft Windows PCs, Solaris OS Workstations, thin clients and mobile devices.

Tarantella is a competitor to Terminal Services from Microsoft and Citrix software, but it's much more interesting (It's got Windows and Citrix connectors, Thin Client stuff, etc). It's basically like GNU Screen (you can resume sessions and easily migrate between machines), but for X and via your web browser :-).



If you want to try this baby out, you'll need a Solaris or Linux machine. Download Tarantella from http://www.sun.com/software/products/sgd/get.jsp

The fun part is, with Solaris 10 you can simply install Tarantella in a Zone (Solaris Container).

Before you install SSGD you must define (and secure) the users:

• The user names must be "ttaserv" and "ttasys".
• Both must have their primary group set to "ttaserv".
• You can use any UIDs and GID you want.
• The ttaserv/ttasys users must have a valid shell, for example /bin/sh.
• We recommend that you lock the ttaserv/ttasys user accounts (passwd -l).
• The users must have a valid home directory too, so if you're using /export/home (/home is the home of the automounter) make sure you do it right.
  

One quick way to do that is:

# groupadd ttaserv

# useradd -g ttaserv -s /bin/sh -d /export/home/ttaserv ttaserv
# mkdir /export/home/ttaserv
# chown ttaserv:ttaserv /export/home/ttaserv
# passwd -l ttaserv

# useradd -g ttaserv -s /bin/sh -d /export/home/ttasys ttasys
# mkdir /export/home/ttasys
# chown ttasys:ttaserv /export/home/ttasys
# passwd -l ttasys

Check if the user accounts are setup correctly:

# su ttaserv -c "/usr/bin/id -a"
uid=101(ttaserv) gid=100(ttaserv) groups=100(ttaserv)
# su ttasys -c "/usr/bin/id -a"
uid=102(ttasys) gid=100(ttaserv) groups=100(ttaserv)

Install the SSGD package:

# cp tta-4.40-907.sol-x86.pkg.gz /tmp; cd /tmp; gunzip tta-4.40-907.sol-x86.pkg.gz
# pkgadd -d /tmp/tta-4.40-907.sol-x86.pkg

To complete the installation and select options (port, etc), run /opt/tarantella/bin/tarantella start - configuration may take a while...

Once SSGD is installed (I chose installing it /opt by default) you can use:

# /opt/tarantella/bin/tarantella status
# /opt/tarantella/bin/tarantella start
# /opt/tarantella/bin/tarantella stop
# /opt/tarantella/bin/tarantella security start

The security start requires a valid security license and a SSL certificate (you can create a self signed certificate using OpenSSL then import with SSGD).

To add license keys, type:

/opt/tarantella/bin/tarantella license add

Once SSGD is installed and started, just navigate any Java enabled browser to http://yoursite.yourdomain:selectedport and you're good to go :-). Use "Administrator" and the root password to login. (Use regular system accounts for non-administrative purposes. Oh, and secure SSGD by using Zones).



Be sure to check the documentation on docs.sun.com:
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/SSGD_4.2

PersonalAlpha - Alpha CPU Emulator lets you run OpenVMS or Tru64 UNIX on your PC

I already told you about SIMH, the VAX emulator, now it's time to look at a working Alpha emulator (there is another one I know of that works, but it's rather expensive and intended for development purposes). This means you can run OpenVMS or Tru64 UNIX right at home, on your PC :-).



PersonalAlpha is a Alpha emulator that can run OpenVMS or Tru64 right on your i386 desktop machine.

You can use 128 MB of emulated Alpha memory, 1 Ethernet adapter, VT-terminal emulation and 4 disks.

Minimum requirements: A Windows machine, 1 GHz CPU, 1 GB of memory(512 MB will run with performance penalty), 1 Ethernet adapter and 4 GB of free disk space.

Now all you need to do is join the DECUS society (or Encompassus) and get yourself that free OpenVMS hobbyist kit and you're good to go :-).

Also, check out Virtutech Simics.


Various links and resources to other Alpha emulators / simulators /whatever:
http://www.simplescalar.com/
http://www.yuba.is.uec.ac.jp/~kis/SimCore/functional.htm
http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/users/tullsen/smtsim.html
https://systems.cs.colorado.edu/DistributedSoftware/Aint/
http://www.encompasserve.org/DECUServe/DECnotes/VMS/3411.1.HTML
https://systems.cs.colorado.edu/DistributedSoftware/Aint/

My very own DEC minicomputer - sort of

SIMH is a highly portable, multi-system simulator maintained by Bob Supnik, former DEC engineer and vice president. SIMH runs on pretty much anything: UNIX, BSD, Linux, Windows and even OpenVMS. If you're into historic computing, simulation of historic hardware or trying to migrate some really ancient applications, look into SIMH.

SIMH can also be used to migrate old machines to new platforms. For example, you can run VMS/VAX using SIMH on a modern UNIX system (Vienna's city administration still runs some VMS / VAX systems, and has started migrating them via emulation).

You can even run modern operating systems on SIMH - like OpenBSD/vax.

SIMH implements simulators for:

• Data General Nova, Eclipse
• Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1, PDP-4, PDP-7, PDP-8, PDP-9, PDP-10, PDP-11, PDP-15, VAX
• GRI Corporation GRI-909
• IBM 1401, 1620, 1130, 7090/7094, System 3
• Interdata (Perkin-Elmer) 16b and 32b systems
• Hewlett-Packard 2114, 2115, 2116, 2100, 21MX
• Honeywell H316/H516
• MITS Altair 8800, with both 8080 and Z80
• Royal-Mcbee LGP-30, LGP-21
• Scientific Data Systems SDS 940

My very own IBM System/370 Mainframe - sort of

Are you intro retro computing or just want to run a really really obscure operating system (something that SIMH may not handle)? Or just want to brush up on your mainframe skills and run bleeding edge z/OS? Well, you really need to try Hercules then :-).



Hercules is an open source (QPL licensed) emulator of IBM Mainframe computers (System/370, ESA/390 architectures and even the 64-bit zSeries). Hercules runs under Linux, Windows (98, NT, 2000, and XP), FreeBSD, and Mac OS X (10.3 and later).

Hercules emulates the CPU and peripheral device hardware and can run the operating system supplied by the user.



Hercules will run OS/360, DOS/360, DOS/VS, MVS, VM/370, TSS/370 - all IBM public domain operating system, as well as OS/390, z/OS, VSE/ESA, z/VSE, VM/ESA, and z/VM, and even Linux/390 and Linux (SuSE, RHEL, Debian, CentOS and Slackware) on zSeries.

Solaris podcast covers P2V migration using Etude

Sun podcast:

It covers an interesting part of Project Etude, the Solaris 8 Migration Assistant that lets you migrate legacy environments using P2V (physical-to-virtual) technologies.

How the Solaris 8 Migration Assistant allows users to run Solaris 8 environments on machines running Solaris 10

The moving of applications, settings and configuration files with less risk

Why someone would want to migrate an entire OS environment from Solaris 8 to Solaris 10

Handling custom software development

What happens once you install the virtual image environment into a container

Balancing virtualization with security

Brand Z and altering the behavior of containers

Going beyond environment migration to finding economies of scale by compressing multiple containers into the same global zone

Where you would not use Solaris 8 migration

Taking advantage of Solaris 10 features

Details here. Transcript here.

UNIX Deployment Tools - JumpStart, IgniteUX, NIM, KickStart, AutoYaST, FAI

Bare metal recovery and mass deployment tools for UNIX and UNIX-like systems:

On Windows there's RIS, WDS or tools like Ghost, on UNIX platforms we have tools like JumpStart, IgniteUX, NIM, FAI, KickStart, etc. to help with massive deployment of operating systems.

UNIX:

• Sun Solaris - Custom JumpStart and Advanced Installations - The custom JumpStart installation method is a command–line interface that enables you to automatically install or upgrade several systems, based on profiles that you create. The profiles define specific software installation requirements. You can also incorporate shell scripts to include preinstallation and postinstallation tasks. You choose which profile and scripts to use for installation or upgrade. The custom JumpStart installation method installs or upgrades the system, based on the profile and scripts that you select. Also, you can use a sysidcfg file to specify configuration information so that the custom JumpStart installation is completely hands-off.
• Sun Solaris - JumpStart Enterprise Toolkit: provides a framework to simplify and extend the JumpStart functionality provided within the Solaris Operating System.
  
• Sun Solaris Flash Archives (flar) - can be used with JumpStart technology to automate and speed up deployment or disaster recovery.
  
• HP HP-UX Ignite-UX - is an administration toolset that allows: Simultaneous installation of HP-UX on multiple clients, The creation and use of custom installations, The remote recovery of clients, The creation of recovery media.
• IBM AIX mksysb/mkcd/mkdvd: The mksysb command creates a backup of the operating system (that is, the root volume group). You can use this backup to reinstall a system to its original state after it has been corrupted. If you create the backup on tape, the tape is bootable and includes the installation programs needed to install from the backup.
• IBM AIX NIM - Network Installation Management - is an excellent feature of the AIX operating system and is very important for teams or companies that have a need to install or upgrade many RS/6000 machines with the same images at the same time. NIM supports the use of mksysb images. Performing a NIM mksysb installation is faster than performing a NIM rte installation, and with mksysb, you can optionally include other installed software. You can use a mksysb image to install the nodes of a CSM cluster.

Linux:

• RedHat Linux Kickstart provides automation of Linux installation that uses a single kickstart file to install the system on multiple machines.
• SUSE Linux AutoYaST - Automatic Linux Installation and Configuration with YaST2. AutoYaST allows unattended and automated installation. With AutoYaST, administrators can create a consistent baseline configuration for new installations in large or expanding deployments. In addition to AutoYaST, other installation methods include PXE Boot, CD-ROM, NFS, CIFS/SMB, HTTP, FTP, and the Service Location Protocol (SLP), which allows autodetection of install servers. ALICE, SuSEs former auto-installation system was a system built around the auto-installation features that were available with YaST1. In order to be able to use existing ALICE configuration files and resources, a special option is provided in the configuration system will let you convert ALICE configuration files into a control file readable by AutoYaST.
• Debian GNU/Linux FAI - Fully Automatic Installation - is an automated installation tool to install or deploy Debian GNU/Linux and other distributions on a bunch of different hosts or a Cluster. FAI can also be used for configuration management of a running system.
  

BSD:

• Automatic OpenBSD Installation - Jumpstart-style procedure for installing OpenBSD servers
• FreeBSD "JumpStart" Guide - This article details the method used to allow machines to install FreeBSD using the Intel PXE method of booting a machine over a network. Use sysinstall install.cfg for scripting.
• BSD PXEBoot - while not unassisted, BSD systems can easily boot from PXE and install over the network.
  

Tools:

• Cfengine - an adaptive system configuration management engine - is an automated suite of programs for configuring and maintaining Unix-like computers. It has been used on computing arrays of between 1 and 20000 nodes.
  

Windows PE tools, LiveCD, Deployment Tools

Tools that help with Windows Deployment (Imaging, mass deployment, PXE, multicast, LiveCDs, bare metal recovery, disk cloning, "JumpStart" technology, automation tools, etc).

Cool Windows PE Tools:

• Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD - Bart's PE Builder helps you build a "BartPE" (Bart Preinstalled Environment) bootable Windows CD-Rom or DVD from the original Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 installation/setup CD, very suitable for PC maintenance tasks.
• UBCD4Win is a bootable recovery CD that contains software used for repairing, restoring, or diagnosing almost any computer problem.
• WinBuilder - Build customized Windows boot disks like LiveXP, VIstaPE, etc.
• Windows PE 2.0 is the core deployment foundation for Windows Vista.
• WAIK - Windows Automated Installation Kit - Customize and deploy Vista. Here's a guide.
  

Unattended tools, deployment tools:

• nLite - Deployment Tool for the Bootable Unattended Windows
• vLite - Deployment Tool for the Bootable Unattended Windows Vista. Remove Windows Vista components, integrate drivers, tweak, bootable ISO...
• Windows PE is a tool based on Microsoft Windows XP Professional that allows IT staff to build custom solutions, and can run Windows setup, scripts, etc. Provides automation tools, deployment tools, etc.
• WAIK - Microsoft Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) lets you install, customize, and deploy the Microsoft Windows Vista. It lets you perform unattended installations of Windows, create Windows Images with ImageX and create Windows PE images.
  
• Sysprep is a tool designed for corporate system administrators, OEMs, and others who need to deploy the Windows operating system on multiple computers.
• NewSID from Sysinternals changes the computer's Security Identifier to help with disk image cloning to perform mass roullouts of Windows. Alternative to using Sysprep.
• drbl-winRoll is a tool that enables MS-Windows client to accept commands from DRBL server, and it resolve windows hostname, SID duplication problem via using image clone tool at single local LAN.It can also change "workgroup" name via IP/netmask automatically.

Mass deployment, PXE:

• Remote Installation Service (RIS) in Windows Server allows deployment of Windows images via PXE boot.
• Windows Deployment Services (WDS). WDS is the next version of Microsoft Remote Installation Services (RIS). Windows Deployment Services is included in the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) and in Windows Server 2003 SP2. It supports advanced features such as customized images and has Vista support.
• Unattended is an open source Windows 2000, XP and 2003 automation tool (similar to RIS) that also works on Linux and such.
  
• Symantec Ghost Solution Suite provides a corporate imaging, deployment and system management solution.
• Clonezilla is a free partition or disk clone software similar to Ghost.
• Acronis Snap Deploy - Complete PC system deployment solution using disk imaging technology
  
• RIS For Linux - deploy Windows from a *NIX system via PXE boot.
  

Other tools:

• WUD - Windows Updates Downloader