Solaris 11 Destkop installation

Simple step to install a desktop (Gnome) on Solaris 11 As root run the following command

# pkg install solaris-desktop

If the download of the packages and installation is successfull you would see an output similar to below

           Packages to install: 370
       Create boot environment:  No
Create backup boot environment: Yes
            Services to change:  14

DOWNLOAD                                PKGS         FILES    XFER (MB)   SPEED
library/gnome/gvfs                   147/370   33288/53216  277.9/547.3 -92191B
...

PHASE                                          ITEMS
Installing new actions                   84196/85615
...
Installing new actions                   85615/85615
Updating package state database                 Done 
Updating image state                            Done 
Creating fast lookup database                   Done 

Reboot the system and you will now be presented with the desktop login dialog

Changing a hostname on FreeBSD

In /etc/rc.conf change the value of the hostname to the desired name.
For example:

hostname="fbsdtest"

Restart the system

Future of Tape Storage

Tape storage technology has been receiving serious competition from disk storage technology for the past few years. Decrease in disk drive prices has been a major contributor. However tape still remains the number one choice for data protection. This however is changing in favour of disks. However can tapes be entirely eliminated from a backup environment ?

A few factors still favor tape:

Investment in tape infrastructure:
Tape technology has been around for more than 30 years now. Administrators
have built policies, budgets etc. around tape technology. While newer
procurement will involve disk technologies, the existing tape infra will be
hard to discard

Price:
While disk prices have lowered significantly over the last few years, the
price per gigabyte is still higher than that of tape.

Longer lifespan:
Tapes have no moving parts. This makes them easier to move and ship around.
Also tapes have a longer shelf life of many years

The shift however is definitely towards disks and over the years we should see fewer new tape installations. However elimination of tape from your infrastructure is hard to visualize

Kernel lock profiling on FreeBSD

Ensure that the kernel was compiled with

options  LOCK_PROFILING

To start lock profiling

sh# sysctl debug.lock.prof.enable=1

To stop lock profiling

sh# sysctl debug.lock.prof.enable=0

To display the statistics

sh# sysctl debug.lock.prof.stats

To reset the stats

sh# sysctl debug.lock.prof.reset =1

man LOCK_PROFILING for more options and to understand the output of the stats

Remove any compiler optimization flags (-O2 etc) to get the correct file and line numbers in the output