illumos based OpenIndiana

Update 26.02.2011.
There is also a USB image. You can use it, quite conveniently, with dd tool on Linux or with OpenSolaris USB Live creator on Windows written some time ago by Hiroshi Chonan.
To write it to USB stick with dd, you have to prepend a special header, which you can download here. Just do:

wget http://dlc.openindiana.org/isos/2G.header
wget http://dlc.openindiana.org/isos/148/oi-dev-148a-x86-20110223-1.usb
cat 2G.header oi-dev-148a-x86-20110223-1.usb >> oi-dev-148a-x86-20110223-1-header-prepended.usb
dd if=./oi-dev-148a-x86-20110223-1-header-prepended.usb of=/path/to/your/usb/device (ie. /dev/sdb)

Of course, with OpenSolaris based distributions, you can use /usr/bin/usbcopy from pkg:/install/distribution-constructor

Cheers!
-------------------
And so it happened. OpenIndiana has now published illumos based authority and isos.
Authority: http://pkg.openindiana.org/dev-il/ - based on illumos changeset fe7962c08d1d; the latest changeset in illumos repository.
Isos: http://dlc.openindiana.org/isos/148/oi-dev-148a-x86-20110223-1.iso

Illumost testing build

UPDATE: Installation instructions corrected. Thanx aszeszo for that. :)
Last week I've built packages from illumos sources, changeset cac385f011a3. Project OpenIndiana was kind to set up a repository with packages that you can use to upgrade your OpenIndiana system:

http://pkg.openindiana.org/illumos-experimental/
General instructions follow:

pkg set-publisher --non-sticky openindiana.org
pkg set-publisher -P -O http://pkg.openindiana.org/illumos-experimental/ on-nightly
pkg uninstall entire
pkg image-update -v --be-name illumos-1

Enjoy.

find and symlinks

A pearl of wisdom from today problems: find does not automatically descend into symlinks to directories. You have to ask it to, by using -follow. It turns out that trivia is not widely known at this site.
This has today surfaced with filesystem hierarchy resembling below:

drwxr-xr-x /usr/local/bin/Testing
lrwxrwxrwx /opt/Testing -> /usr/local/bin/Testing

It translates into: /usr/locla/bin/Testing is a directory and /opt/Testing is a symbolic link to this directory. Within this directory lies a file test.t.
A developer was bewildered why, when he cds into /opt/Testing, following find the file:

find . -name test.t

and following does not:

find /opt/ -name test.t

Reason is simple. find, by default, will not follow symlinks to directories. There is an option for that: -follow.

Closed crypto removed from illumos - FLAG DAY

Hi

I paste e-mail from Garrett, which constitutes a flag day for everyone building illumos nightly. Please, read it carefully, as it explains itself nicely:

With my integration of "6 Need open kcfd", there is actually no more
kcfd or signed crypto tarballs. (The necessary code for thread
management is in the kernel kcf. You'll notice new kernel LWPs called
"kcfpoold" in ps -eLf output.) Also, all vestiges of FIPS-140 support
are removed.

This represents a flag day for everyone building illumos.

You must do a full nightly across thsi flag day -- incrementals *will*
break.

You must not have a crypto tarball. (One less thing to download from
Oracle.. yay!)

You *MUST* use the version of nightly in the latest source. It is a
syntax error to try to use the old nightly -- it won't work unless you
have the old crypto tarball, and if you do, the result will not be
functional!

To recap:

* remove crypto tarball if present.
* use nightly from source tree
* do a full clobber build.

Thank you.

- Garrett

How to build illumos guide has been updated to follow this change. Enjoy!

Broken splashimage with illumos boot menu

Due to some misunderstanding, a solaris.xpm have been removed too early from illumos source tree. It results in problems while trying to boot your new illumos boot environment, if you have updated with onu.sh script.
If you happen to have this problem, what you need is modify your grub menu. Mine looks like this.

title os-devel_145
findroot (pool_rpool,0,a)
bootfs rpool/ROOT/os-devel_145
splashimage /boot/solaris.xpm
foreground d25f00
background 115d93
kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B $ZFS-BOOTFS,console=graphics
module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive

What you need to do, is edit it, so it looks like below:

title os-devel_145
findroot (pool_rpool,0,a)
bootfs rpool/ROOT/os-devel_145
kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B $ZFS-BOOTFS
module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive

On somewhat related note, booting to single user mode is done with adding -s at the end of the kernel$ line:

kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B $ZFS-BOOTFS -s

The problem with missing splashimage is known and a bug has been filed.

Illumos building instructions

As far as we know, Oracle has stopped developing OpenSolaris in the open. For those of us, who would rather have Opensolaris become a real openly developed operating system, ptoject illumos came to life. Thanks to Garrett d'Amore et consortes. On the illumos wiki page there is a nice instruction on compiling your own post build 134 illumos source.
Already much work has been put in the source tree to liberate it from dependency on /extra repository and new putbacks arrive all the time.
If you'd like to check it for yourself, here is the link to How to build illumos guide.

Zones delegated administration

To counter my previous entry, this is something that touches Zones also, but is pretty nice feature:
http://static.opensolaris.org/on/flagdays/pages/20100607142839.html - delegated zones administration.
Basically a user or role in global zone can be designated in a zone configuration as a admin resource, thus giving the user/role additional abilities to control zones.
A good example taken from the link above:

           example# zonecfg -z myzone
          zonecfg:myzone> add admin
          zonecfg:myzone:admin> set user=zadmin
          zonecfg:myzone:admin> set auths=login,manage,clonefrom
          zonecfg:myzone:admin> end
          zonecfg:myzone> commit


No, user zadmin can use profiled shell to administer zones.