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Sun Microsystems IT

OpenSolaris Code Released 362

Posted by CmdrTaco from the today-is-the-day dept.
njcoder writes "C|net's news.com.com has reported that Sun Microsystems is releasing parts of the OpenSolaris code today licensed under the OSI-approved CDDL . The release consistes of over 5 million lines of code for the base system OS/Net (kernel and networking). OpenSolaris is based on Solaris 10, the current version of Sun's Unix Operating System. Back in January, Sun released the code for DTrace, a dynamic tracing tool for analyzing and debugging kernel and userland events. DTrace is one of the big features in Solaris 10. Some other highlights include the GRUB bootloader, SMF (Service Management Facility) which replaces init.d scripts, it starts up processes in parallel for faster boots (7 second boot on a dual opteron workstation I think that was the setup) as well as providing features for automatically restarting. OpenSolaris provides support for x86/x86-64 processors as well as Sparc. The Blastware guys are working on Polaris which is an OpenSolaris port to PowerPC. Sun has been working on opening Solaris for over a year now. The OpenSolaris project started with a pilot group of Sun and non-Sun users. During the pilot program a lot of info including screenshots could be found on various OpenSolaris member blogs. (My favorite is Ben Rockwood's blog). Teamware is the source code management system Sun uses for Solaris and OpenSolaris. Which was designed by Larry McVoy (now of BitKeeper) while he was at sun. No word yet on if Teamware will be available for OpenSolaris developers or not. Sun also uses CollabNet for it's Open Source project websites so that might be a possibility as well."
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OpenSolaris Code Released More

OpenSolaris Code Released

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  • Rock on! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:21AM (#12814141) Homepage Journal
    YES! This completely rocks! Check it out:



    Combined with an Open Source/Forkable license, what more could a Solaris Geek want? Get out the party hats people, because this has got to be THE most awesome thing Sun has ever done!

    (I'm excited, can you tell? *Happy Dance* *Happy Dance*) :-P

    Now for the bad news. Sun has taken the tack of encouraging users to build their own system. That is a good thing. Unfortuntely, all builds require a system to bootstrap the build. At the moment, the only option is Solaris Community Edition [sun.com], a non-Torrented download. (Boo!) That being said, I don't think we'll have to wait too long for the OSS community to fix that little issue. :-D

    • Re:Rock on! (Score:3, Informative)

      by njcoder ( 657816 )
      Also check out Jim Grisanzio's blog [sun.com]. It explains a bit about what's been going on with the pilot program.
    • It's nice, but what are the advantages of (Open)Solaris over say, OpenBSD, which I could also afford?

      Seriously, why use OpenSolaris rather than an existing open-source OS? I'm sure there are some ideas that can be borrowed...

      • Re:Rock on! (Score:3, Funny)

        by m50d ( 797211 )
        Proper CD recording support because the makers understand the need for backwards compatibility, and don't go around breaking APIs just because they feel like it.

        • Re:Rock on! (Score:3, Funny)

          by bankman ( 136859 )
          Proper CD recording support because the makers understand the need for backwards compatibility, and don't go around breaking APIs just because they feel like it.

          Joerg Schilling [linux.com], is that you?

      • Well, assuming that applications written for Solaris will also work on OpenSolaris, that would be the reason you would use this over something else.

        I wonder if Oracle 10g or 9i runs on OpenSolaris.

    • Sun Compiler License (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Noksagt ( 69097 )
      When will the Sun compiler be released under the CDDL? Currently, Sun Studio is under a different license. [opensolaris.org]

    • Re:Rock on! (Score:3, Informative)

      by grahamlee ( 522375 )

      Unfortuntely, all builds require a system to bootstrap the build. At the moment, the only option is Solaris Community Edition, a non-Torrented download. (Boo!) That being said, I don't think we'll have to wait too long for the OSS community to fix that little issue.

      Sadly, that might not necessarily be the case - OpenDarwin has been around for five years and you still need a Darwin system [including some non-free tools] to bootstrap the build. But as Solaris Express is free as in non-costworthy, I don't

    • Re:Rock on! (Score:5, Funny)

      by kbmccarty ( 575443 ) <(kmccarty) (at) (gmail.com)> on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @04:33PM (#12817801) Journal

      Now for the bad news. Sun has taken the tack of encouraging users to build their own system.

      Countdown to Debian GNU/Solaris in T minus 10... 9...

  • let the driver flood gates open! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by emptybody ( 12341 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:22AM (#12814147) Homepage Journal
    now maybe we will see some driver development for all the cool hardware that is out there?

  • Well, does it?

  • opensolaris is a trap (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    this code is a trap to scuttle linux development. sun will be looking to sue coders who they feel copy concepts and code from opensolaris into gpl'd codebases. do not look at the opensolaris code is you are a linux coder or code in gpl'd software. protect yourself and your code.

  • Zfs? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by astrashe ( 7452 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:24AM (#12814179) Journal
    Is zfs included?

    • Re:Zfs? (Score:5, Informative)

      by pedantic bore ( 740196 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:37AM (#12814361)
      According to the feature list (http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/documenta tion/opensolaris_guide/ [opensolaris.org]) ZFS is not part of the current release.

      Justing reading the stuff that is released, however, is a joy.

    • Why are people so anxious to try this? Sun never had a history of getting any x86 OS in good working order. The x86 version of solaris 7, 8, 9 were absolutely horrible.

      If they couldn't do it with a full strength company then, what makes you think they can do opensolaris with half the company laid off?

      • Dennis Clarke, who runs blastwave.org, posted an interesting comment on Solaris x86 here [sun.com]. He's been having success with Solaris on x86 since 2.5.1

        It seems that Solaris 2.9 wasn't going to come out for x86 because that was after Sun had bought Cobolt. Then a bunch of happy Solaris x86 users got Sun to change their mind.

        I have had a Solaris 9 x86 server since about the time it came out and it runs just fine.

  • I'm unfamiliar (Score:3, Interesting)

    by udderly ( 890305 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:26AM (#12814196)
    Since I'm mostly unfamiliar with Solaris, what are the main advantages it has over Linux, BSD and Windows? Just curious.

    • Re:I'm unfamiliar (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:45AM (#12814458)

      what are the main advantages it has over Linux, BSD and Windows?

      Well Solaris is +3 vs. undead, while Linux, BSD and Windows are: +1 icy blast, +2 flaming and -4 cursed respectively.

    • Re:I'm unfamiliar (Score:5, Informative)

      by ahl_at_sun ( 853337 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:56AM (#12814559) Homepage
      That answer depends on who you are. If you're a system administrator Predictive Self-Healing is going to raise the reliability of your systems and make management scads easier; SMF makes configuring the system a snap and lets you identify problems quickly and easily; Zones lets you partition the system without the management overhead of a bazillion OS instances; DTrace lets you understand everything that's happening on your system -- and who's responsible for the latest crap-up; Solaris Process Rights improve security and administrative overhead by splitting up the traditional binary notion of the super user. If you're a developer, you'll love DTrace -- I can't imagine developing with out it; the p-tools, truss(1) and mdb(1) are also great. If you're an end-user, well, Solaris's gnome sucks as much as anyone's gnome -- go use Mac OS.
      • Theres Enlightenment being packaged for Solaris according to one of the developers for Open solaris. http://www.cuddletech.com/blog/ [cuddletech.com]

        Maybe then it wont be so bad for the end user either.

      • Re:I'm unfamiliar (Score:3, Interesting)

        by flaming-opus ( 8186 )
        you just said mdb = great. Now I know you're just making it up. Mdb is just about useless when the core file is generated on a system other than the one you're debugging with. (always the case if the binary crashes at a customer site, rather than the test-lab) We just went through a lot of effort to convert from using sun CC to compiling with gcc, not because gcc produces better code, but so we could get the right symbols for using gdb.

        mdb is the biggest pain in the world; gdb isn't perfect, but it's a lot

        • Re:I'm unfamiliar (Score:5, Interesting)

          by ahl_at_sun ( 853337 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:09PM (#12815422) Homepage
          Yes! That was true, but not as of Solaris 10. The reason core files needed to be on the same machine that produced them was because they didn't include all the necessary information. In particular, they didn't include read-only data. Their genesis was around debugging on a given machine and in that case, dumping the read-only sections is kind of pointless. This was a frustration that affected every application developer who cared about post-mortem analysis; we in Solaris really care about debugging from first failure.

          In Solaris 10, I did some work [sun.com] to make the content of core files adjustable and added text (aka code) to the default. Now when you get a core file, you can debug it on any other system regardless of the patch level, libraries installed or the version of your application that was running. Using coreadm(1M) you can adjust the content to, say, add the symbol table to the core dump or omit the gigantic ISM segment that you don't care about for.

          So, yes, mdb(1) had some limitations in the past -- we've tried to address them in Solaris 10. If you have other issues preventing you from using mdb(1), post a comment on the OpenSolaris [opensolaris.org] site.

          I thought I was going to have to find a shill to ask that question... "Sir, we've never met before, have we?"

    • Re:I'm unfamiliar (Score:3, Informative)

      by rubycodez ( 864176 )
      For Linux and FreeBSD and common packages/ports on opteron and ultrasparc there's still 64 bit cleanliness issues, and there's BSD issues running on Ultrasparc III and above chips (as in, can't do it). FreeBSD is still trying to implement fine grained SMP spinlocks which don't sieze up under heavy load & to get fine grained locks into tcp stack. Solaris builds backward compatibiity into libraries that Linux dosen't have, which is why when installing proprietary app binaries there's all kinds of neat

    • Re:I'm unfamiliar (Score:4, Informative)

      by bdgregg ( 744616 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @12:05PM (#12814660) Homepage
      Probably the most clear and undenyable feature that is unique to OpenSolaris/Solaris is DTrace [sun.com].

      DTrace lets us examine just about anything, with minimal impact on the system. It's way cool, and other OSes have nothing that is close (for details covering the Linux Trace Toolkit (LTT), DProbes, K42 and Kerninst see the USENIX paper [sun.com].

      DTrace solves disk I/O by PID, network activity by PID, elapsed and on-cpu times for syscalls, libcalls and user funcs, and much more.

      DTrace is great if you are a programmer with a little kernel knowledge, but if not you may find the DTraceToolkit [brendangregg.com] helpful - it is a collection of ready-to-roll scripts.

      For a list of many OpenSolaris features with screenshots, see the OpenSolaris Guide [opensolaris.org].

  • Solaris can't compete (Score:5, Funny)

    by jhfry ( 829244 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:26AM (#12814209)
    Solaris doesn't stand a chance against *BSD or Linux... their logo sucks! Come on... seriously... what's more cuter than a Penguin or a Daemon?

  • so.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by brickballs ( 839527 ) <{brickballs} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:28AM (#12814223) Homepage
    automatically restarting

    windows automaticay restarts for me all the time. I get a quick flash of blue and then bam! restart.

  • Persona non-grata. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:28AM (#12814237)
    "Teamware is the source code management system Sun uses for Solaris and OpenSolaris. Which was designed by Larry McVoy (now of BitKeeper) while he was at sun. No word yet on if Teamware will be available for OpenSolaris developers or not."

    Remember folks. You hate Larry.
    • Why should us folk hate Larry? Linus doesn't hate Larry McVoy [theregister.co.uk]

      If you peice the stories together, it seems that Larry let the linux community use a free bitmover client and provided the back end for free. The only stipulation was that they don't try to reverse engineer his product. Someone at OSDL, where Linus was employed at the time started working on reverse engineering BitKeeper. Larry tried to get him to stop but when he didn't he retracted the free version. Somehow the free version was costing Bi

  • For those of us who don't like torrents (Score:3, Informative)

    by m50d ( 797211 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:33AM (#12814296) Homepage Journal
    http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp [sun.com]. Requires registration though.

  • openoffice... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by torrents ( 827493 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:33AM (#12814297) Homepage
    if this project is half as successful for sun as openoffice is i'm sure they'll be happy they decided to open it...
    • Only problem, GPL. They knew that if Solaris was released under GPL it'd be dismalteled and incoorperated into Linux due to more free software developers being comfortable with Linux. Sun would lose it's branding ability.

      With OOo it was diffrent. There was nothing to dismatle staroffice into at the time. Sun could maintain the code and not worry about losing control and branding.
      • OO.o was released in July 2000. KOffice was started in 1998.

        As a point of clarification, OO.o is under the LGPL and the SISSL. Obviously LGPL is GPL-compatible, but SISSL isn't (though it is still free).

        This is in contrast to the CDDL of OpenSolaris, which is also GPL-incompatible.

  • Great. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Telastyn ( 206146 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:33AM (#12814299)
    Perfect. An open source OS backed by a well known name. The perfect stepping stone to get hesitant PHBs to accept an open source OS without a big company behind it into their shops.
    • What a strange thing to say. If this was 1999 I could see your point, but give me a break. Red Hat, Novell, and IBM are all well known names by now. Sheesh.

  • SMF vs InitNG? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by yerdaddie ( 313155 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:34AM (#12814319) Homepage
    I'm curious about how the SMF boot parallelization code stacks up against the InitNG project [thinktux.net], which does the same for Linux. Anyone had experience with both?
  • Jörg Schilling [blogspot.com] will be so happy. He can finally release SchilliX [berlios.de], the Linux lookalike that runs cdrecord the way god intended it to.

  • Apps Here! Get Your Apps Here! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Zemplar ( 764598 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:36AM (#12814348) Journal
    Ckeck out Blastwave.org http://www.blastwave.org/ [blastwave.org] for some torrents, apps, guides, and other goodies.

    Additionally, SunFreeware http://www.sunfreeware.com/ [sunfreeware.com] is another great site for getting applications.
  • Spokeman from SCO annonced today that they are currently closely examining Solaris source code for any "infringing" SCO's Linux code.

    When asked about the legitmacy of the action, however- "This IS the property of SCO, that's final...no we don't have proof for that, but we are working on that."

  • Can either an "Editor" or the Poster please RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:37AM (#12814363)
    "7 second boot on a dual opteron workstation I think that was the setup"

    You don't have to think, just RTFA, where you can see that it was a single AMD64 setup.
    Still, I guess that would be too much trouble for the simple gain of being correct ?

  • Is the monopoly finally being smashed? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @11:42AM (#12814431)
    I believe we are seeing the monopoly finally begin smashed to pieces. Besides the Linux and *BSD alternatives, we now have open-source x86 Solaris at our disposal, as well as the upcoming release of yellowTAB Zeta (based on BeOS). And with Mac OS X coming to the x86, things may really start to get interested. Just as people thought the x86 PC operating system market would start to stagnate, we have all sorts of innovation coming our way!
  • my Duron 850 boots Fedora 1 in about 30 seconds. Granted, it doesn't boot database, web or other servers at startup and doesn't have a bloated JVM installed as well, but still...

    It's a friggin Opteron and the substitute for init.d scripts should work faster than that!
  • This is a very good thing.

    Some of us have been waiting for true POSIX compliance for some time (woohoo shared memory mapped files!)

    Though Sun gave pretty sweet deals for Solaris (think I got intel for $100), opening it up means a lot more people can be programming for it, specifically where it was weak (drivers).

  • I quote:

    "Sun Microsystems claimed that you caused $80m of damage by illegally downloading the source code for Solaris.

    It's a bullshit figure. What was really unnerving was that to demonstrate to the public and the courts that I was such a bad guy, the only things they could show were financial damages.

    What I was essentially doing is stealing source code to analyse it for vulnerabilities. I was moving it because I wanted to be on my target's computers for as little time as possible.

    So what the government
    • So basically he's saying any open source OS is not worth shit? Bet that will go down really well with RMS and company.

      Just because Sun decided to make $80m worth of software OSS doesn't mean it has no value. And breaking and entering to get/test software doesn't really speak well for one's "good intentions". Now that it's OSS, feel free to get and analyze it any way you like. Doesn't change the fact that it was breaking and entering to get it back in the day.

  • It seems to me that every now and then (in recent years) Sun will come out supporting Open Source movement and then short time later put its foot in its mouth by coming out swinging *AT* Open Source movement. It leaves me wondering if burried somewhere in the legalese of their license agreement is some nasty clause that will just screw Open Source movement over at a later time.

  • Way cool. When my PPC PB 15" is ready to be replaced with a new Intel one, I can repurpose it with a Polaris load. Very nice.

    • That's assuming it gets ported to Apple hardware. The only thing I saw on their web site was the statement that the Pegasos would be the standard reference platform. Which is probably a logical choice, given that at the moment, it's the only affordable commodity PPC platform with a future.

      I wish there was a little more information regarding the project on their web site. I'm interested in following this project myself.
  • Wow, I've been waiting for this one. And I was also one of the first 5000 on the website, so I scored myself a nifty free opensolaris tee as well :)

    Go Sun! :)

  • Larry McVoy did NOT design Teamware (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NatteringNabob ( 829042 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @02:02PM (#12816104)
    Larry McVoy designed a prototype called 'NSE Lite' which was based on concepts developed by Eric Schmidt and Bunker Lampson which were incorporated into NSE which was built by a host of people including, but not limited to, Jon Fieber, Marty Honda, Ethan Adams, Terry Miller, David Hendricks, and Jill Foley. Larry McVoy had absolutely nothig to do with NSE or the core concepts of copy-modify-merge except for being an unhappy NSE customer. Glenn Skinner is listed as the patent author for 'smoosh' which is the central technology to both NSE-lite and Teamware. Larry claims that he is co-inventor. I don't know, I was in the NSE group, Larry was in the OS group at the time. Teamware itself was designed and implemented by Ethan Adams, Terry Miller, Jill Foley, Mark Sabiers, Lewie Knapp, Josh Sirota and Mitchell Nguyen. Larry's primary contribution was to complain a lot. Larry is a bright guy, but he didn't design Teamware anymore than Bill Joy designed Unix. He deserves a tremendous amount of credit for sucessfully productizing the technologies invented by the NSE team (and a lot of others) something that Sun, with substantially more resources, was unable to do, but it is an extreme stretch to call Larry the designer of Teamware (even though if Larry thinks so).

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