Samba 3.5.5 update for Solaris 10

Samba 3.5.5 is finally available for Solaris 10 in a supported way, SPARC patch 146363-01 and X86 patch 146364-01 updates the bundled Samba to version 3.5.5.

It should be available for download from support.oracle.com if you have a support contact. If you do not have that you could try out Solaris 11 Express which has the same version and also has native CIFS support in the kernel. A short summary of CIFS support in Solaris 8 through Solaris 11 Express presented at SNIA SDC 2010 can be viewed here: JiriSasek-CIFS_Map_Solaris.pdf.

Update: There is another patch available updating SAMBA to 3.5.8 with also fix at least one serious issue that prevents renaming of files on a ZFS filesystem. The new patch is 119757-20.

Solaris Samba update
Solaris 10 update 10 update

Introduction to Virtual Networks

Project crossbow, the virtualized network stack is a gem of [Solaris11|Nexenta|OpenSolaris]. Jeff Victor has written a good three part introduction to the gains of virtual networks and examples on to how to use Crossbow together with zones, well worth a read:

Virtual networks part 1
Virtual networks part 2
Virtual networks part 3

Oracle/Fujitsu expands SPARC partnership

Oracle and Fujitsu are expanding their partnership to help the development of the next generation of M-series servers. This will be done by increasing the joint engineering effort of the SPARC platform. Sale teams from both companies will also cooperate in selling SPARC Enterprise servers.

This gives credibility to why the roadmap had M-series represented even in 2014, it looks like we are going to see some large SPARC iron the next few years.

Fujitsu and Oracle Strengthen Decades-Long Relationship

illumos news

There have been some news surrounding the illumos project, the community developed and maintained version of the OS/Net consolidation and future code base for Nexenta and OpenIndiana.

First Nexenta have hired three known developers from the OpenSolaris community. The development process have also been changed to become more scalable so that more developers can participate. This is done by having Advocates accepting and reviewing patches instead of giving commit access to all contributors:

"So now, rather than developers pushing changes directly to our mercurial tree, going forward Advocates will take patches from Contributors (either via hg export or patch file), verify that the content of the patch is what was reviewed, and will then be responsible for integrating those changes into our shared master."

It's encouraging to see that two of the three persons behind DTrace is active in the illumos project, Bryan Cantrill posted this to illumos-devel a few days ago:

"For whatever it's worth, I have some DTrace patches and some user-land SMF patches to send to whomever is most appropriate. (Both of these add new features, FWIW.)"

Welcome to new Nexentians
Change to illumos contribution process

Solaris 11 Express VBox images

If you want to try Solaris 11 Express without dedicating hardware or even spend time on an installation there are now VirtualBox images available for download from Oracle. The images have the VirtualBox guest additions pre-installed.

Instructions and download links are available at The Observatory

Second OpenIndiana release

With the upcoming christmas and new year I had totally missed that OpenIndiana have had their second release, oi_148 which is based on the last publicly available OpenSolaris source. The OpenIndiana project is part of the illumos foundation and will use the illumos ON source in a later release.

Here are the release notes and download the images here.

Solaris 10 update 10 ZFS refresh

The internal builds of Solaris 10 8/11 (update 10) have had another refresh of the ZFS code. It is now be synced with snv_153 which is a even later build than Solaris 11 Express 2010.11 is based on. Also related to storage this update will support the LSI SAS 2308 HBA and the LSI SSS 6200 Solid State Storage.

Enable cases for s10u10 tech refresh 2

Solaris 10 update 10 update