Solaris 10 10/08 (U6) ZFS Root Installation Tip

If you wish to install the new Solaris 10 10/08 using ZFS for its root file system, you might not see it in GUI installation mode.

That’s why you need to install it using Text/Console mode. Just choose number 4 in the first prompt of the installation process.

In one of wizard step, you are prompted either using ZFS or UFS, just choose ZFS instead. Then, fill the pool name, choose the size of root pool swap and dump area, and how you want to store /var.

xVM with Marvell Yukon Ethernet Driver

I have days problem with enabling my Marvell Yukon Ethernet Driver (in may case, I’m using 88E8056) working with Sun xVM VirtualBox and xVM in either Solaris 10 or Nevada B80/B93. I used driver comes from Marvell, I have test 2 versions of drivers, but no luck. All version, when I issued dladm show-dev command. it always indicate that the status is UNKNOWN.

After searching around just realize that xVM needs GLD v3 network drivers that is not provided by Marvell, this link is very useful for me, so I replicated from that site become newer version:

• Obtain ON source here and extract it
• Obtain driver source here (in this case I’m using version 2.6.1, or you can get newer version) and extract it
• Make sure that skge (from Solaris/OpenSolaris Installer) or yukonx (from Marvell) were removed
• Do this thing:

$ gzcat myk-2.6.1.tar.gz | tar xf -
$ cd myk-2.6.1
$ rm Makefile.config
$ ln -s Makefile.config_gld3 Makefile.config
$ vi Makefile.config

Edit the line like this (appropriate with your ON source extracted location):
ONUTSDIR = /root/Download/opensolaris/usr/src/uts

• Build and install the driver (in this case I’m using GCC)

$ export PATH=$PATH:/usr/sfw/bin
$ gmake
$ su
# gmake install
# ./adddrv.sh
# dladm show-link
LINK CLASS MTU STATE OVER
myk0 phys 1500 up --

Now you can start your Sun xVM VirtualBox and xVM network bridge is working fine…

Me, OSUG in Jurnal Indonesia

Last week, suddenly I contacted by a girl that finally introduced her self as reporter from Jurnal Indonesia. It’s a nice conversation though. You can look at the news here:

http://jurnalnasional.com/?med=tambahan&sec=PROFIT&rbrk=&id=57860&detail=PROFIT

The lady’s name was reminding me to the Indonesia’s President’s doughter in law

Improving your Firefox Performance with HTTP/1.1 pipelining

There is a way to improve your Firefox browser performance with enabling HTTP/1.1 pipelining. Please refer to Firefox’s FAQ for further information about that. Please keep in mind that not all web servers are capable with this particular feature.

Here are step-by-step enabling http pipelining in your Firefox browser:

• type about:config in your address bar
• set network.http.pipelining become true
• set network.http.proxy.pipelining become true (if you use proxy server)
• set the valid integer number of network.http.pipelining.maxrequests, the value range is 1-8, the default value is 4.

Middle Mouse button in Firefox and Swiftweasel as “Paste”

Long time ago, back to 1980’s, X11 define that middle mouse button is paste, you can read the detail in here. As opposed to Microsoft standard uses middle mouse button as navigation key.

Firefox/Swiftweasel in Unix/Linux implemented the same nature of X11. If you have problem with this nature, you can simply disable the feature.

• From your browser, put about:config in address bar
• Search middlemouse.paste and change the value to false