Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The SUN has set, for the last time!

On January 27th at approximately 9:50am, Oracle completed it's acquisition of Sun Microsystems for 7.4 billion all cash. The price is quite a steal considering Sun's history of innovations. It is also personally quite sad to see one of the greatest engineering companies in my lifetime, like a beautiful descending Sun-set, descend beyond the horizon.

I was introduced to SunOS over 15 years ago when I had to take an electrical engineering class (Feedback Control Systems) that required running simulations on MatLab. They were the early days of the world wide web and the beginning of an engineering love/career. My internships, from there on were Sun and Solaris related. One beautiful summer, I went to The Herff College of Engineering in Memphis to learn and port a Cochlear model written in C by Dr. T Wilson, to Java. Without plans to do so, I made a career on something I learned and loved, as a sidebar tool. That tool was engineered by Sun Microsystems and for this I humbly say, THANKS for the great ride and memories, ... thanks to everyone who made Sun Microsystems what it became, is, was. It will be missed ...


Friday, January 15, 2010

EON ZFS Storage min and nginx web server

In a previous post, lighttpd was used as a add in web server for the EON ZFS min storage (NO HTTPD) users. Another web server option for the ZFS storage (NO HTTPD) image is nginx. This post will show how to easily add HTTPD service using the nginx web server. 

Prerequisite(s): A storage pool must be created and a binary kit must be installed. The binary kit is needed because it contains libpcre, a dynamic library needed by nginx.

Let's get started adding a nginx web server, to our ZFS min (NO HTTPD) storage image. First, get the pre-built nginx version 0.8.32 here. I have also included compilation notes under the nginx section in case you wish to compile and add other features on your own. Transfer the nginx-0,8.32,tgz file to the storage pool via CIFS share, sftp or USB. Here, I start with the file located in /tmp and a storage pool named abyss. Substitute your zpool name for abyss.
cd /abyss
gzip -dc /tmp/nginx-0.8.32.tgz | tar -xf -
Now let's add the automation entries to /mnt/eon0/.exec. Also, execute the commands to create the necessary symlinks. These entries align paths entered in nginx.conf
(cd /usr ; ln -s ../abyss/nginx .)
At this stage, the nginx web server is ready to run, but feel free to customize the /abyss/nginx/conf/nginx.conf and generate your own /abyss/nginx/conf/cert.pem, /abyss/nginx/conf/cert.key file. OpenSSL (part of the binary kit which is a pre-requisite for this post) would be needed to generate your own self signed cert file (cert.pem, cert.key). To start and automate the web server, run and add the following to /mnt/eon0/.exec.
/usr/nginx/sbin/nginx -c /usr/nginx/conf/nginx.conf

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

EON ZFS Storage min and lighttpd web server

If you run one of the EON ZFS (NO HTTPD) storage images that do not include a web server this post will show how to easily add HTTPD service using the lighttpd or nginx web server. 

Prerequisite(s): A storage pool must be created and a binary kit must be installed. The binary kit is needed because it contains libpcre, a dynamic library needed by lighttpd.

Let's get started adding a lighttpd web server, to our ZFS min (NO HTTPD) storage image. First, get the pre-built lighttpd version 1.4.25 here. I have also included compilation notes under the lighttpd section in case you wish to compile and add other features on your own. Transfer the lighttpd-1.4.25.tgz file to the storage pool via CIFS share, sftp or USB. Here, I start with the file located in /tmp and a storage pool named abyss. Substitute your zpool name for abyss.
cd /abyss
gzip -dc /tmp/lighttpd-1.4.25.tgz | tar -xf -
Now let's add the automation entries to /mnt/eon0/.exec. Also, execute the commands to create the necessary symlinks. These entries align paths entered in lighttpd.conf
(cd /usr ; ln -s ../abyss/lighttpd .)
(cd /var ; ln -s ../abyss/lighttpd .)
At this stage, the lighttpd web server is ready to run, but feel free to customize the /abyss/lighttpd/etc/lighttpd.conf and generate your own /abyss/lighttpd/etc/server.pem file. OpenSSL (part of the binary kit which is a pre-requisite for this post) would be needed to generate your own self signed cert file (server.pem). To start and automate the web server, run and add the following to /mnt/eon0/.exec.
/usr/lighttpd/sbin/lighttpd -f /usr/lighttpd/etc/lighttpd.conf