I used psnup (in psutils package) from blastwave.org to print multiple pages per sheet on Solaris. Here is the command I used to print:
psnup -d -2 original.ps converted.ps lp -dprinter_name converted.ps
-d option adds a line around the border of a page. -2 option specifies 2 pages per sheet.
If you want, here are additional tricks you can do.
From now on, save some trees next time you print.
Here is a cpustat command that Amjad K. shared for tracking L1/L2 cache hit/miss on Solaris x86 Opteron. A special thanks to Amjad for this tip. Here is the command:
%cpustat -c IC_itlb_L1_miss_L2_miss 1 5
%cpustat -c IC_itlb_L1_miss_L2_hit,IC_itlb_L1_miss_L2_miss
If you are interested to track other events for Opteron, see the following listing. A special thanks to Chien Y. for this pointer.
Recently, a friend of mine asked me about setting up Studio 11 in Solaris within VMWare. So, I took some time to build an image for him.
Solaris Express, Developer Edition is easier to install than Solaris 10. It’s almost as simple as keep clicking Next or Enter key until you are done. 
I ran the installation in VMWare Server 1.02 environment. I assume you already familiar with VMWare and skipped a few VMWare setup steps. If you need help with that, read step 1 – 15 in this blog entry. Solaris Express, Developer Edition 02/07 requires 768MB of RAM. So make sure you allocate enough for this VM. Here are the steps:
1. Choose “Solaris Express, Developer Edition” at the boot menu.
2. Choose 1 for Solaris Interactive
3. Press F2 to continue (i.e. keep US-English Keyboard Layout)
4. Press Enter to continue
5. Press Enter to continue
6. Enter 1 for English
7. Select your time zone and click Next
8. Click Next to accept the time
9. Enter root password twice and click Next
10. Check Accept and click Next
11. If you don’t want localization, click click Next. Else, check any additional localization you want before click Next.
12. Click Next to accept the default disk for partition customization
13. Click Next to accept the default primary partition configuration (i.e. the first partition should be Solaris with all the space you allocated for it.)
14. You may either keep the default partition or change it anyway you like. Here is how I did mine: Choose c1t0d0 node and click Modify button. Remove /export/home partition. Specify 4GB for swap (this is necessary if you want to install Java ES 5 later. If not, specify 2 x the amount of RAM you allocated for the VM. If there are still extra space left after specified new swap space, add rest of the free space to root (/). Click OK and then Next.
15. Click Install Now.
16. Click Reboot Now at end of the installation.
On your first boot, you might want to login to the console as root for the system to automatically go through “post install setup”. You might want to also install VMware Tools. If you need help with that, see Appendix A in this blog entry. I had to comment out unwanted extra large resolution listings in /etc/X11/xorg.conf in order to keep the resolution at 1024×768. Perhaps this could be a minor RFE for VMWare team.
This version worked for me. Just download it and extract. No fancy tweaks.
If wasn’t for the online documentation and forums, I would not have complete my installation/configuration as successfully as I did. As a token of appreciation, I am sharing some pointers and notes on my experience. Hope this will be helpful to you too.
Over the weekend, I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) Server on AMD64. Why server? I thought that I wanted to take advantage of the “support for hardware facilities that speed up the use of virtual machines“. So I inserted the CD and started the installation. The installation was fairly smooth and fast. I had to spend a bit of time to get used to the new disk partitioning menu interface and re-partition a few times before I get the software RAID configuration I liked. The installer offered the option for the user to select if she/he wants to install LAMP and other server components, which is what was expected out of a server edition of the OS.
What I didn’t realize was that folks at Ubuntu.org was really serious about building a server distribution that only installs what it needs to run as a server, which was the right thing to do. When I rebooted my machine to load the OS, I only saw a text console, no desktop environment was installed. So, I said to my self, “Great, now I’ll have to install that myself!?” This was actually no big deal for me because I am comfortable enough to do that manually with the help from other online HOWTO documentations. This actually reminded me of days when I was installing Gentoo from source. That was a long but rewarding process. I figured out what package I needed or wanted from various guides (for example, this one) and build a list of packages to tell the package management system (apt-get for Ubuntu) to batch install them while I take a break doing something else.
Configure the system after installed the packages became a bit more challenging. For example, GNOME Display Manager (GDM) would complain that Human theme not found. So, I tweaked /etc/X11/xorg.conf to load another theme that I installed already. Next, X would not load because Nvidia driver installation binary added references to font files that didn’t exist and attempted to load a tablet input device driver (wacom). I commented out these references and that did the trick for me.
The next challenge I had was trying to enable Smart Common Input Method (SCIM) to load in GNOME. The first HOWTO didn’t work for me. Fortunately, the second HOWTO got SCIM to load correctly. I also was able to configure 32-bit Flash Player 9 with 64-bit Firefox/Mozilla. I wished the same library wrapping technique would work for Java plug-in. I even tried to run 32-bit Mozilla. Before I get to try the 32-bit plugin, Firefox complained that it can’t find 32-bit SCIM. Until the JVM team/Java community create a 64-bit version of the plug-in, I guess am out of luck and will have to do run 32-bit Mozilla in a VM image to work around the issue. Even VMWare Server 1.02 can’t install without issues. Fortunately, this HOWTO save me for the day.
All-in-all I am happy with my setup for now. Drivers works beautifully. I wish the missing 64-bit software support (Flash Plug-in, Java Plug-in, etc.) and WMA codec support would be less painful or unfriendly on AMD64. If I had known better, I would install the desktop edition rather than server edition for my use. It should be much easier to install sever kernel or VM optimized kernel than setup a desktop environment. I’ve learned my lesson.
While trying to configure Java plug-in for Firefox on AMD64/Linux, I realized that only 32bit version of plug-in is available. So, here is a RFE for the JVM team/community: Please do add this feature.
gastronome ‘gas-tr&-”nOm
Noun
a lover of good food; especially : one with a serious interest in gastronomy (which is the art or science of good eating)
Source: www.m-w.com
The best way to configure HTTPS/SSL on Sun Java System Application Server 8.1/8.2 is using the command line. The command you should use is asadmin create-ssl. See also this documentation.
Special thanks to Bernhard T. for the tip.
Thanks to Tom D. for pointing me this blog entry on ZFS tuning. The trick documented in this blog entry can be very useful for people who use ZFS on direct-attached storage arrays.
Here is a few tips that I gave to another person today:
* Do not add a new fs that masks existing system folder. For example, do not add a new dir at /usr/bin. Doing so will cause the masking of /usr/bin with another empty directory you might specify. This means that Solaris can’t
find Bourne shell executable and therefore can’t give you a shell when you attempt to login.
* Try to use shutdown instead of halt (i.e. zlogin test-zone shutdown). This will allow Solaris to go through a clean shutdown process.
Hope this helps.
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