Monthly Archives: November 2006

Minimum Memory for OpenSolaris ?

Posted on by

Dear Lazyweb,

Alec has been bugging me to try OpenSolaris with ZFS on something (a small laptop he suggested) but I’ve run into problems. My only spare box is an ancient Olivetti Netstrada, about 10 years old with 4 (yes, four) Pentium Pro 200MHz CPUs and a whopping (for its time) 256MB RAM.

Problem is that whilst Linux happily boots and runs on it the two OpenSolaris LiveCD’s I’ve tried (Nexenta and Belenix) both fail. Nexenta says that there’s not enough RAM to unpack the RAM disk (not surprising as their site says it needs 512MB to run) and the Belenix one just leaves the screen in a mess of pretty colours as soon as Grub tries to run the loaded kernel.

Solaris Kernel Crash on Olivetti Netstrada quad 200MHz PPro, 256MB RAM boat anchor

I then tried to boot the Nexenta install CD (they claim it can run in 256MB, though no mention of its installers needs) and got the same pretty pattern of colours when the kernel executed. 🙁

I do have one other PC, the only problem is that’s got even less RAM and the CD drive doesn’t appear to want to open any more, grrr..

Why You Should Use SSH

Posted on by

I’m here at SuperComputing 2006 (SC06, booth #1938) and whilst wandering around during the exhibition setup yesterday (Sunday) spotted that the folks running the NOC (( Network Operations Center )) for the conference (called SCinet) are running Bro to capture passwords that are going across the network in the clear and publishing them on a set of screens on their booth.

They’re also up on the web here:

https://scinet.supercomp.org/security/passwords06.html

I like these folks style.. 🙂

Bro clear-text password capture at SC06

Australian Government Upsets Google

Posted on by

The ABC is reporting that there is draft Australian copyright legislation (( legislation here thanks to KatteKrab )) that could make it a requirement for all commercial search engines to contact the copyright holder of every web page/site in Australia and obtain permission for their site to be spidered for indexing.

This is because apparently the proposed legislation will only

protect libraries, archives and research institutions but leave commercial entities like Google out in the cold.

Google’s submission is quoted as saying:

“Given the vast size of the Internet it is impossible for a search engine to contact personally each owner of a web page to determine whether the owner desires its web page to be searched, indexed or cached,” Google submitted.

“If such advanced permission was required, the Internet would promptly grind to a halt.”

I disagree, the Internet wouldn’t grind to a halt, but we might find that Australian based sites would drop off the larger worlds radar as they were expunged from search engines. I don’t know how the legislation would impact sites like mine which whilst being written by someone in Australia (( OK, I’m in LA at the moment, but I’ll be back soon )) are hosted overseas ?

Another great idea from the Australian Liberal Party

Posted on by

OK, so global warming is going to bleach most of the Great Barrier Reef if business as usual carries on in the world. So the Australian Liberal Party (currently in power) has come up with a really great idea to protect part of it – the Federal Tourism minister wants to cover part of it with a shade cloth!

Federal Tourism Minister Fran Bailey says using “shade cloth” over parts of the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland could protect it from the harmful effects of global warming.

This is based upon the fact that a scientist noticed that shaded areas of the reef currently have more vibrant colours. However, my guess is that this won’t be enough to save the polyps from the rising water temperatures which will be the main issue. Sure, the shade will reduce local temperatures relative to exposed areas, but that won’t stop a general trend in temperature rise from the effects of the surrounding water.