Playing with Ecto some more

I'm trying to get ecto, wordpress, and the other jumble of blogging stuff I have talking to each other. So this post is a test to see if it works.

I post my real stuff here at http://rich.whiffen.org

Cheers!

Time to close this down

I think I'm going to close this down. I haven't written crap since last year. Plus now I have a laptop and can finally use the iBlog tool instead.

So moving on over to rich.whiffen.org

Maybe, Just maybe, I'll actually write some stuff there.

Rich

Sun's Blackbox

Sun announced project blackbox today:
http://www.sun.com/emrkt/blackbox/index.jsp

Excellent idea. Not sure how many people will buy it, but it's an excellent idea. DR and spike capaticy will be it's key markets. They tout some others on the website, but I don't think they'll take off so much. The remote datacenter locations idea is intriguing. The oil rig example, for instance. Questing is, is the container or the bandwidth more expensive? The DR target is a no brainer. I'd bet Sungard and DR-services companies like that buy a few hundred of these. I like it from a spike capacity perspective too. Imagine if your CNN and you know you're about to get creamed from a computing perspective this November for the election... 1-800-sun-0404 to the rescue. Especially with their AMD offerings. 7 racks loaded up with 8-socket/16-core AMD boxes with VMware ESX. I'm giddy just thinking about it.

The comments on digg.com were pretty good.

http://digg.com/design/Sun_to_unveil_Project_Blackbox_Datacenter_in_a_Container

"This is brilliant! Way to go sun. I think I'll purchase one, bury it in my backyard, create a nice little sewer tunnel down to it and really truly work from home"

http://digg.com/tech_news/Photos_Sun_s_Project_Blackbox

"Did they make room for a sleeping bag between the racks?

If so i wonder how many geeks will trade their house in."

And

"Yeah imagine how easy these would be to steal! You know if you happen to have a flat-bed truck with a small crane and some where nice and safe to store it.

Heh - good idea though, it's kind of like a really large blade(tm) for the internet. Just connect a bunch of these together and you're good to go."

Slashdot had it's usual gems:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/10/17/135214.shtml

"One week ago, Jonathan Schwartz (CEO of Sun) declared the death of the datacenter [sun.com], as discussed on Slashdot [slashdot.org].

Now they've put in a box for burial?"

My apologies to the comment writers, I'm to lazy to attribute or link directly....

Revisiting what I said about Grids last year

Last year I said that Grids would be huge... in ten years and I still think I'm right. Two more articles that kind of agree with me:
Byte and Switch: Gridding My Teeth
Byte and Switch: Enterprises Still Not Sold on Grid

They say things along the lines that I was trying to say last year. No one is buying it yet. The SDLC isn't there yet to support it. People aren't willing to trust the 3rd party with their data, etc..
Anyway, 9 years and counting.
Cheers,
Rich

Got more than 1 digg!

How's this for little joys in life: I submitted a digg story that got more than 1 digg! Holy crap! Its only 7 diggs, but that's 6 more than 1 Whoo hoo! I'm a diggin' maching!

Here's the post:
http://rwhiffen.blogspot.com/2006/08/video-hijacking-macbook-in-60-seconds.html#links

and the digg:
http://digg.com/security/Video_Hijacking_a_Macbook_in_60_Seconds_or_Less

Where' s my $1,000 a month?

Video: Hijacking a Macbook in 60 Seconds or Less

Here's the video to go along with the previous "hijacking" story. Interesting to note, they attack a 3rd party driver, but don't mention if the built in wi-fi is also susceptible.

read more | digg story

The other articles about this mention the reason they choose the Mac as the target:

Still, the presenters said they ultimately decided to run the demo against a Mac due to what Maynor called the "Mac user base aura of smugness on security."

"We're not picking specifically on Macs here, but if you watch those 'Get a Mac' commercials enough, it eventually makes you want to stab one of those users in the eye with a lit cigarette or something," Maynor said.

(quoted from: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/08/hijacking_a_macbook_in_60_seco_1.html
)

Yeah... I also think they chose the mac because of the 'ho-hum, another windows sploit...'
factor. It's just plain sexier to say you remotely popped a mac.

On top of that, they attacked a 3rd party card, not the built in wifi.... Smells fishy to me.

Cheers,
Rich
TAGS: macbook apple security

Solaris ZFS on intel imac via parallels

Started playing with Solaris ZFS on Solaris 10 for x86 today.

I have a solaris 10 x86 install on parallels VM on my intel iMac and I wanted to see if I could create a ZFS filesystem using two 1gb virtual hard disks. Parallels only allows 4 virtual IDE devices and since I have the DVD and the boot drive, I only have 2 devices to play with. But it would appear that the devices aren't easily used.

Jul 26 22:59:31 solaris scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@1 (ata1):
Jul 26 22:59:31 solaris timeout: abort device, target=0 lun=0
Jul 26 22:59:31 solaris scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@1 (ata1):
Jul 26 22:59:31 solaris timeout: reset target, target=0 lun=0
Jul 26 22:59:31 solaris scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@1 (ata1):
Jul 26 22:59:31 solaris timeout: reset bus, target=0 lun=0
Jul 26 22:59:31 solaris gda: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@1/cmdk@0,0 (Disk1):
Jul 26 22:59:31 solaris Error for command 'read sector' Error Level: Informational
Jul 26 22:59:31 solaris gda: [ID 107833 kern.notice] Sense Key: aborted command
Jul 26 22:59:31 solaris gda: [ID 107833 kern.notice] Vendor 'Gen-ATA ' error code: 0x3
Jul 26 23:00:06 solaris scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@1 (ata1):
Jul 26 23:00:06 solaris timeout: abort request, target=0 lun=0
Jul 26 23:00:06 solaris scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@1 (ata1):
Jul 26 23:00:06 solaris timeout: abort device, target=0 lun=0
Jul 26 23:00:06 solaris scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@1 (ata1):
Jul 26 23:00:06 solaris timeout: reset target, target=0 lun=0
Jul 26 23:00:06 solaris scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@1 (ata1):
Jul 26 23:00:06 solaris timeout: reset bus, target=0 lun=0
Jul 26 23:00:06 solaris gda: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@1/cmdk@0,0 (Disk1):
Jul 26 23:00:06 solaris Error for command 'read sector' Error Level: Informational
Jul 26 23:00:06 solaris gda: [ID 107833 kern.notice] Sense Key: aborted command
Jul 26 23:00:06 solaris gda: [ID 107833 kern.notice] Vendor 'Gen-ATA ' error code: 0x3

A search of the parallels forum tells me I'm not alone.
http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=3221&highlight=solaris+10

sigh....

Well, if I get it to work, I'm going to use:
docs.sun.com: Solaris ZFS Administration Guide
To play with it.... Here's hoping.

Tags: Solaris ZFS Parallels