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Category Archives: operating systems

OpenSolaris 2008.05 on EC2 - Why 32-bit only?

18-Aug-08

Since Sun and Amazon removed the limit on the number of OpenSolaris 2008.05 instances able to run on EC2, I’ve been curious - and a little bothered - by the fact that the 2008.05 AMI is 32-bit only. Curious because OpenSolaris shouldn’t have any issues running on a 64-bit EC2 instance (there are other [...]

Capacity Limit for OpenSolaris on EC2 no more

14-Aug-08

According to a blog post on blogs.sun.com, the capacity limit for OpenSolaris 2008.05 on EC2 has been removed.
The blog entry makes it sound like you no longer need to register with Sun to use OpenSolaris on EC2, but that doesn’t appear to be the case - I only see the AMI in my private instances, [...]

No Luck with a Quick-n-Dirty BFU of SXCE 79 on EC2

25-Jun-08

For grins, I tried a quick-and-dirty BFU of a SXCE 79 instance running on EC2 to the latest nightly build this morning. I roughly followed Ben Rockwood’s BFU instructions and didn’t do anything to resolve conflicts beyond running acr. On reboot, it looks like the system panicked - I presume the reason is [...]

Putting Ubuntu on the Eee PC

22-Jun-08

I finally got around to installing Ubuntu (Hardy) on my Eee PC this weekend. My only regret: That I waited so long to do it.

Reading List, 6/4/2008

04-Jun-08

Ubuntu Netbook Remix - “A ‘remix’ of the standard Ubuntu Desktop 8.04 release to enable it to work better on devices with small screens, such as Netbooks (sub-notebooks).” I’ve been meaning to replace Xandros on my Eee with Ubuntu - it’ll be nice to have this on top of Hardy Heron. (Seen at [...]

Capacity limit on OpenSolaris 2008.05 AMI

04-Jun-08

I missed this: Apparently the OpenSolaris 2008.05 AMI on EC2 has reached a capacity limit. So, while I got Sun’s approval this morning for their OpenSolaris/SXCE.79 on EC2 beta, I don’t get to use OpenSolaris until they add more capacity; SXCE.79 is a nice consolation prize, though.

OpenSolaris and EC2: Control Issues, Anyone?

01-Jun-08

Generally, I’m a fan of Sun Microsystems. For the most part, I like their hardware and their software - and their best products show real innovation and willingness to take risks. I’m also a fan of Amazon’s EC2 product, so the announcement that Sun would be officially bundling OpenSolaris for EC2 was great [...]

Kickstarting CentOS 5.1 - Not from a yum repository any more

15-Feb-08

In the past, I’ve used our local mirror of the CentOS yum repository to kickstart machines booted using PXE; apparently, this no longer works with CentOS 5.1, although it did with 5.0. If you attempt to do so, after the initial PXE boot, you get the following message:

The CentOS installation tree in that directory [...]

Running FreeBSD 6.3 on VMware ESX (Updated)

30-Jan-08

So, you recognize that FreeBSD isn’t officially supported on VMware ESX, but you want to give it a try anyway? Here’s what I did to get it installed, with VMware Tools and using e1000 Ethernet drivers:
Installation was for the most part straightforward - I chose “Other” for the operating system type, and allocated resources [...]