One problem I had left since my latest post my sound was not working properly.

But with a little googling I got it fixed via this post, with many thanks to the writer. Although the sound card of my machine is a little different:

makker-laptop:~ # lspci|grep Audio
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)

makker-laptop:~ # cat /proc/asound/card0/codec#*|grep Codec
Codec: SigmaTel STAC9205
Codec: Conexant ID 2c06

His solution did work for me:

• Edit /etc/modprob.d/sound:
  

options snd slots=snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel model=laptop
# u1Nb.bHIrUAw8+c5:82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel

• Reboot

OpenSuse 11.1 looks great. But installing is in my experience not so evident as with 10.3 or 11.0.
Luckily if Google is also your best-friend, it is a doable job.

Last weekend I decided to upgrade my OpenSuse. Main reason was that I hoped that with catching up to the latest release I would be able to connect to the new wireless router at work.

But it got me in pretty much trouble. So in the end I reinstalled it instead of upgrading it.

Then I could not get the nvidia drivers to work on my D830 with nvidia quadro nvs 135.
I got it working by:

1. init 3
2. start yast2
3. install nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-default and x11-video-nvideoG02 (delete possbile G01 counterparts, but install the nvidia configuration tool also)
   
4. sax2 -4 -m 0=nvidia
5. init 5

Then you can use sax or the nvidia configuration tool.

I struggled also with installing VMWare 2.0.1. Running vmware-config.pl was failing with compiling the vsocket module. I solved that with the patch given here (Thanks "snakedriver").
But the console would not pop-up in firefox.
Although I did a reinstall of OpenSuse, I just copied my Firefox profile back from the backup. In that the vmware console plugin resides from my former installation. You would say that it should not matter, since I used the same installation. But by removing it and installing it from my newly installed, local, vmware server I got it working.

Since a few weeks I restarted using Logmein. I'm familiar with this tool since a few years, but since the lack of need I stopped using it.
But it is very handy for remote controlling (Windows) servers over WANs. Solutions like VNC require you to be on the same subnet of the server you want to control. Or you'll have to edit all the routers in between to have the traffic routed correctly.

With Logmein you add computers to your inventory. Doing that will install a set of services on your host that will connect independently to the Logmein servers. Then you'll able to logon to your Logmein-account and navigate to the particular computer you want to control. And then you can click on Remote control, what will open a screen displaying (eventually) your desktop. So no matter where your server is, you can control it. We have some demo/training-pc's and they can be moved by colleagues or taken to a demo or training-event. And like others I have a father and a father-in-law that I support in their computing.

To remotely control pc's with your browser, Logmein has 4 techniques:

• ActiveX
• Mozilla (using a Firefox add-on)
  
• HTML (sending over bitmaps)
• Java

I use OpenSuse 11 x86_64. And ActiveX won't work on my machine. There is a Linux Firefox add-on in beta, but it requires a 32-bit Firefox. So also no option to me. HTML is very slow and Java did not work either. So until today I started a windows VM under VMware to use Logmein. But today I reviewed my java-installs on my machine. Just recently Sun released a 64-bit version of the Java 1.6 browser plugin. Before that you needed the OpenJDK browser plugin on 64-bit Linux. Apparently they're not completely compatible. That is, Logmein did not work with OpenJDK. Today I uninstalled OpenJDK. I had allready installed the Sun java plugin but the OpenJDK plugin was preferent. Now Firefox loads the Sun java plugin and with that one Logmein works!

So if you want to control remote windows servers on 64-bit OpenSuse (or another 64-bit Linux) try uninstalling OpenJDK and install the Sun 1.6 JDK or JRE.

Now we wait until Logmein also supports remotely controlling Linux servers...

I did not pay attention to it until today, but since Oracle 11g accounts have by default a limited valid period for password. By default password expire causing a password change upon logon. This is very inconvenient for databases running as a repository for applications like for example the SoaSuite.
I found after a little googling a solution answer for example here. The solution is by simply disabling the password expiration on the default profile:

ALTER PROFILE DEFAULT LIMIT PASSWORD_LIFE_TIME UNLIMITED;

Today I got a mail from Charles Philips, President Oracle. Now I don't think I'm one of his favorite peers to ventilate information about his strategies. Probably many of you also got this mail.

In it he elaborated on the Sun Microsystems acquisition that I wrote about this monday. He sees Java and Solaris as the "Key software assets" in this aqcuisition. Besides of course the hardware. Since the whole Fusion Middleware Stack, and important parts of Oracle's Enterprise Software Portfolio, is build in Java, Oracle ensures the continue innovation and investment in Java technology. For the benefit of the customers and the Java community.

He also mentions that "The Sun Solaris operating system is the leading platform for the Oracle database. With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle can optimize the Oracle database for some of the unique, high-end features of Solaris. Oracle is as committed as ever to Linux and other open platforms, and will continue to support and enhance our strong industry partnerships." So, it seems that Solaris becomes the preferred platform again. With right after that Linux and other "open platforms". Will Oracle then stop supporting Windows? Or is Windows also considered to be "open"? I'm sorry, I'm really not that negative about Windows. I just like to make a little fun of it.

On www.oracle.com/sun you can read more about what Sun means to Oracle and their Customers and Partners. There you can find a pdf with a general presentation. In that it is stated that Oracle "Sustain Solaris as an industry standard OS for Oracle software".

I really hope that Oracle's acquisition is good for the future of Sun as a brand, that this works. It could bring interesting new features and functionality. It's fun to phylosofing about these things. And I wonder how it looks to see the Oracle logo in the installers of Java, besides the Sun and OpenOffice logo's.

If I stick my head out of my window and hang out far enough without falling down, I might see one of the about 5 Sun buildings in my city. It's a 5 minutes walk to the nearest trainstation and just at the other side of the railway there is the Sun Campus in Amersfoort. There's also another location a little further away. Today I heard on the radio the announcement that Oracle is to buy Sun Microsystems, so in the near future I might see the Oracle logo on top of these buildings. If Oracle is not going to close them. I found the annoncement also here (in Dutch).

As often there are multiple perspectives on this story. I was actually a bit surprised at first. Although I understand the acquisition. The most obvious assets are:

• Java, which is called by Larry Elision the most important softwareproduct Oracle ever bought.
• Solaris, a Unix based operating system, that used to be the prefered platform. I believe that it was the platform on which Oracle first released their products. Now that position is taken by Linux. A nice asset after Oracle released about 2 years ago their Enterprise Linux based on RedHat's Open Source parts.
• Suns servers, Oracle becomes a hardware vendor!
  

For Java there is another thing. Last year Oracle bought BEA Systems. And with that acquisition Oracle acquired also JRockit, another Java Virtual Machine implementation. With Sun, it has two major JVM-implementations. You can ask how open Java is when two of the main implementations is owned by a large Software Vendor. I'm not a doom-thinker and pestimistic in these things. But certainly this is a problem for many java-guru's and open source developers.

Shortly after I joined Oracle, now more than ten years ago, Larry Ellison announced the Raw Iron project. Oracle right on the hardware. So no OS in between (or at most a thin OS layer, but Oracle did not have an OS back then). When Oracle started with Oracle Enterprise Linux this vision started to become true a little. Last year on Oracle Open World, Oracle announced the Database Machine. Developed together with HP amongst others. Another step closer to the Raw Iron vision. But the idea has never been so close as now, when Oracle buys Sun. Oracle was always relying on others for hardware. Now Oracle is a competitor to HP, IBM and others.

Another thing that I found amusing is the following. About three and half years ago (oct. 2005), Oracle acquired the Finish company InnoBase/InnoDB. "Innobase Oy is the developer of InnoDB, the leading transactional storage engine for the MySQL open source database." It was in the time that SAP was looking at MySql. Oracle was besides a competitor also the leading database provider for SAP. And SAP one of the largest (if not the largest) reselller of the Oracle Database.
To me it seemed that InnoDB was of very little importance for Oracle. If I remember correctly the reason was that Oracle wanted to invest in Open Source solutions. But I felt it was a merely a stroke against SAP. With Sun Oracle also gets MySql. Thus the (I think) largest Database in Open Source solutions is then owned by the largest Database vendor of the world. I believe that is another problem for most open source developers.

A last thing I almost forgot is the StarOffice Suite. The suite that is open-sourced into OpenOffice. I wonder how long it takes before Oracle decides that the employees should not use MS Office anymore and removes it from the Oracle Base Image (the standard installation on Oracle laptops). With Oracle Microsoft will loose one of the largest Office customers...

Of course there is a lot more to say about it. But these are my first thougths about this remarkable acquisition in the IT world. I think it's even the most remarkable at the moment.

I think it is for about a year now that VMware launched the next release of their free Server product, release 2.0. Until now I stuck with the 1.0.x release. There were a few reasons for that. One of the main reasons was that the difference in footprint is 400MB! Where 1.0.x is a little over 100MB in size, for 2.0 it is around 500MB. And I find that quite a lot.
But also the interfacing is different. The new release does not have a console, but is completely browser based. It comes with a Tomcat based (if I'm not mistaken) UI.

Last week I had to install it on two 64-bit Windows Vista machines. And it turned out that the 1.0.x releases were not supported and did not function on these machines. I thought I read somewhere that there were also issues with VMware Server 2.0 on Vista x64. But it turns out that 2.0 is supported on those environments and so I just tried.

I found that installing VMware Server 2.0 on Windows Vista x64 is a piece of cake. And it runs fine. There are a few minor differences with 1.0.x. The main is that itn works with so-called datastores to get to the Virtual Machines. You can't browse on the servers filesystem directly. But you can add other datastores that point to a certain location on the hosts filesystem.

Today I installed VMware Server 2.0.1 also on my laptop with OpenSuse 11.0 x86_64. It went succesfully too. For Linux there is a seperate RPM for 64-bit hosts, like mine.
You can do a "rpm -Uhv VMware-Server...." to install without uninstalling the old vmware server. It does an uninstall of the old version during the install of new one.
On Linux you still have to run vmware-config.pl after that. At the end it asks for a management user. By default this is your root user, but you can give up another OS user.
On Windows it is apparently the user that also installed it.

After connecting to the Server UI, you can connect with the management user. The password is the same as the OS password of the user.

With the 1.0.x release of VMware I had problems with my wireless adapter. It did not support bridging the virtual ethernet-adapter. It could be solved by recompiling the VMware player 2.0 VMNet module into the 1.0.x server. This lead in some kernel compile errors that were solvable (see elsewere on this blog). But the VMNet module of VMware Server 2.0 does not have this problem. So wireless bridging works out of the box.

The Console opens after clicking on the console tab of a Virtual Machine. It opens in a new window that you can maximize to full-screen. For firefox it installs an add on on the first access. The console window has a bar on top side of the screen to access the most of the screen functions. I find that very handy. More convenient than the 1.0.x console in full screen.

I tried a youtube movie of Jean Michel Jarre (my favorite) and sound works fine too.

Again I'm impressed with this great Virtualization Tool.