williamhathaway.com

I just tried registering a Solaris 10 11/06 machine using sconadm and here is the resulting output:

/usr/sbin/sconadm register -a -r /tmp/regprofile
sconadm is running
javax.management.remote.JMXProviderException: Connection refused
at com.sun.cacao.rmi.impl.CacaoRMIConnectorProvider.newJMXConnector(Caca oRMIConnectorProvider.java:415)
at javax.management.remote.JMXConnectorFactory.getConnectorAsService(JMX ConnectorFactory.java:415)
at javax.management.remote.JMXConnectorFactory.newJMXConnector(JMXConnec torFactory.java:307)
at com.sun.scn.client.MSCConnection.doMscConnect(MSCConnection.java:155)
at com.sun.scn.client.MSCConnection.mscConnectWithKeystorePassword(MSCCo nnection.java:67)

(about 30 lines snipped out by me)

at com.sun.cns.basicreg.BasicReg.<init>(BasicReg.java:100)
at com.sun.cns.basicreg.BasicRegCLI.main(BasicRegCLI.java:523)

How about something more helpful like:

ERROR 68: Can’t connect to the fuzzbat service on server server99.

Please check that the fuzzbat service is enabled with ‘svcadm enable fuzzbat; svcs fuzzbat’.

While stack traces are helpful to developers, they can largely obfuscate the problem to the end-user and certainly don’t provide guidance on what the likely problem is and what the next step should be. If you want to print stack traces, at least try to provide some actionable information to the end user.

(My error was apparently generated because I had renamed the machine, but hadn’t bounced some services. After I rebooted, the sconadm command worked fine.)

I ran in the Harrisburg Area Road Runners’ Club race today along the river front in Harrisburg. HARCC sponsors informal races every Sunday morning at 8:30am that rotate around the metro Harrisburg area and cover a variety of distances. All runners are welcome, you don’t have to pay any fees or be a member to run in these races. Today’s race was a choice of either 2 or 5 miles. I choose to do the 2 mile course since I wanted to get a feel for my conditioning, but also wanted to make sure I’d be able to recover quickly to get in some solid training the rest of the week. The conditions were close to perfect: 45 degrees and sunny and a very flat out-and-back course.

I felt really strong for the first half of the race and it was refreshing to be able to see the HARCC “elite” runners not too far ahead when I got to the mile marker/turnaound point (although in fairness they were all running the 5 mile distance so they were pacing appropriately for the longe distance). I could definitely feel fatigue coming on during the 2nd half, but was trying really hard not to let the pace drop off much. I was able to push hard during the 2nd mile and my final time was 13:00, which I was really happy with. I plugged the result into the McMillian Running Calculator and it looks like I’m tracking well for where I want to be for the half-marathon race in just over a month. It is nice to see those boring evenings on the LA Fitness treadmills are paying dividends.

Mile 1: 6:35, sustained heart rate: 175

Mile 2: 6:25, sustained heart rate: 182

Estimated VDOT: 47.63

I bought a 15″ MacBook Pro in November running OSX 10.4 and have been loving it. Over the past 10 years I’ve used laptops with Windows 98, 2000, and XP, various flavors of Linux, as well as Solaris Express. In the past, I’ve always struggled with the trade-offs between software availability (especially things like VPNs), general ease of use, and reliability. Now that Macs are running x86 chips and there is efficient virtualization software (like VMWare or Parallels), I feel like I finally have a platform where I am generally happy. OSX has a lot of built-in software that is really well integrated and in general I feel like the OS doesn’t get in the way of what I want to do. I have added the following additional software:

• Firefox
• Adium – for OTR encrypted conversations over AIM
• QuickSilver – crazy cool keyboard interface to search and fire off actions
• Smultron – handy text editor that is a more feature rich than the bundled one
• NeoOffice – OpenOffice port to use the native OSX graphical interface
• VMWare Fusion (beta) – lets me run Virtual Machines (I’m currently using it for Solaris and CentOS)

In no particular order here are some of the base OS features that I like: solid suspend/resume, global in-file search, first-class terminal support, ease of application install/uninstall, smart roaming network profiles, great printer and PDF integration, fantastic multi-media support (quicktime, iTunes, photo management).

Did my first 10 mile training run on the treadmill today at LA Fitness. I ran the first 8 miles at a 9:13min/mile pace and then mile 9 at 8:00min/mile (hopefully around my race pace) and mile 10 at just under a 7:30min/mile pace. There is a Harrisburg Area Road Runners Club 5 mile race next Saturday which I’m planning on entering to help gauge my fitness. Having a big goal like the half-marathon has been really helpful in keeping me on track with training.

With the new patch restrictions Sun has put in place, if you want to use smpatch on a system you will need to register the system with Sunsolve (even if you trying to access the free patches). The command that smpatch directs you to use is updatemanager, which only offers a GUI interface. if you want to register a system from the command line, you can perform the following steps (You will need to create an account on sunsolve.sun.com first)

1. Create a registration profile
2. Register the system
3. Use smpatch to download and install patches

root@t2000 9# cat > /tmp/regprofile
userName=your_sunsolve_username
password=your_sunsolve_password
hostName=your_machines_hostname
subscriptionKey= (put a value here is you have a Sunsolve contract that covers the machine)
portalEnabled=false
^D
root@t2000 10# chmod 400 /tmp/regprofile (if you don't chmod the file the next step will complain)

root@t2000 11# /usr/sbin/sconadm register -a -r /tmp/regprofile

sconadm is running
Authenticating user ...
finish registration!

root@t2000 12# smpatch update
119254-36 has been validated.
119963-08 has been validated.
120753-03 has been validated.
118676-03 has been validated.
…

I wanted to find a neat topic for photography and while web surfing stumbled across ferrofluid, which is basically very small iron filings suspended in an oil which reacts strongly to magnetic fields. I ordered a ferrofluid kit consisting of a nut, a bolt, and a small bottle of ferrofluid from an educational supply store and spent a few hours playing. Here is my favorite result:

I also created a photo set showing the progression of the ferrofluid as it was dripped onto the nut and bolt.

The only real downside of playing with ferrofluid is that since it is oil-based it can be a real pain to cleanup properly.

There is a course at UC Berkeley called Physics for Future Presidents that is really interesting. You can listen to it for free via audio or video podcasts and the professor uses lots of neat examples that bring to life a variety of topics. The class uses very minimal math, so if don’t be scared away by a fear of complex equations.

Here are some neat stories/facts that I picked up while listening to the classes:

• A chocolate chip cookie has a lot more energy by weight than dynamite
• The solar energy that can be captured in a square meter is approximately 1 horse power
• There are sound channels in the atmosphere and ocean which carry sounds thousands of miles, allowing for some really cool uses like rescuing downed pilots or detecting nuclear tests

The San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the class.