System News for Sun Users

CRN.com Names the 10 Best Open-Source Products Of 2011

2011-12-21T17:00:00+01:00

The ten best open source products of 2011, as named by CRN.com are these, in reverse order:

Fedora 16
Ubuntu 11.04
OpenStack
Asterisk 10
MySQL 5.6, Beta
Android 3.xx, or "Honeycomb"
Firefox for Android
Linux Mint 12
Ubuntu 11.10
LibreOffice

(Selected by Edward F. Moltzen, CRN)

Using NexentaStor ZFS storage appliance with vSphere

2011-12-16T17:00:00+01:00

Last year, Tomi Hakala wrote an article describing how to use NexentaStor to create an NFS share on a commodity x86 box and make that share available to vSphere. Those steps with version 3.0 are still the same with version 3.1:

Install NexentaStor; obtain a unique key; enter key
Create a ZFS volume
Create a folder
Configure NFS Server (use NFS v3)
Note the mount point in which folder is available to NFS client
Open vSphere Client and mount NAS datastore

NexentaStor 3.x is a major release, with many new features, improved hardware support, and many bug fixes over the older Developer Edition including:

In-line deduplication for primary storage and backup
Free for up to 18 TB of overall raw storage capacity (i.e. sum of all ("raw") disks sizes, excepting logs, caches and spares)
Supports easy upgrade to future Community Edition releases and to Enterprise Edition licenses
Support for user and group quotas
The ability to automatically expand pools

NexentaStor 3.x Community ISO CD images can be installed on "bare-metal" x86/64 hardware. VM installed images are also available.

84 Open Source Companies Ranked By Momentum Index

2011-11-25T17:00:00+01:00

MomentumIndex.com has ranked 84 open source companies with Acquia at the top of the list, followed by talend and Jaspersoft. Others include

Automattic - WordPress.com
SugarCRM - Customer relationship management
Engine Yard - PaaS for Ruby on Rails and PHP
Appcelerator - For rapidly developing native and HTML5 mobile web apps
Kaltura - Open Source Online Video Platform
Alfresco - Enterprise CMS
Nexenta - Open source enterprise class storage solutions based on Solaris

MomentumIndex identifies exposure to cloud computing as responsible for those companies exhibiting the fastest growth.

Open Source Is Not a One Man Band

2011-11-22T17:00:00+01:00

Open source is about very much more than avoiding licensing fees, Simon Phipps contends in his blog Open Source Nurtures Innovation. He argues cogently that absence of the need for an individual or a small group of developers to maintain code libraries (a must with proprietary software) frees writers of software to concentrate on new applications. In the world of open source, " ... instead of being solely responsible for the sustaining of every innovation they add, innovators can contribute their work to the shared code commons and have the sustaining shared by everyone," according to Phipps.

Getting PostgreSQL HA to Work in vFabric Data Director

2011-11-03T16:00:00+01:00

How to set up a one-click HA setting in PostgreSQL's vFabric Data Director is illustrated in Jignesh Shah's blogspot.com post. In some cases the PostgreSQL monitor can correctly diagnose the situation and restart the database. In others the virtual machine itself will need to be shut down, enabling the vCenter Server to start the database on another server. In this instance, DHCP addresses may well be affected, which Shah solves by relying on the virtual hosts format to allow users to find their intended database without regard for which server it is running on.

Phipps Explains the Cadre Behind LibreOffice to The Document Foundation Conference

2011-10-19T16:00:00+01:00

Simon Phipps, formerly of Sun Microsystems and Oracle, now founder of the startup ForgeRock and director of the Open Source Initiative, recently addressed The Document Foundation's first LibreOffice Conference, where explained that Open Source as a movement does not require a "white knight" to foster and sustain it. Instead, he maintained. Open Source calls for " ... developers willing to collaborate, and a community willing to contribute both time and money." Fortunately, LibreOffice was brought about by the efforts of both factions.

15 Essential Open Source Tools for Windows Admins

2011-09-26T16:00:00+01:00

Despite what you may have assumed, there is an alternative to Microsoft when it comes to enhancements for Windows, and these enhancements are free and olpen source, so why call Redmond. J. Peter Bruzzese a number of these offerings in his InforWorld article "15 Essential Open Source Tools for Windows Admins." Here's a list:

Wireshark
AMANDA
MailArchiva
Exchange 2010 RBAC Manager
Core Configurator 2.0 for Server Core
AutoSPInstaller for SharePoint 2010
OCS Inventory
UltraDefrag
Nmap for Windows
Zenmap
PowerGUI
Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) Tool
ClamWin Antivirus
Virtual Router
VirtualBox

Microsoft also hosts CodePlex, a site for open source projects.

Bossie Awards 2011: The Best Open Source Desktop and Mobile Software

2011-09-07T16:00:00+01:00

Here are the categories for which 2011 Bossie Award winners have been named:

Best Open Source Software
Best Open Source Desktop and Mobile Software
Best Open Source Application Development Software
Best Open Source Data Center and Cloud Software

VirtualBox won with this endorsement: "A free-to-use and open source virtualization solution for desktop environments, VirtualBox changed hands from Sun to Oracle when the latter bought the former. That hasn't changed the pace or tenor of its development, though, and the last few revisions -- including a major update to the left of the decimal point -- have continued to pile on reasons to ditch commercial alternatives. For anyone who even dabbles in virtualization, it's gone from useful to must-have."

The Long Road To (Software) Freedom

2011-08-31T16:00:00+01:00

Simon Phipps has devised a seven-step "path to software freedom" that he lays out for readers as follows:

Open source as enemy
Damage containment
Embrace and extend
A change of executive direction
Exploratory opening
General opening
Embrace of software freedom

Sun, Phipps says, was at stage 6 when the acquisition occurred. Where is your organization on the spectrum?

Open Source, Java, and Oracle - Cracking the Code

2011-08-04T16:00:00+01:00

Steve Harris's keynote address at OSCON is very capably summarized in Tori Wieldt's blog "Open Source, Java, and Oracle -- Cracking the Code," in which Wieldt writes that Harris said the company [Oracle] does not have a top-down strategy around open source, but rather individual lines of business, which have open source strategies of their own to meet business needs. Concerning Java, which resides in the Oracle Middleware line of business, Oracle's priority, Harris said, is to keep Java vibrant with increased investment in platform, continuing to move towards free and open, and to improve support for the Java developer community. Finally, Wieldt blogs, in a nod to Oracle's view of how the open source community perceives the company, Steve Harris introduced the humorous "Perceived Open Source Threat Level" graphic and said "We're not where we should be, but it has gotten better and it will get better.' The ever-shifting pointer hovers uneasily between GUARDED and ELEVATED.

Turns Out Oracle Did Not Become the Proprietary Villain Certain Segments of the Press Predicted

2011-01-12T17:00:00+01:00

Turns out Oracle is not the villain some segments of the IT press suggested it would become once Sun was safely within its fold. Fernando Cassia, for one, disputes those alarmist headlines so common during the acquisition negotiations (Oracle Might Kill OpenOffice; Oracle Will Kill MySQL) in TechEYE.net. Most of the open source projects that came through Oracle's door with Sun are still vital and ongoing, Cassia writes, noting the apparent exception of OpenSolaris.

Open Source Survey: Oracle Products Top Several Categories

2010-12-22T17:00:00+01:00

The funeral seems to be dragging on interminably in the opinion of some, but yet another myth surrounding Oracle's acquisition is nevertheless being laid to rest: Oracle's plans will not involve open source. Well, results of the 2010 Linux Journal Readers' Choice Awards suggest otherwise. Given that Oracle solutions took first place in four categories and given the strong statement of support voiced by Edward Screven, Oracle's chief corporate architect: ("Supporting open source is important to Oracle and our customers, and we continue to invest in it."), it looks like open source has a vibrant future under the Oracle umbrella. The four winners?

Best Office Suite: OpenOffice.org
Best Single Office Program: OpenOffice.org Writer
Best Database: MySQL
Best Virtualization Solution: VirtualBox

Linux Journal Readers' Choice Awards 2010

2010-11-15T17:00:00+01:00

12,000 readers of The Linux Journal voted for their Linux favorite apps. Android was selected as Product of the year and three projects closely associated with Oracle/Sun -- OpenOffice.org, MySQL, and VirtualBox -- won in their categories. The announcement of winners has details of the winners and runners up.

OpenDJ from ForgeRock

2010-10-12T16:00:00+01:00

Do you remember Sun OpenDS project? Good. Then perhaps you will be happy to learn that it has been resurrected as OpenDJ, a new member of the ForgeRock product family. Simon Phipps reports this information in his Wild Webmink blog "New ventures: OpenDJ, FossAlliance."

An Attempt at Defining Open Standards

2010-10-06T16:00:00+01:00

In his Oracle.com blog Trond-Arne Undheim addresses the issue of "Defining Open Standards," challenging the notion that arriving at a definition of open standards is impossible. In fact, he goes as far as to describe open standards as "pure goodness."

Oracle Cites Recent Actions as Commitment to Open Source Community

2010-09-28T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle says it is committed to the Java platform and open source developer communities, and reports evidence of this by its proposed new code contribution to the Eclipse Foundation. The Sapphire project is a proposed open source project under the Technology Container Project. Oracle also cites the continued advances being made to the Java platform and GlassFish server as well as its new releases of a broad range of developer tools as further testament to its dedication to the open source and developer communities.

OpenIndiana Launched

2010-09-16T16:00:00+01:00

The Illumos Foundation this week launched OpenIndiana. Described as a continuation of the OpenSolaris operating system, OpenIndiana aims to be an alternative to Oracle Solaris 11 and Oracle Solaris 11 Express and is expected to be binary and package compatible with both of these Oracle OSes. The first development build of the open source OS, which is now available for testing, is based on OpenSolaris build 147.

InfoWorld Announces Its Bossies Awards for 2010

2010-09-01T16:00:00+01:00

For some years now, InfoWorld has been assessing open source applications and naming "best of" winners in its Best of Open Source Software (Bossie) Awards program. The report of this year's winners includes VirtualBox as well as an informative history of open source applications and their evolution. The article notes that "open source" does not mean the same thing to everyone in the field, citing the examples of MySQL and Android to make its point.

Free Administration Guide on GNU/Linux

2010-08-19T16:00:00+01:00

"The GNU/Linux Advance Administration" is a 500+ page free eBook that covers Linux network, server and data administration, Linux kernel, security, clustering, configuration, tuning, optimization, migration, and coexistence with non-Linux systems. Produced by the Free Technology Academy (FTA), the complimentary book explains how to install and configure several computer services, as well as how to optimize and synchronize the resources using GNU/Linux.

"The State of Enterprise Open Source Software After the Oracle Acquisition of Sun Microsystems"

2010-07-28T16:00:00+01:00

Jaspersoft conducted a survey of its 130,000 registered users and customers to determine the perception of how MySQL and Java programming language could be expected to fare under Oracle's stewardship. Given the importance of both technologies to the future of open source, Jaspersoft thought the survey would provide some indication of user attitudes toward open source trends in the enterprise. The results were published in the paper "The State of Enterprise Open Source Software After the Oracle Acquisition of Sun Microsystems."

Open-Source Solutions Make Inroads in the Enterprise

2010-07-12T16:00:00+01:00

In his recent post on ReadWrite Enterprise entitled "Study: Open-Source Making Significant Traction in the Enterprise" Alex Williams reports on a survey conducted by Accenture that revealed more than two-thirds of the enterprises surveyed indicating plans to increase their investment in enterprise-capable open-source software in the coming year. Nearly 40% of respondents reported plans to migrate mission-critical software to open source within the coming year, Williams writes.

Hudson 1.365 Released

2010-07-05T16:00:00+01:00

Hudson 1.365 is out and it contains a critical security fix, correcting the vulnerability reported by InfraDNA, which pointed out attackers could read arbitrary files in the server file system whose path names are known, by sending malicious HTTP GET requests. For those unfamiliar with Hudson, it monitors executions of repeated jobs, such as building a software project or jobs run by cron. Among those things, Hudson focuses on are building/testing software projects continuously and monitoring executions of externally-run jobs.

New Open Source Connector to Link Oracle and Hadoop

2010-06-30T16:00:00+01:00

Quest Software and Cloudera announced plans to develop an Oracle connector for Apache Hadoop. This connector will link the Hadoop data management platform to Oracle databases. The bidirectional data transfer between Hadoop, which serves as a large-scale storage and computation engine, to relational data in Oracle databases is expected to be done by a free Quest utility currently code-named "Ora-Oop".

OpenDS 2.3.0-build003 Now Available

2010-06-22T16:00:00+01:00

The OpenDS Directory Server offers a fully featured LDAPv3 compliant directory server with multi-master replication, advance command line interface, graphical user interface and much more. The open source project recently released OpenDS 2.3.0-build003. Visit the promoted build page and the Changelog for the latest on this release. More general information on OpenDS is available from its home and wiki pages.

New Release of the ODFDOM - the OpenDocument API

2010-06-15T16:00:00+01:00

ODFDOM is a free OpenDocument Format (ODF) library. Its purpose is to provide an easy common way to create, access and manipulate ODF files, without requiring detailed knowledge of the ODF specification. It is designed to provide the ODF developer community with an easy lightwork programming API portable to any object-oriented language. A new version of ODFDOM was released this month. ODFDOM 0.8.5 of the Java implementation provides more than a dozen patches/bug fixes and two new features.

A Look at OpenESB from the Standpoint of Development, Administration, and Management

2010-06-11T16:00:00+01:00

In his article "OpenESB: the JBI Implementation" Massoud Kalali discusses both the new features and the basic classes one needs to work with in order to accomplish file system operations like copying a file, dealing with symbolic links, and deleting a file.

Open-source R Interface Available for Oracle Data Mining

2010-06-09T16:00:00+01:00

The open source 'R' programming language is now available as a user interface for Oracle Data Mining (ODM) software. According to the ODM blog, the R interface will assist the many statisticians and data analysts who work with R but are unfamiliar with the Oracle database environment or PL/SQL to use ODM's in-database functions easily.

Considerations for Organizations Looking Toward Open Source

2010-05-28T16:00:00+01:00

Open-source software "has transformed over the last decade from this unknown, risky thing that hippies and garage developers do, to the basis for a market in the billions of dollars," says Jay Lyman, an analyst at The 451 Group, as reported by Mary Brandel in a ComputerWorld article that identifies what it terms are the "hidden snags" of this growing segment in the IT industry.

OpenDS 2.3.0-build002 Now Available

2010-05-14T16:00:00+01:00

The OpenDS Directory Server offers a fully featured LDAPv3 compliant directory server with multi-master replication, advance command line interface, graphical user interface and much more. Just this month, the open source project released OpenDS 2.3.0-build002. Visit the promoted build page and the Changelog for the latest on this release. More general information on OpenDS is available from its home and wiki pages.

JAPS (Java Agile Portal System) Version 2.0.10

2010-05-05T16:00:00+01:00

Java Agile Portal System (jAPS) is an enterprise accessible information platform that eases aggregation, publishing, access, customization, and integration of information, services, processes and resources, compatible with accessibility international standards like WCAG 2.0, Section 508 and PAS 78, for both front end and back office. The latest version of jAPS is 2.0.10. It introduces a new "entity interface," allowing the configuration of the entity types, the CMS content types and the modification of the entity attributes.