Basic customization of gdm with OpenSolaris

If you consider running Solaris on your PC(s) at home (e.g. in a multiboot setup), there is often the requirement that anyone can shutdown the PC after logging out.

I suggest that you perform the following steps:

1. Change the gdm customization file, /etc/X11/gdm/custom.conf
2. Deactivate the CDE login service
3. Activate gdm

Changing the gdm customization file, /etc/X11/gdm/custom.conf

Put the following lines after the line [greeter] in file /etc/X11/gdm/custom.conf:

SystemMenu=true
DefaultWelcome=false
Welcome=Welcome on %n
IncludeAll=true
RebootCommand=/sbin/init 6
HaltCommand=/sbin/init 5

Deactivating the CDE login service

Log in in as user root, using the console or the failsafe session mode from your login mananger. Then, execute:

svcadm disable cde-login

This will kill your X server, so you have to login from the console.

Activating gdm

Log in as user root. Then execute:

at now + 1 minute
svcadm enable gdm
<ctrl>d

This will create an at job which will be executed after one minute. This should give you enough time to log out ;-). So, please log out after you have pressed <ctrl>d. Wait for one minute and see the gdm screen showing up. That’s all.

It’s likely possible to combine steps 2 and 3, e.g.:

at now + 1 minute
svcadm disable cde-login
sleep 5
svcadm enable gdm
<ctrl>d

Not sure if the delay between disabling cde-login and enabling gdm is really necessary – I just have not tested yet.

Setting up remote printing with OpenSolaris – it’s really that easy!

When setting up remote printing from a Solaris system (SPARC or x86) to a printer that is attached to a print server, the /etc/printers.conf file may seem incorrectly configured after using the lpadmin command – it does not contain the remote print server name!. However, the interesting parts of the printer setup are in file /etc/lp/interfaces/<printer-name> and in other files in directory /etc/lp/printers/<printer-name>.

The steps below work fine for my setup with a LevelOne FPS-3003 print server with a HP LaserJet 1320 with PostScript option, attached to USB port 1 of the print server. I am pretty sure it will work with comparable setups.

• hostname of printer: printserv (make sure this hostname can be resolved – e.g. an entry in /etc/hosts exists for this hostname, and /etc/nsswitch.conf has a line for hosts in which “files” is the first entry)
• port number for the printer (TCP printing): 9100
• printer queue name on Solaris machine: ps
• no banner page will be printed
• this printer will be the default printer

Setting up remote printing from a Solaris system: 4 easy steps

$ lpadmin -p ps -v /dev/null -m netstandard -o dest=printserv:9100\
-o protocol=tcp -o timeout=5 -o banner=never -I postscript -T PS \
-D "Printer on second floor"
$ lpadmin -d ps
$ accept ps
$ enable ps (*)

Be careful: When executing the enable command in the bash shell, you may get the following error:

bash: enable: ps: not a shell builtin

Workaround: start another shell and execute that command in the new shell, or use:

$ sh -c "enable ps"

More information is available here.

SPEC CPU2006 is out – with a world record for Sun Fire E25K!

Yesterday, an article in Heise Newsticker (German language) pointed me to the release of SPEC CPU2006. I was quite impressed by the results – with Sun Microsystems publishing more results than other company.

Among them is an impressive result for the parallel integer benchmark CINT2006 rate for the Sun Fire E25K with 72 US-IV+ processors: 759!

With SPEC CPU2006, it is easier to compare the results for the CINT2006 benchmark with those for the CINT2006 Rate (CINT2006 running in parallel). Same applies to the floating point benchmark suite, CFP2006. The base result of 1 is identical for all four SPEC CPU2006 benchmarks – it’s the result of the benchmark suite on a Sun Ultra 2.