Oh hell yeah!

Opensolaris version 2008.05 has been released! And as a live cd too. Finally we can see something solid of Indiana. Oh, and they get a brand new website/logo as well.

See some first impressions, some (relatively minor) problems in this first version, a handy tip on additional package needed to develop stuff, and finally extremely useful instructions to install it on a xen domU.

Download it from opensolaris.org, some of the mirrors (torrent included), metalink or request a free cd (you can order more than one if you’re doing an installfest or somesuch iirc)

edit: here’s a review.

edit2: you can find out aout my struggles with this system up above here.

on other sunny news, openxvm got a new homepage too, found around something on virtualbox 1.6 too

VirtualBox For Teh Win (on FreeBSD)

Lately I was snooping around for a good virtual machine solution, there’s a lot more stuff than just a few years ago (and qemu got really better on linux), when I came across some nice BSD news (yes, it’s BSD news, buried as usual but still there).

It seems VirtualBox (aquired by sun recently btw) is being ported to FreeBSD. Well, that would make the number of reliable vm avaiable … one (no, serenity virtual does not count, it was crappier than qemu without the kernel extensions).

Oh, and btw, there’s (obviously) a port for opensolaris too, and the usual unix nutcasgeniuses at sun are putting it through some really tight loops. (that does mean I must urgently find some excuses not to buy me an ultra. Either that or manage to build a nuclear reactor in the backyard to power up all my junk)

The only big downside of virtualbox is that it cannot give the guest os access to actual hard disk drives, on the other hand it’s got a builtin iscsi initiator (the €100 version only, mind you), so you can probably work around that limitation.

The BIG upside compared to vmware it’s a builtin rdp server to the guestos, and I have a pile of junk sitting somewhere that will probably be converted into a thinstation. (assuming I can still find the right ac/dc adapter of course)

edit: it seems some FreeBSD developers have picked up the ball, and are developing the initial port effort done by innotek.
See also innotek’s forum and freebsd-ports, also a first patch against the current svn and this post from Sander van Leeuwen (of sun).

edit2: FreeBSD build instructions, solaris 10 installation instructions, workaround for a nic problem in FreeBSD 7.0, a repository of virtualbox images