Using the pre-installed SXDE VMWare image on MacOSX

As I mentioned in a previous post, you can download SXDE 01/08 as a VMWare image.

The download page, however, assumes you know what to do with the files (two large zip files) once you have them.

It wasn't that clear to me, although I figured it out after some searching around. I thought I'd describe them here for you.

• Unzip the two files. This creates two separate directories, with a number of files. Copy all the files into a single directory. Your directory listing should look something like this:
  

  
  SunSXDE108-s001.vmdk    SunSXDE108-s005.vmdk    SunSXDE108.vmsd
  SunSXDE108-s002.vmdk    SunSXDE108-s006.vmdk    SunSXDE108.vmx
  SunSXDE108-s003.vmdk    SunSXDE108.nvram        vmware.log
  SunSXDE108-s004.vmdk    SunSXDE108.vmdk
  

  
  
• Edit the SUNSXDE108.vmx file and add this line:
  

  
  monitor_control.disable_longmode = 1
  

  
  
• Bring up VMWare Fusion, choose "File->Open" and point it to SunSXDE108.vmx

• Log in as "root", password "sxde"

• When you log in, it warns you you are logging in as a privileged user, and suggests you not do this. I wholeheartedly agree. But log in anyway, so you can create a new user account. SXDE very graciously starts up the user admin GUI for you to do this


• Log out of root and log in as the new user


• VMWare tools don't work completely so are not installed. This requires a fix from VMWare, which I hope we'll see soon. This is a cutting-edge distribution, after all...

• Fix the screen resolution. On my 17" MacBook Pro, much trial and error led me to pick 1680x1050 - not too small, not too large, just right.

• Then you can follow the various to-dos I wrote up on how to get going with NetBeans, Ruby, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Apache, etc.

That should do it!

Solaris Express Developer Edition with NetBeans 6, AMP and Ruby

Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE) is a quarterly distribution of the latest and greatest Solaris stuff. The releases are named after the quarter, and the release that just came out today is called SXDE 01/08. You can download it here. Note you can get the DVD image, or if you're using VMWare like me, you can just get the VMWare image -- pretty cool!

This release is of particular interest because for the first time it includes NetBeans out of the box, in this case NetBeans 6.0.

This release also includes an integrated runtime stack for Apache-MySQL-PHP and for Ruby, along with tools to make it easy to set up and manage these stacks. Getting Apache and MySQL up and running was quite a snap!



I've been playing around with this release for a while, making sure NetBeans plays nicey nicey with the runtime stacks. There are a few hiccups, but for the most part it works quite well.

I wrote up a number of how-tos on the NetBeans wiki site, like how to get started with using the Ruby runtime in NetBeans or how to start up the PostgreSQL service. If you're interested, get SXDE, install it (in VMWare if you're like me), and use these how-tos to help you get your feet wet.

One thing I thought was pretty cool was how easy it was to get going with debugging in PHP. You just have to enable debugging, set a breakpoint, and go.




I have been working with Solaris for a number of years, and these days the leaps and bounds they are making in improving the desktop experience is quite astounding. The installer is actually reasonable. I am also looking forward to the new package management system, IPS, that is coming out as part of Project Indiana.

So, try it out, or stay tuned, as you see fit, but this Solaris thing is definitely coming along. The report from Europe isn't so bad either... :)

VMWare Fusion 1.1 performance - give it some time

I am continuing to happily run Solaris Express Developer Edition under VMWare Fusion 1.1 on my Mac. This is now my primary development environment

I had some nasty performance issues at first. I have a 5400RPM disk drive, and when I was running Solaris, I would experience regular "lock downs" where my computer became almost completely unresponsive while the disk chewed and chewed and chewed.

I finally moved my disk image to an external USB drive, and was much much happier.

Then earlier this week, I tried running my image on my main disk again, and it actually is working great, no issues at all.

I think the issue is that VMWare allocates disk space on demand. So when I was first getting going, installing lots of stuff, pulling down source trees and so on, VMWare kept asking the Mac for more disk space for its image.

But now the disk size has stabilized, and that's not happening any more.

If I were to do it again, I think I might do the following:

• Put the image on a separate disk initially
• Write a script to create a big file in my image filesystem, then delete it. This forces allocation of space
• Move the image back to my main disk.

Alternately, you could just keep the image on the external disk, but that's a bit of a pain.

I suspect if I had a 7200 RPM disk, this wouldn't be so much of an issue. I think I'll put that in as a budget request for next quarter :)