ask | dr. root

Well, I would actually recommend that you do the opposite, if possible. That is, install Solaris 10 on a server and run your Linux applications on Solaris 10. With Solaris Containers for Linux Applications, your Linux applications will run unmodified on the rock-solid, secure Solaris 10. Plus, you can use the powerful DTrace to help monitor and debug your Linux applications.

Learn more at http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/scla.jsp

In this on-demand webinar, NetBeans and Mobile Complete technology experts discuss the development and deployment of Java-based applications on mobile handsets and the process is faster and more efficient than ever before.

You'll understand how MobileComplete’s DeviceAnywhere™ solution and NetBeans can enable you to build quality Java-based application; learn about the new DeviceAnywhere and NetBeans 6.0 integration developer benefits – including real-time interaction with hundreds of handsets. And last but not least, you'll see a demo of how this solution provides a much simpler, efficient, high-performance framework for building, testing and transferring Java technology-based mobile applications.

» Play Back Webinar

Version 6.0 is out!

NetBeans IDE 6.0 features Ruby/JRuby/Ruby on Rails support, enhancements for improved Swing development, a new Visual Game Designer, updated Data Binding support, integrated Profiling and more...

» Download NetBeans IDE 6.0
» Documentation. Support & Training

Sun is holding a number of half-day (morning) seminars in Dublin on 4-5-6 December.

4th December: SOA Simplified (Live Demo)
This half-day seminar aims to demonstrate why SOA has quickly made the move from novel concept to priority at enterprises of all types and sizes, worldwide. There will be a live demonstration of simplified SOA solutions and the presentation will help you understand the critical steps in planning your SOA deployment and the core technologies that will deliver true business integration.

5th December: Identity Management Provision (Live Demo)
Attend this morning session if you'd like to see a live demonstration of Sun Identity Management Suite and learn how to deliver secure, identity and access management solutions to transform your organisation.

6th December: Desktop Virtualisation (Live Demo)
At this morning session, you'll see a live demonstration of the Sun Ray and Secure Global Desktop technologies. In addition, through real world examples, you will see how your existing IT desktop and applications can be delivered through a standards based infrastructure, that supports the needs of your organisation in a cost effective way.

If you'd like to register, go to www.hos.horizon.ie/events

Mark the date - 16th Irish OpenSolaris User Group meeting:

Topic           Image Packaging System (IPS)
Date            Tuesday November 27th
Time            7:00pm onwards
Location        DIT, Kevin Street, Dublin 2 (room KE: 1-008)

This month, Michal Pryc has kindly offered to give a talk on the Image Packaging System[1] - a new package management system for OpenSolaris that will ease the pain of package installation and upgrade.

The project is still in it's early stages, but you can try it out now by downloading and experimenting with Indiana[2]. Come along to the meeting to find out more!

Michal plans to give a quick outline of:

  * IPS structure
  * client/server side tools
  * limitations
  * portability

As well as a GUI tool he's been working on. 

For more information on this event, simply go to:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/ie-osug/meetings/16/

[1] http://opensolaris.org/os/project/pkg
[2] http://opensolaris.org/os/project/indiana/resources/getit

Sun has created an sys admin-related Open Source resource section on its website, for all the the open-source projects Sun is contributing to -- e.g. OpenSolaris, OpenSPARC, Netbeans, OpenOffice.

[ Open Source Resources for System Administrators ]

If you're interested in learning to install multiple versions of Solaris on the same disk (x86 and SPARC), check out William Xue's comprehensive step-by-step tutorial on sun.com. In his tutorial, he describes the steps to install Solaris 9, Solaris 10 and Solaris Developer Express Edition on the same disk. The document covers SPARC and x86 systems.

[ View Tutorial ]

If you've registered for the first Irish Java Technology Conference next week, you can win a private, champagne audience with Blogger Joel Spolsky at 30,000 feet above the Irish sea. Intrigued? Well, I've just learnt that Joel is presenting the IJTC keynote before heading to the UK. The organisers have chartered a flight for him and are now running a competition for IJTC delegates that register online. I'm not sure where the plane will let you off -- hopefully where you took off originally -- but I have to say it's quite an original prize. :-)

If you'd like to register for the conference, go to http://ijtc.firstport.ie/

IrishDev.com is organising the first Irish Java Technology Conference in Dublin on 7-8-9 November. Sun is sponsoring the event. For details, visit: http://ijtc.firstport.ie/

If you often visit sun.com, you may already be aware of Sun's Try & Buy programme.

If not, Sun's Try & Buy programme lets you evaluate brand new hardware free for 60 days. We're talking about the most innovative Sun servers, storage and workstations -- including the newly announced UltraSPARC T2-based servers which will soon be available for a 60-day test drive. In essence, simply choose a system, choose a configuration and test it for 60 days.

The offer is absolutely free. Participants pay nothing - not even shipping - and they're entitled to free technical support for the entire duration of the 60-day trial.

You can only test one Sun system at a time. After 60 days, you can either keep it and buy it, or if you think it doesn't perform well enough in your environment, Sun just takes it back. No catch.

When you're not sure whether a product will work in your environment, the Try & Buy programme is a great way to make an informed decision.

If you are based in Ireland and would like to learn more, visit www.hos.horizon.ie/tryandbuy.

Outside Ireland, simply visit sun.com/tryandbuy to see if Sun is running the Try & Buy programme in your country.

Sun has published a comprehensive document that will guide you through the steps for setting up a diskless installation for Solaris in an x86 environment. In addition, the document helps you set up a separate a TFTP/DHCP and NFS/root server for a similar environment. It also describes problems that could occur during setup and how to resolve them.

» View PDF

Just a reminder that Glassfish V2 is now available for download - the latest release includes features, such as clustering, high availability, a new GUI administration console and Metro (an enterprise Web services stack). If you need an app server for highly scalable enterprise deployments, check out Glassfish V2...

https://glassfish.dev.java.net//

There's a new tutorial on the NetBeans website which provides information about downloading, installing and configuring Ruby support in the NetBeans IDE. It also describes how to use database servers with JRuby and how to deploy a JRuby application to Glassfish.

[ View Tutorial ]

The NetBeans 6.0 IDE comes pre-configured with JRuby interpreter. Arun Gupta, Technology Evangelist at Sun, explains in his blog how you can swap the JRuby interpreter with a C-based Ruby interpreter and vice versa:

http://blogs.sun.com/arungupta/entry/totd_7_switch_between_jruby

If you can't wait for the November release, the beta version of NetBeans IDE 6.0 is now available for download! The new version of NetBeans IDE has many new features, including Ruby/JRuby/Ruby on Rails support.

» Download NetBeans IDE 6.0 Beta

» Learn more about NetBeans IDE 6.0


What is 'NetBeans IDE'?

The NetBeans IDE is a free open-source Integrated Development Environment for software developers. The IDE runs on Windows, Linux, MacOS, as well as Solaris, and is easy to install and use straight out of the box. The NetBeans IDE provides developers with all the tools they need to create professional cross-platform desktop, web and mobile applications.

If you ever need to know what products are compatible with Solaris or how Java technology interoperates with the Microsoft .NET 3.0 framework, check out this new site: www.sun.com/bigadmin/topics/interop

Quick reminder that Solaris 10 8/07 is now available for download and that some of the new features include:

• Solaris Containers for Linux Applications to let you run Linux applications unmodified on Solaris 10.
• Networking enhancements to run multiple independent network stacks on a single system.
• High performance networking features to help you leverage hardware acceleration for large packet network traffic.
• Enhancements in Multiple Page Size Support (MPSS) for greater scalability, especially for applications with large memory footprints.

For an overview of the new features, check out the following Sun video:
» Video: Solaris 10 8/07 New Features

[Get Solaris 10 8/07]

An interesting screencast by Roman Strobl that shows you how to call native C code from a Java class using the Java Native Interface -- This demo was created using NetBeans IDE 5.5.1 with the NetBeans C/C++ Pack.

[ Watch Screencast ]

Google has published a NetBeans module that lets you integrate Checkout SDK through a simple wizard and manage your Checkout handlers through a simple UI. This project is available as a distributable NetBeans Module and works with NetBeans 5.5.1 and greater.

For more information, go to:
http://code.google.com/p/google-checkout-java-sdk/wiki/NetBeansModule

OpenLogic Discovery is a free software tool that can help you identify and manage the open source software installed on Solaris, Linux, and Windows workstations and servers.

Using OpenLogic Discovery you can quickly scan a system for installed open source packages, including packages that were not explicitly installed but were bundled with other software. The software then provides a detailed inventory of the open source software identified on the system, including version numbers for each package found and files that have been partially installed, moved, or renamed.

OpenLogic Discovery identifies software by digital fingerprints, checking the fingerprints against a library of more than 5000 versions across 900 of the most commonly used open source packages. This library is expected to grow to encompass additional packages.

If you'd like to try OpenLogic, simply go to:

www2.sun.de/dct/forms/reg_us_2808_614_0.jsp?
intcmp=hp2007sep04_openlogic_start

This is another goodie from Sun Technology Expert Sang Shin. To start your free training, go to:

http://www.javapassion.com/idm/

I found the following version of the animated movie, "Elephants Dream" on YouTube and I thought I'd pay tribute to the Orange Project team who produced this movie - back in 2005/2006 - by embedding it here and promoting their good work. I mentioned them in a previous post about 3D modeling and video editing software.

What's so special about this movie? Well, it was produced using open source software, such as Blender 3D and The Gimp. The Orange Project team was made of artists and developers from around the world and they even contributed new features to the current version of Blender.

Enjoy!



For more information - including high-quality downloads - check out:
http://www.elephantsdream.org

And to see what other open source based movies are under development, check out:
http://www.blender.org

SDN Share is an online community where developers can share technical content related to Sun's technologies and products. The objective of this program is to give developers an opportunity to interact with their peers and share their expertise. At the moment, there's also time-limited SDN Share Rewards Program, which allows you to receive SDN Share Points for your contribution(s) to the community. In turn, these points can be redeemed for rewards on Amazon.com.

If you'd like to know more about SDN Share, go to:
http://www.sdnshare.com/

It's Friday and the last day working day of the week - for many of us... Let's have more free online training with Sun Technology Expert Sang Shin, and this time it's all about web services and SOA programming.

In this online training course, Sang Shin covers:

• New Java APIs for Web Services (JAX-WS, JAXB 2.x)
• REST
• WSIT (Project Tango)
• SOA Technologies (BPEL, JBI, Open ESB)
• GlassFish (Java EE 5, JBI runtime, Service Engines, etc.)

And for the Hands-on labs, the "out of the box" support of above technologies by NetBeans 6.0 (both in terms of designer tool and runtime) will be heavily leveraged.

• XML Schema editor
• XSLT designer
• WSDL editor
• BPEL designer
• CASA (Composte Application Service Assembly) editor

Enjoy!

Another excellent freebie today... Get free online J2EE training from Sun Technology Architect and Java Evangelist Sang Shin.

This is a very comprehensive, self-paced, online course, packed with presentations, tutorials and hands-on exercises.

Enjoy!

[START LEARNING J2EE PROGRAMMING]

I stumbled across this today and I think those of you who are learning AJAX and planning to develop AJAX applications using the NetBeans IDE will find it very useful...

Sun Technology Architect and Evangelist Sang Shin, who's a well-known name and respected figure by Java developers worldwide, is offering free online AJAX training. Yes! And the full name of the course is "18-week Free AJAX Programming (with Passion!) Online Course". If you visit Sang Shin's website and look at all the goodies there, you will understand why it says "with Passion!" - You have to admire such dedication. And personally, I do! :-)

Sang Shin's website includes presentations, flash videos, hands-on labs and homework! And because AJAX is a quickly evolving technology, the content of the course is constantly being updated and improved. Topics include Ajax, JavaScript, Advanced Dojo toolkit, ZK framework, DynaFaces, Phobos and Portlet.

What more can I say... Open Sesame!

[START LEARNING AJAX PROGRAMMING]


NOTE: Each module will list any additional software you need to download prior to starting the tutorials. But before you begin, you will need to install the following software on your computer - if it's not there already:

• Java Standard Development Kit (JDK™) version 5.0 (download)
• If you already have installed JDK 5.0, you can skip this.
• The name of the installation file is as following (for JDK 5.0 update x)
• jdk-1_5_0_xx-windows-i586-p.exe (Windows)
• jdk-1_5_0_xx-linux-i586.bin (Linux)
• jdk-1_5_0_xx-solaris-i586.sh (Solaris x86)
• NetBeans IDE 5.5.1 with Sun Java System Application Server 9 Update x bundle (download)
  
• When you install NetBeans IDE 5.0, it will ask you which JDK you want to use.
  
• You can download and install NetBeans IDE 5.5.1 (download) and Sun Java System App Server 9 Update 1 (download) individually. In this case, you will have to add Sun Java System App Server as additional runtime platform manually as described here.
• Mozilla Firefox Browser (download)
• We are going to use Firebug debugger which is designed for the Mozilla Firefox browser.

• 4257_ajaxbasics2.zip (download)
• It contains this document and the lab contents including sample applications
• It also contains Firebug debugger (in case you have not have internet access)
  
• Download it and unzip in a directory of your choice

Sun canceled access to the anonymous FTP server to download patches since September last year.

So what are your options?

Well, you can either use the Sun Update Connection or make use of the free scripting service provided by wget.

If you have a Sun Service plan, the wget process will require that you supply a Sun Online Account and password combination to access non-restricted patches.

If you do not have an account with Sun, simply register and accept a click thru Software License Agreement. To access non-restricted patches, you will need to have a Sun Service plan in place.

Where can you find the wget software?

You can download it from the following sources:

• GNU Download Site (Source)
• Sunfreeware (Compiled for Solaris SPARC)
• Sunfreeware (Compiled for Solaris x86)

JDS systems should come with wget pre-installed, so simply set up your wget script. Sun has supplied a free test script for you to use: http://sunsolve.sun.com/getsolpatch.sh

» If you need more details on accessing software patches, go to http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-9-82023-1

Does Sun Studio 12 software have both the Sun compiler and the integrated development environment (IDE) for Linux, as it has for the Solaris Operating System?

I'd like to set up an x86 server farm for in-house developer builds with the resulting build deployed on SPARC III-IV+ platforms. Can I do this with Sun Studio 12 software?

If you'd like answers to these questions, then check out the top 12 questions on Sun Studio 12 that developers asked and how Sun's experts answered them in this Q and A...

http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/community/ondemand/ss12_qa.jsp

Sun's new UltraSPARC 2 processor can run up to 64 logical domains -- each with its own operating system. Sceptical? Check out this demo posted by Ashley Saulsbury at Sun Microsystems.

» Watch Flash Video (1600px x 1200px)
» Watch Flash Video (800px x 600px)

[Visit Ashley Saulsbury's Blog]

If you'd like to learn more about patching for the Solaris Operating System, check out the recently posted FAQ on sun.com at:

www.sun.com/bigadmin/sundocs/articles/patch-faq.jsp

The new UltraSPARC T2 processor, with its 8 cores capable of handling 8 concurrent threads each, for a total of 64 threads, is a massively threaded server on a chip. Not only that, but it's faster and has more ports, more cache, more features than the T1 processor.

Watch Jonathan Schwartz and David Yen describe it here.

One of the new features in Solaris 10 now allows Solaris Containers to be moved from one system to another -- this new feature is currently available in Solaris Express, but will soon be available in a Solaris update.

Sun has published an excellent step-by-step guide on the process of moving Solaris Containers. You can view it at:

www.sun.com/software/solaris/howtoguides/moving_containers.jsp

or alternatively download the PDF:

www.sun.com/software/solaris/howtoguides/moving_containers.pdf

Enjoy!

Sun has published an article which describes various tunables for Sun StorEdge SAN Foundation Suite -- also known as Leadville -- software. There are several areas of performance -- failover times, SCSI queue depth management, etc --
that can be optimised by judicious and careful use of certain user-tunable kernel-level variables.

This new document on sun.com presents three general matrices describing the various types of tunables and/or default values related to performance, failover times and error recovery and logging:

Type one (1) : variables may be adjusted to fit specific customer configuration requirements.

Type two (2) : variables are adjustable, but in general no adjustment is recommended. These variables need to be tuned only in very rare cases.

Type three (3) : variables are hard-coded and are not adjustable; they are presented herein for completeness only.

If you'd like to better understand the discovery, path failover and general performance tunables and values incorporated in the Leadville driver stack, simply download the PDF.

Sun has published a very nice, detailed, step-by-step guide for installing the Solaris 10 11/06 Operating System, Solaris Cluster 3.2 software, the QFS 4.5 cluster file system and Oracle 10g Release 2 RAC.

This document also provides detailed instructions on how to configure QFS and Solaris Volume Manager so they can be used with Oracle 10g R2 RAC.

The installation procedures can be used for SPARC or x64 platforms, for installations with up to eight nodes using IP over InfiniBand (IPoIB) or Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) for the private interconnect and with any level of I/O redundancy.

After you complete the procedures, you can use any combination of raw devices, Solaris Volume Manager, Automatic Storage Manager (ASM), or QFS cluster file systems to store data files.

A must-have!

» Download PDF

You may be aware that Sun has released the Solaris Cluster source code through the HA Clusters community on the OpenSolaris site. Solaris Cluster is a multi-system, multi-site disaster recovery solution that manages the availability of applications services and data across local, regional and vastly dispersed datacentres.

Sun has recorded a podcast on the the open sourcing of Solaris Cluster and how multiple parties within the ecosystem will benefit. Highlights include:

• The seeding of open source from the Solaris Cluster product, namely Open High-Availability Cluster, and binary distribution of Solaris Cluster that runs on open Solaris.
• A three-phased approach starting with agents, followed by the geographic edition (disaster recovery), and then finally, the core infrastructure.
• How open sourcing of Solaris Cluster addresses a need in the system administrator development community.
• How an open-source set of tools can stimulate better conversations between application developers and deployers about making products do what they should, when they should.
• The release of the testing infrastructure to ensure that what has been developed actually works.
• Details of the open license.

[Source: Innovating@Sun]

» Listen to Podcast (MP3)

If you're interested to learn how the Sun Fire X4500's high storage density and high throughput can solve the challenges associated with data warehousing, HPC storage cluster and media streaming -- and more -- you should definitely check the following and very informative Sun Net Talk:

[Watch] Sun Fire X4500: The First and Only Hybrid Data Server

In a recent article and accompanying screencast, InfoWorld explains why ZFS is so powerful and easy to use, and why ZFS and the Sun Fire X4500 server, codenamed Thumper, are a perfect match...

"Soon after I started working with ZFS (Zettabyte File System), one thing became clear: the file system of the next 10 years will either be ZFS or something extremely similar. The fluidity, the malleability, and the scalability of ZFS far surpass anything available now on any platform. We're talking about a file system that can address 256 quadrillion zettabytes of storage, and that can handle a maximum file size of 16 exabytes."

(Paul Venezia is senior contributing editor of the InfoWorld Test Center)

» InfoWorld Article: Sun ZFS breaks all the rules
» InfoWorld Screencast: Sun's ZFS on Thumper

If you missed this year's JavaOne event, the conference PDFs and multimedia sessions are now available on sun.com. Sun will add more content over the coming weeks, so check the site on a regular basis.

Enjoy!

http://developers.sun.com/learning/javaoneonline/j1online.jsp?track=1&yr=2007

This new white paper on sun.com explores the performance characteristics and differences of Solaris ZFS and the Veritas File System through a series of tests using the Filebench benchmarking framework which reproduces the I/O patterns of applications, as well as the popular IOzone benchmark which tests specific I/O patterns. In many instances, Solaris ZFS outperforms the combination of the Veritas Volume Manager and Veritas File System.

Find out more...

» Download PDF: Solaris ZFS and VERITAS Storage Foundation File System Performance

This newly-published white paper on sun.com explores the performance characteristics of Solaris ZFS and the ext3 file system through IOzone, BenchW and Postmark benchmark testing.

For the conditions tested, Solaris ZFS outperforms the Red Hat Enterprise Linux ext3 file system for many workloads, especially Postmark and relational database indexed queries. In other cases, Solaris ZFS exhibits comparable performance but does not require the performance or data integrity trade-offs that are inherent in the ext3 file systems, when running in ordered and writeback modes.

Conclusions drawn suggest that Solaris ZFS provides the same or greater data protection as the Red Hat Enterprise Linux ext3 file system running in journalled mode. However, the ext3 file system often delivers the lowest performance, while Solaris ZFS can provide equal or greater performance than the ext3 file system operating in the ordered or writeback mode.

Read more...

» Download PDF: Solaris ZFS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux ext3 File System Performance

Sun has published a new white paper that details and reviews the performance characteristics and differences of Solaris ZFS and the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 NTFS file system through a series of publicly available benchmarks, including BenchW and Postmark.

Depending on the test, Solaris ZFS can significantly outperform the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 NTFS file system for many workloads. Find out more...

» Download PDF: Solaris ZFS and Microsoft Windows 2003 Server NTFS File System Performance

What's the alternative to a backup of your data onto DVD or onto an external drive?

Well, according to Eric Kustarz at Sun, the alternative is a ZFS snapshot. Check Eric's blog to learn more and to find out why ZFS and laptops are a perfect fit!

Go to: blogs.sun.com/erickustarz/entry/zfs_on_a_laptop

You're right to ask. Sun has three server families and each is designed for particular workloads.

In short...

SUN FIRE COOLTHREADS SERVERS:
Sun Fire CoolThreads servers are powered by the UltraSPARC T1 Chip Multi-Threading processor and are ideally suited for massive transactional throughput. If you need a server that can manage large numbers of web-based transactions, they're your perfect fit.

SUN FIRE X64 SERVERS:
In areas that require an x86 chip and demand both multithreaded and high floating point performance, AMD Opteron (and now also Intel Xeon with the new Sun Blade 6000) processor-based Sun Fire x64 servers would prove a better choice.

SUN ENTERPRISE SERVERS:
For heavy-duty database applications where single-threaded performance trumps throughput, Sun Enterprise servers -- powered by an UltraSPARC IV+ or SPARC processor -- will give you the necessary horsepower.

In essence, Sun's Logical Domains (LDoms) technology allows you to allocate a system's various resources, such as memory, CPUs and devices, into logical groupings and create multiple, discrete systems, each with their own operating system, resources, and identity within a single computer system. By careful architecture, a logical domains environment can help you achieve greater resource usage, better scaling and increased security and isolation.

Sun has published a blueprint which will help you gain a better understanding of how you can easily and effectively deploy Sun's Logical Domains technology.

It will help you determine how and where to use logical domains to the greatest effect using best practices. The document discusses strategies for deploying logical domains on the Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 systems -- the first systems to offer Logical Domain support -- and the various best practices for these platforms.

The guide works through step-by-step examples that include the commands to set up, deploy and manage logical domains and looks at commonly asked questions and advanced techniques.

The good thing about this guide is that it has been designed for several different levels of user and intended to be used as both an introduction to concepts and technologies, and as a handy reference for more complex approaches.

» Download PDF

Q. I upgraded from SSH1 to OpenSSH. It generated a new SSH-1 RSA host key, instead of noticing and preserving my existing host key. Also, it appears to be ignoring my sshd_config file!

A. SSH1 and OpenSSH have different default directories in which they look for configuration files: SSH1 uses /etc, whereas OpenSSH uses /usr/local/etc. You can either move your existing hostkey and other SSH configuration files to the new location, or build OpenSSH with configure --sysconfdir=/etc.

Interested to learn more? Check out the SSH Frequently Asked Questions at: www.snailbook.com/faq

Sun is introducing today new Blade servers where you can mix and match SPARC, AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon architectures. Interested? Check out the web launch today at 4.00pm G.M.T.: www.sun.com/launch

Did you know you can use Sun Connection and baselines to update your Solaris and Linux hosts?

A baseline is a dated collection of patches, patch metadata and tools -- Sun releases them for Solaris every month. By using baselines, you can easily track the patch level of your hosts.

Let's say you create a test host on which you deploy a particular baseline. You could test this host for a period of time to ensure that the patches in this baseline are stable enough to be used on your production host. When the testing reveals that this baseline is stable, you can install the same baseline you tested on your production host.

Learn more about baselines on sun.com -- and you will no longer have to worry about figuring patch dependencies...

» Read the full article: How to Use Sun Connection and Baselines to Patch the Solaris OS

If you're in Ireland and if you're looking to attend Solaris, Java or Enterprise Training Courses, Horizon Open Systems is running a special offer to celebrate Sun's 25th Anniversary...

If you book and attend any four Dublin training courses by 31st December 2007, you'll get the cheapest absolutely free. You can also avail of this promotion, if you send four employees (from the same company) on four different courses -- Again, you get the cheapest course free. Or also valid if you book four seats on the same course, you will again only pay for three.

For further details, visit : www.hos.horizon.ie/promotions

Available courses:

Solaris 10 Courses:
» UNIX Essentials Featuring the Solaris 10 OS
» Intermediate System Administration for the Solaris 10 OS
» Advanced System Administration for the Solaris 10 OS
» Transition to Solaris 10 From Solaris 8 and Solaris 9
» Solaris 10 for Experienced System Administrators
» Solaris 10 Containers
» Shell Programming for System Administrators
» Network Administration for the Solaris 10 OS
» Dynamic Performance Tuning and Troubleshooting With DTrace
» Solaris System Performance Management
» Administering Security on the Solaris Operating System

Solaris 9 Courses:
» UNIX Essentials Featuring Solaris 9
» Intermediate System Administration for Solaris 9
» Advanced System Administration for Solaris 9

Java Technology Courses:
» Java Programming Language
» Developing Applications for the J2EE Platform
» Sun Java System Directory Server 5.x: Analysis and Planning
» Sun Java System Directory Server 5.x: Maintenance and Operations

Enterprise Systems Courses:
» Storage Management with Backup
» Solaris Volume Manager Administration
» VERITAS Volume Manager Administration
» Sun Cluster 3.1 Administration

The Wiki for DTrace, published by SolarisInternals, is very, very cool. Check it out and bookmark it:

» Wiki: DTrace Topics

Sun has recently published an article on how to install the latest Kernel Update (KU) patch, or any patch, to a post-GRUB x86 based miniroot image for the JumpStart installation programme.

In some cases, Sun provides hardware support through driver patches. These driver patches are released to suport third-party hardware, but they can also enable the installation of a particular release of Solaris on newer hardware without necessitating the re-engineering of that particular Solaris release. The procedure will require the installation of a particular driver patch. And most often, the process involves installing the latest KU patch for the OS in question.

This article describes how to patch an x86 GRUB miniroot image to create a modified GRUB based miniroot that contains the latest KU. The version of Solaris that is used in the artice is the Solaris 10 1/06 release, which is the same release that introduced GRUB-based booting on x86 based systems (Note: you can use this procedure for all subsequent Solaris 10 releases that implement GRUB-based booting).

» Read more: "Patching an x86 Miniroot Image for the Solaris OS"

There are many tools out there to help developers find memory-related errors at runtime. But none of them is perfect. Dmalloc is a valuable open-source debugging package for C, C++ and Fortran developers that will supplement your other debugging tools.Dmalloc is especially useful when you have large applications that more powerful debugging tools can't handle well.

In a recently-published article on sun.com, Sun Engineer Greg Nakhimovsky explains how, with a few relatively minor adjustments, you can use Dmalloc on Solaris with Sun Studio compilers to locate memory-related application bugs...

Have a look at Greg's step-by-step article and happy debugging!

»Read: Using Dmalloc With the Solaris OS and Sun Studio Compilers (by Greg Nakhimovsky)

If you couldn't attend this year's JavaOne Conference, fear not! Sun has made available videos of the general sessions on its website. Here's a selection of technical highlights:

» Announcing Java FX (34:26)
Rich Green, James Gosling and Christopher Oliver unveil JavaFX -- a new Java innovation targeted at the billions of consumer devices and computers powered by Java technology.

Evolutionary Java Technology: A Look Forward at the Future of the Platform
» Part 1: JRuby Demo (30:19)
» Part 2: Glassfish V3 (14:44)
» Part 3: Nasa World Wind Java, GL Studio and Iris (23:05)
» Part 4: JavaFX and JavaFX Mobile (22:00)

Mobility and Device General Session: Discussing The Latest Trends...
» Part 1: Laurie Tolson (Sun) is joined by Jason Ling (MySpace) and Martin Wrigley (Orange/France Telecom) (11:10)
» Part 2: Mashup, SVG, mSOA, Mobile & Embedded Community (19:42)
» Part 3: GEM, Service Convergence, Common Developer Platform (14:45)
» Part 4: JavaFX Overview, Architecture, Devices, Big Picture (7:28)

To view more replays, visit the 2007 JavaOne Conference website.

Enjoy!

If you're looking for ZFS Best Practices including Storage Pools Recommendations, Storage Pool Considerations, General ZFS Administration Information and more, the following SolarisInternals wiki entry is a must-have bookmark:

» View ZFS Best Practices

To commemorate the largest NetBeans Day ever, NetBeans.org has put together a special issue of NetBeans Magazine with a whopping 84 pages of in-depth technical articles. Issue Three showcases the flexibility and versatility of the IDE and Platform, and the upcoming features in NetBeans 6.0.

You can view the magazine as a whole or as individual articles. You can also access simplified HTML versions of each article. Though for the full visual experience, I recommend the PDF :)

» View & Download NetBeans Magazine - Issue Three - May 2007

This is a Sun video about the NetBeans Mobility Pack which is used to write, test, and debug applications for Java-enabled phones and mobile gadgets.

Watch Video: Billions of Devices, One Tool Set (8:24)

Sun has expanded its $1/CPU-hr, pay-per-use Network.com utility to Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

If you are a developer, ISV or simply an end-user from any these these countries, you now have access to Network.com's powerful, on-demand computing infrastructure (powered by Solaris 10), as well as to the open source and ISV applications published in Network.com Application Catalogue.

Plus! Users signing up for a Network.com account get 200 CPU-hrs free for a limited time...

Sounds good? Visit www.network.com for details!

If you have the Solaris and Windows operating systems on your system, there is a way to mount read-only NTFS partitions under Solaris and read Solaris UFS partitions from Windows... Thanks to the Mount-ntfs and UFSRead project.

This project consists of two tools:

• mount-ntfs is a tool that allows mounting read-only NTFS partitions under Solaris
• ufsread is a tool that lets you read Solaris UFS partitions from Windows (NT/2K/XP but not 3.x/9x/ME).

To learn more, visit: http://mount-ntfs.sourceforge.net/

Additionally, check out Pradhap Devarajan's blog on sun.com for a step-by-step guide to mount-ntfs: http://blogs.sun.com/pradhap/entry/mounting_ntfs_partition_in_solaris

An overview and guide to ZFS is now available on sun.com.

ZFS is Sun's newest method of managing storage in Solaris 10. It incorporates a volume management system with a POSIX-compliant file system and a rich set of management tools. From the perspective of applications, the file system behaves exactly as traditional file systems behave but offers much improved performance and capacity.

(This guide will be most useful if you are configuring ZFS for the first time)

» View "ZFS Overview and Guide" by Don Turnbull

This is an interesting Tech Tip recently published on sun.com.

Is it possible to add device support to Solaris by attaching an existing Solaris driver to a new device?

Given that many Solaris device drivers are written to be independent of the vendor and device IDs of that device, the driver module can potentially support a larger number of similar devices that use the same vendor chipset but might present different OEM IDs.

In short, if a device in your system doesn't seem to be supported by Solaris, try to look for a Solaris driver that supports a similar device -- and if you can't find a Solaris driver that supports a similar device, look for a third-party driver.

» Read Tech Tip: Assigning a New Device to an Existing Driver in the Solaris OS

There's an interesting article on sun.com about the benefits of upgrading to Sun's Leadville Fibre Channel (FC) stack -- Leadville is the code name for Sun StorEdge SAN Foundation Software, formerly known as Sun StorageTek SAN Foundation Software.

If you're unfamiliar with Leadville, Sun developed the Leadville FC stack from scratch to replace the traditional SCSI emulation method most operating systems use to recognise FC devices as parallel SCSI devices. Leadville is an open standards-based I/O framework and device driver stack, fully integrated into Solaris 10 and available on SPARC, x64 and x86 platforms. And because the Leadville stack is integrated into Solaris 10, it is part of all the Solaris update releases -- Nice...

The Leadville FC stack has some significant advantages over the traditional SCSI emulation drivers, like dynamic addition of new devices, persistent binding, virtually limitless scalability, support for multipathing, better I/O stack and more.

Have a look - The article is concise and will give you a good overview of the Leadville framework. It will also tell how to install or upgrade to Leadville.

» Read Article: Updating Fibre Channel Drivers to Use Sun StorEdge SAN Foundation Software

Viet Pham at Sun Microsystems and Phillip Thurmond at JBoss have recently published an article on sun.com to help you deploy the JBoss Application Server on the Sun Fire T2000 Server. The document serves as a starting point and provides tuning recommendations specific to the JBoss Application Server on the Sun Fire T2000 server.

Though this document focuses on the deployment of JBoss on the Sun Fire T2000, it links to a good number of online resources if you need to find out more about these two products.

» View "Deploying JBoss Application Server on Sun Fire T2000 Servers"

(If you're interested in the Sun Fire T2000 Server, don't forget you can test-drive this very cool system for 60 days through Sun's Try & Buy Program)

There's a static source code analysis and code scanning tool that can help you identify incompatible APIs between Linux and Solaris and help you speed up migration project estimation and engineering.

Sun Application Porting Assistant 1.0 Final Release, Solaris 10 OS, SPARC/Solaris 10 OS, x86/Windows XP Home Edition/Windows XP Professional/Windows XP Professional SP1, English

» Download

Solaris Jumpstart in Solaris 10 for x86 platforms provides the same automated installation capabilities as it does for the SPARC platform, but there are subtle differences. Sun has recently published step-by-step procedures for creating a JumpStart server using Solaris 10 for x86/x64 platforms.

View article: "Using Solaris JumpStart With the Solaris 10 OS for x86/x64 Platforms" by Craig Winter and Dale Layfield, Sun Microsystems

In this week's edition of opentalk | newsbytes, Horizon's weekly newsletter for the Sun community, you can find a link to a two-part Flash introduction and demo of NetBeans IDE 5.5 by Roman Strobl. Check it out if you'd like to learn more about the GUI Builder, Ant, Profiler, NetBeans Platform and localisation support, NetBeans Mobility pack, NetBeans Enterprise pack and NetBeans Visual Web pack, among other things.

And that brings me to today's excellent step-by-step tutorial, kindly written by the Visual Web Pack Tutorials Team: Developing a Web Application with NetBeans Visual Web Pack 5.5.

It will get you started with the Visual Web pack 5.5, so definitely worth having a look.

Happy coding and developing!

» View Tutorial: Developing a Web Application
» Download NetBeans IDE 5.5
» Read opentalk | newsbytes, Issue 10

There is an interesting article by Rick Weisner on sun.com about the use of kstat and libkstat APIs to extract metrics from the Solaris OS. The alternative is a system() call to run a script or external program to extract these metrics, but for performance reasons, you should avoid it. Instead, you should use the appropriate APIs. Have a look at Rick's article and see how the use of kstat and libkstat can make your code faster, cleaner and better.

» View PDF: Using kstat From Within a Program in the Solaris OS

There's actually an excellent guide on the subject by Joe McCabe on sun.com.

Using PHP on Sun Java System Web Server

Whether you want to install the PHP engine as a CGI programme, FastCGI Server or NSAPI Plugin -- all the information on how to install and use PHP with your Sun Java System Web Server is there.

Six levels...

Countless pitfalls...

Bugs around every corner...

No, this isn't an "Indiana Jones" movie, nor the upcoming "Hellgate: London" FPS/RPG, but a new interactive game designed by Sun Microsystems, which promises to be a worthy challenge for developers worldwide. It's called Temple of The Sun and apparently the Sun Studio software and Solaris Express Developer Edition are the keys to completing the ultimate challenge and finishing the game.

And to reward you for your efforts, there are real-life treasures to be won in the form of cash and prizes -- with a top prize of $5,000 (USD).

www.sun.com/templeofthesun

So good luck and happy coding! :)

Let's finish the week with some more Java tips...

If you've ever wondered whether you could use the hardware cryptographic accelerator in Sun's CoolThreads servers, or share cryptographic keys and public key certificates between Java applications and native applications on Solaris, the answer is yes. And Sun Expert Vincent Ryan isn't just telling us it's possible, he's also showing us how.

Check out his "XPert: Configuring Java Apps to Use Solaris Security" Q&A to find out how you can configure a Java application to make use of the hardware cryptographic accelerator available in Sun's CoolThreads servers, or share cryptographic keys and public key certificates between Java applications and native applications on the Solaris OS, or sign a JAR file using a keypair from the default PKCS#11 keystore in the Solaris OS.

» View Q&A -- XPert: Configuring Java Apps to Use Solaris Security

More Java SE 6 today. And for good reason, Java SE 6 has many new features, enhancements and improvements -- like better GUI performance and better handling of the behavior of GUI applications, as well as improvements and new features in server-side core and Java core.

Sun has published a two-part article on the new and updated desktop features in Java SE 6 -- it's a compilation of various articles and blog entries originally posted on sun.com. It's quite comprehensive and you'll get a good understanding of why the new version of Java SE will help you develop better and faster. Check it out:

» New and Updated Desktop Features in Java SE 6, Part 1
» New and Updated Desktop Features in Java SE 6, Part 2

And if you haven't made the move yet...

» Download Java SE 6

There's an excellent article on the Sun Developer Network about how the SwingWorker class in Java SE 6 can help you create and manage worker threads that improve your user interface performance.

If you're in the business of developing desktop applications, it's definitely something worth having a look!

» View the article

When Java software developers want to create a desktop application in the Solaris OS, they need to create an application that will integrate well with the existing GNOME desktop. This application need to share the same native look and feel as the desktop theme, use the native system dialogs, use the native configuration engine and in every respect look and behave like a native GNOME desktop application.

There are a number of choices available to developers. They can use an application framework such as Swing, which is part of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) or the SWT framework provided by Eclipse. However, if they are already GNOME developers and familiar with Glade/GTK-based development, then they will have to learn yet another framework, which can of course be very time consuming.

The Java GNOME bindings offer another alternative. This is a set of Java bindings for the GNOME platform libraries and the Cairo 2D drawing engine from freedesktop.org. The bindings allow GNOME and GTK+ applications to be written in the Java programming language, making use of Java Native Interface (JNI) support to bridge between Java technology and the underlying native GNOME platform and Cairo C libraries.

If you'd like to learn more about Java GNOME bindings, check out John Rice's article on the subject on sun.com at:
developers.sun.com/solaris/articles/java_gnome/

(Note: The bindings are available as part of Solaris Express, Developer Edition 2/07)

This is detailed quite well in the following document on sun.com: System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (DNS, NIS, and LDAP).

Look in particular at the section on PAM.

Hope this helps.

Sun is giving away OpenSolaris Starter kits for x86 systems. Inside the kit you'll find tutorials, documentation and two DVDs filled with useful software:

• Solaris Express — Preview future features of Sun's Solaris Operating System.
  Also inside: ZFS, DTrace, Containers, and hundreds of other unique features.
• Live CDs — These bootable images allow you to check out community-built distributions of OpenSolaris, each with unique features:
  - Nexenta OS
  - BeleniX
  - SchilliX
  
• Sun Studio compilers — Get advanced features for developing applications on Sun Solaris platforms.
  
• OpenSolaris source code.

Get started using OpenSolaris technology -- right on your laptop or home PC.

To get you free OpenSolaris Starter Kit, go to get.opensolaris.org

This is a very interesting screencast if you'd like to learn to debug JavaScript using DTrace.

DTrace can examine JavaScript code execution in realtime, allowing you to identify performance issues and bugs. By using DTrace for JavaScript debugging, all sofware layers in the system can be examined from the same tool, such as the software of the browser and the kernel. For example, DTrace may help you prove that a performance issue is actually a bug in the browser - and not your JavaScript code.

» View screencast

Check out this interesting screencast in which Tom Erickson, creator of Chime and the Java DTrace API, shows you how how easy it is to create live graphs of your own DTrace programs, complete with viewable documentation and active drilldown!

Tom built and ran this Chime demo on his desktop AMD Opteron system running Solaris Nevada build 57 with Java 5 (build 1.5.0_10-b03) using the Java DTrace API.

» View screencast

If you're an online game developer, you may have heard that Sun is open sourcing Project Darkstar -- an enterprise grade, highly scalable, online game server entirely written in Java. This is big news for online game developers, MMORPG developers in particular. And NCsoft, the company behind "City of Heroes" and "Guild Wars" is already prototyping new games on the Darkstar platform.

In a nutshell, Project Darkstar is a game agnostic platform that allows developers to quickly develop online games in any genre and target a wide variety of devices. It provides developers with a simple programming model -- with plug-in APIs to facilitate expansion and integration with third-party components. The platform also enables games to handle large numbers of clients, while providing low-latency response times. It automatically handles persistence of game state and recovery of game state in the event of server failure. And It makes "shardless" MMOGs a reality by removing the need to preallocate servers with fixed assignments to specific game regions. One last thing about the Darkstar platform is that it can be reused from one game to another...

If you'd like to learn more, check out www.projectdarkstar.com.

And if you're an online game developer, visit the above website and sign up for the Darkstar Playground. Sun is offering access to server resources to help you start developing your online games. If you qualify, you will be able to quickly test your game ideas and implement online games without the worry of building a dedicated server room.

The Darkstar Playground will be available in mid-2007, so sign up today!

Sun has published a very interesting 14-page article on the process of developing applications on Solaris and Linux, which covers developing nonnative applications, making existing Linux applications run on the Solaris OS and porting applications from Linux to the Solaris OS. That's one article that will get your programming juices flowing...

The article starts with why you should consider developing on these platforms. Other than being the most popular UNIX-based operating systems, both Solaris and Linux provide rich system commands, programming tools, software packages and API libraries. And that makes them good enterprise application development environments.

The article then delves into the similarities and differences between Solaris and Linux, as well as the application development issues you might encounter on both platforms.

For example -- The most common issues are related to open source software libraries. Many open source software libraries that are used in Linux are already in Solaris 10. But in some cases, you may have to source a Solaris version from the provider or you may have to rebuild the libraries from the source code and install them on Solaris. Other issues covered in this document include system API differences between Solaris and Linux, architecture-specific code and how both platforms handle multithreaded programming.

With this understanding of both platforms, the article then focuses on the following topics, with practical examples backed up with a ton of resources for you to access afterwards... So read it if you'd like to know more about:

• How to Develop Nonnative Applications
• How to Make Existing Linux Applications Run on the Solaris OS
• Porting Applications From Linux to the Solaris OS
• Application Development Environment on the Solaris OS
• Build Environment in the Solaris OS
• Packaging Applications and Deploying on the Solaris OS

» Download Article (PDF)

In a nutshell, no. ZFS and QFS are separate products. ZFS isn't a shared filesystem. And even though there's overlapping functionality between ZFS and QFS, there's no shared code, for example.

Many users would like to see introduced distributed file system capabilities and multi-writers features in ZFS. And Sun is evaluating these features for the future.

So stay tuned!

(I've tried to summarise the information I was emailed into the one-line question above)

Resources:

• Sun Fire V890 Server Owner's Guide:
  http://docs.sun.com/source/817-3956-12/
  
  
• Sun Advanced Lights Out Manager Software User's Guide:
  http://docs.sun.com/source/817-5481-11/
  
  
• Sun Remote System Control (RSC) 2.2 User's Guide:
  http://docs.sun.com/source/816-3314-12/

You were trying to locate the scadm utility, It could be in /usr/platform/platform-name/sbin/

To get the path from your system, type:

# /usr/platform/`uname -i`/sbin/

To assign a new password to admin with the scadm utility, you will first need to log in to the system as root, and then use the command:

# scadm userpassword admin

The system won't ask you to enter the existing password.

In the case of the Sun Fire V890 -- and Sun Fire V480 and Sun Enterprise 250 -- you can also administer the system from a Sun Remote System Control (RSC) console, IF the latter has been installed and explicitely enabled on the system.

If it's enabled on your system, and if you're happy to use RSC, there's an rscadm utility, with a number of sub-commands, that allows you to administer the Sun Remote System Control from the host. To use rscadm, again just log in to the server as root.

Note: By default, installation places the rscadm utility in the directory /usr/platform/platform-name/rsc/

To get the path from your system, type:

# /usr/platform/`uname -i`/rsc/

As you've no idea what the password is, just simply log in to the Sun Fire V890 as root and use the command:

# rscadm userpassword admin

It will assign a new password to the admin user of the RSC console, without prompting you for the existing password.

That should be it...

Don't forget to check the documentation for full details!

If you're based in Dublin (Ireland) or happen to be in Dublin on those dates, here's a short list of Sun events some of you might be interested in attending:

» Sixth Irish OpenSolaris User Group Meeting
Tuesday 20th February (from 6:30pm onwards), Dublin
A very good place to meet other Solaris and OpenSolaris users and the topic of the evening will be the use of Java-Gnome to develop Java based GNOME applications in OpenSolaris. The evening is also be accompanied by pizzas and drinks... Did I just write that?

» Identity Management In Action (Live Demo)
Tuesday 27th February (morning session), Dublin
It's a half-day session that will show you how you can improve security, compliance, access and services while reducing costs within your organisation. Half of the session is an actual live demo of Sun's IDM solution. Neat!

» Microsoft Windows & Sun Thin Clients (Live Demo)
Wednesday 28th February (morning session), Dublin
Interested in cutting desktop and licensing costs, as well as significantly reducing the energy costs within your organisaton? Then Sun Thin Clients might just be the solution and this half-day event an opportunity to learn everything about them and to see the technology in action within a Windows environment. Don't miss it!

Well, see you there!

Bootable ZFS is probably one of the hottest ZFS topics. Unfortunately ZFS filesystems cannot currently be used as your root filesystem, however help is on the way!

The ZFS Boot project has been tasked with providing boot and install support for ZFS filesystems. Last year they documented a way to activate ZFS Mountroot, a feature that was integrated in Solaris Nevada Build 37 and that gives you the capability of configuring a ZFS root filesystem. ZFS Mountroot is off by default, but have a look at the team's blog to learn how it can be switched on -- only if you're feeling adventurous: http://blogs.sun.com/tabriz/category/ZFS

Important Notes: Currently ZFS Mountroot only works on a x86/x64 machine and it's not a complete boot solution -- it relies on the existence of a small UFS boot environment to bootstrap the machine. Sun has talked about adding ZFS bootability to machines running on SPARC technology by teaching the SPARC OBP to utilize GRUB as a boot loader.

Hope this helps.

DTrace is one of the most powerful features in Solaris 10. In a nutshell, DTrace allows you to troubleshoot systemic problems in real time. There is an online documentation for DTrace, but sometimes all you need is a simple example of how DTrace works in the real world.

Paul van den Bogaard at Sun Microsystems has recently published a step-by-step guide which explains how DTrace can be used to resolve the pauses you might experience when trying to log onto a system through SSH. After a short introduction to DTrace and a presentation of the problem, Paul takes through you the process of investigating and resolving the issue with DTrace. He goes through the scripting process and the subsequently generated output in great detail.

This 20-odd page article is very well written and very interesting to read -- you won't fall asleep. If you do, drop me a line/comment :)

» Download "DTrace by Example: Solving a Real-World Problem" (PDF)

Other DTrace resources:

• Solaris Dynamic Tracing Guide
• OpenSolaris Community: DTrace

Sun has published a step-by-step guide to help you secure common web servers.

By the end of the guide, you should be able to configure your web server to allow web content to be maintained securely by content owners, while ensuring that the web server itself run with a minimised set of privileges in its own secured Container.

Handy!

HTML Guide: www.sun.com/software/solaris/howtoguides/s10securityhowto.jsp
PDF Version: www.sun.com/software/solaris/howtoguides/s10securityhowto.pdf

Sun is maintaining a list of Solaris Ready applications and solutions on sun.com -- did you know there are over 4,300 applications that run on Solaris 10?

Solaris Ready applications (SPARC) : 3681 Apps
Solaris Ready applications (x86) : 2302 Apps

Download times can be a pain... But Yours Faithfully has located a very cool freebie for you all today... For a limited time, Sun is offering a free DVD software kit which includes the following:

• Solaris 10 Operating System
  • SPARC and x86 Platforms
• Developer Tools
  • Sun Studio 11
  • Java Studio Creator 2 Update 1
  • Java Studio Enterprise 8
  • NetBeans 5.0

So have a look, fill in the form and enjoy these great products:
http://www2.sun.de/dc/forms/reg_us_2211_391.jsp

Dr. Root

Don't forget to email your questions to askdrroot@hos.horizon.ie

If anyone is looking for information on how to implement AJAX functionality in legacy Web applications, have a look at the recently published articles on the subject on java.sun.com:

http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2EE/hands-on/

The tutorials are the first in the series and I must say they're well written and include screenshots.

Definitely worth a look.

Got a programming question?

Well, you could talk to other programmers, read the Java SE 6 documentation, access user groups, search the web, browse forums, read blogs, rss feeds, read the documentation again *ouch!*

Or..... until Wednesday 14th February... you could let Sun Engineers find the answer for you -- within 24 hours.

If that sounds good, just go to the following URL on sun.com and get others to work for you! :-)

http://developers.sun.com/services/expertassistance/promo/javase6.jsp