Sparcitecture

Have you seen this?

[~]: sudo port -d sync
can’t find package Pextlib 1.0
    while executing
“package_native require Pextlib 1.0″
    (”eval” body line 1)
    invoked from within
“eval package_native $args”
    (procedure “package” line 14)
    invoked from within
“package require Pextlib 1.0″
    (procedure “dportinit” line 315)
    invoked from within
“dportinit ui_options global_options global_variations”
Error: /opt/local/bin/port: Failed to initialize ports system, can’t find
package Pextlib 1.0

Well, I did.

Turns out, I had recently installed the Tcl/Tk Aqua (Batteries Included) distribution and apparently it breaks the MacPorts subsystem. Hopefully you backed up the old binaries for tclsh and wish in /usr/bin (like I did) by moving them to tclsh8.4.7 and wish8.4.7. I was able to (briefly) get the port command working long enough to do a selfupdate by changing the script to call the tclsh8.4.7 binary. Unfortunately, that was not sufficient to fix the problem and resulted in more breakage. Luckily there is an uninstall command on the disk image for the Tcl/Tk installer and after running it (and the linking tclsh and wish to the 8.4.7 binaries I preserved above) my port command was back.

[composed and posted with ecto]

I must say, the job listings on Chicago’s Craigslist are much more interesting than the ones in DC (but then what did I expect?). So far today I have seen “Unix Ninja” and “Master of Technology”.

[composed and posted with ecto]

[tags]chicago,jobs,unix,washington[/tags]

Installing the Cisco VPN client on a Solaris 10 system with ipfilters enabled breaks your ipfilter installation. The symptom to look for is a message from SMF telling you that the ipfilter service has transitioned to a maintenance state when you reboot. The loading of the cipsec module onto the network interface interferes with SMF’s invocation of autopush on the file /etc/ipf/pfil.ap.

Since the Cisco installer adds a line to /etc/iu.ap for each type of interface on the system, the workaround is to append pfil to the modlist for each interface added to iu.ap so the pfil module is loaded after the cipsec module, e.g.:

# tail -2 /etc/iu.ap

bge        -1        0        cipsec pfil
qfe        -1        0        cipsec pfil

[composed and posted with ecto]

It would appear that in the latest release of Solaris 10 (11/06 - both Sparc and x86), out of the box the Sun Update Manager (hereafter referred to as SUM) does not work properly. This seems to be due to DST problems in the bundled JDK (1.5.0_11).

On two fresh installs, one Sparc (SunBlade 1500) and one x86 (Parallels Desktop), after the initial run of SUM I had multiple patches that failed to apply on the next restart. Repeated the SUM process and these patches (40 or so) were marked as download only, not install. I downloaded the tzupdater tool and ran it against the bundled JDK and restarted SDM - this time the patches were marked for install at next reboot and installed successfully when I rebooted the box.

Until Sun puts out another release of Solaris 10, the following steps should be followed to get a fully patched version.

1. Install from removable media or Jumpstart.
2. Download the tzupdater tool bundle and run it against the bundled jdk: java -jar tzupdater.jar -u
3. Run SUM and apply patches as normal.

[composed and posted with ecto]