January 2009 - WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

Re: [Wlug] Thank you for your help and.....

by John Stoffel

Ken> Last week I was stuck. I had a broken SUN sparc64 ULTRA ONE. I Ken> asked WLUG for help. John Stoffel rose to the bait. My SUN now Ken> works better than ever. (We installed four fast ethernet ports Ken> thereby replacing a broken old fashioned eth0.) Thank you Ken> (publicly) John. I have another question. You're more than welcome. I was happy to help out, even though it took a while due to our schedules being out of sync. :] Ken> I am a retired computer programmer. I ended my professional days Ken> as a Senior Software Engineer for CISCO Systems in 2004. I am Ken> getting bored. (and my 401k is getting hit). I am curious as to Ken> whether I can contribute to an Open Source project. How do I Ken> join an open source community? Are they all parts of large Ken> corporations or schools? I just read that CISCO is embracing the Ken> open source idea. Oh course, I shall get hold of them. Ken> Do any of you have some knowledge on this subject? Depends on what kind of programming you want to do: low level drivers, OS internals, application, GUI, etc. Just find a project that interests you, join the developers mailing list, start to learn 'git' (or subversion or mercurial) for distributed development and then jump in. Oh, it also depends on which language(s) you are familiar with and want to program in as well. John

Jan. 15, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Thank you for your help and.....

by nassar＠alum.wpi.edu

Ken> I am curious as to whether I can contribute to an Open Source Ken> project. How do I join an open source community? Are they all Ken> parts of large corporations or schools? It varies a lot, but it comes down to just writing code, submitting it, and repeating. You should mention that you're working on it on the mailing list to avoid duplicating work and get help. If your work is good, the maintainers will include it. If it's bad, they'll ask you to fix it. Eventually, if you submit enough good code, you earn trust and can become a maintainer and check code in yourself. If they don't accept your code, you fork the project and put the patched version on your web site. :)

Jan. 13, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Thank you for your help and.....

by Frank Sweetser

Ken Jones wrote: > Last week I was stuck. I had a broken SUN sparc64 ULTRA ONE. I asked WLUG > for help. John Stoffel rose to the bait. My SUN now works better than > ever. (We installed four fast ethernet ports thereby replacing a broken > old fashioned eth0.) Thank you (publicly) John. > > I have another question. > > I am a retired computer programmer. I ended my professional days as a > Senior Software Engineer for CISCO Systems in 2004. I am getting bored. > (and my 401k is getting hit). I am curious as to whether I can contribute > to an Open Source project. How do I join an open source community? Joining up with an open source project is quite simple. It pretty much boils down to: - pick the project you want to join - sign up for the mailing lists, and probably issue trackers and a wiki - read up on the current state of the project (bonus if it has a "future plans" document somewhere - start asking questions on the mailing lists - pick a piece that looks interesting, and start writing and submitting code Writing documentation is nearly always a good place to start. Many projects have docs that are incomplete, or out of date, and writing docs doesn't require nearly the same level of initial work to get started that writing actual code does. > Are > they all parts of large corporations or schools? I just read that CISCO is > embracing the open source idea. Oh course, I shall get hold of them. Some are, but quite a few have no such backing affiliation. Even many of the ones that have a backer now, didn't initially. The Bacula project, one I'm moderately active in, started off as a pet project by a couple of programmers. Now, the primary programmer is actually building a consulting business around it. Another one, the Puppet configuration management system, was written by the author as a tool to help him in his job as a sysadmin consultant. He chose to open source it, in the hopes that it could be useful to others, and that others, finding it useful, would contribute back to it. Both are coming true, and as a result he has a tool that's far more powerful than anything he could have written completely on his own. In the end, the one common thread you're likely to find among the vast majority of open source communities is a small group - often one or two people - would had a particular itch that they could not scratch, and so decided to start up their own project to fix it. As programs like linux and the various GNU software show, that kind of deep motivation can produce impressive results, even without the traditional corporate support structure. -- Frank Sweetser fs at wpi.edu | For every problem, there is a solution that WPI Senior Network Engineer | is simple, elegant, and wrong. - HL Mencken GPG fingerprint = 6174 1257 129E 0D21 D8D4 E8A3 8E39 29E3 E2E8 8CEC

Jan. 13, 2009

Thank you for your help and.....

by Ken Jones

Last week I was stuck. I had a broken SUN sparc64 ULTRA ONE. I asked WLUG for help. John Stoffel rose to the bait. My SUN now works better than ever. (We installed four fast ethernet ports thereby replacing a broken old fashioned eth0.) Thank you (publicly) John. I have another question. I am a retired computer programmer. I ended my professional days as a Senior Software Engineer for CISCO Systems in 2004. I am getting bored. (and my 401k is getting hit). I am curious as to whether I can contribute to an Open Source project. How do I join an open source community? Are they all parts of large corporations or schools? I just read that CISCO is embracing the open source idea. Oh course, I shall get hold of them. Do any of you have some knowledge on this subject? Ken Jones

Jan. 13, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Hyper Terminal into SUN SPARC ULTRA??

by John Stoffel

Ken> I still have not solved how to get my AURORA LINUX package to see Ken> the added SBUS quad ethernet card in my SUN SPARC ULTRA --so---> Let's see if I remember correctly. The Ultra 1 probably has an HME (Happy Meal Ethernet) interface card, which is 10/100. The quad card you put in is probably a QFE card. Can you boot up the system and see what modules you have in /lib/modules* and also post your dmesg output and lsmod output as well? Ken> I am after some of the files that I have stored on this SAMBA server. I can understadn your frustration! Ken> I figured I could use Hyper Terminal. I have an appropriate Ken> cross over cable with a 24 pin connector to plug into the SPARC's Ken> Terminal A or Terminal B. Ken> I can configure Hyper Terminal on my PC running WINDOWS XP. Ken> I am stuck figuring out how to get the SUN to activate this asynchronous interface. Umm... by default the Sparcs will use ttya as the console input/output if you don't have a keyboard hooked upto the system. Do you have one hooked up when you boot or is it headless? Here's what I'd do: - power off the system. - hook up the serial cable to port A on the Sparc, and COM1 on your PC. Make sure it's a null-modem cable. - unhook any keyboard on the sun. - fire up hyperterm and set to 9600 baud. - start the sparc. You should see output. Send a BREAK sequence (ESC-F I think) to get to the 'ok' prompt on the Sparc. - you should be all set to type, etc. The real issue, as someone else said, is that you need to modify the /etc/inittab file to have a line like this: cd:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty console 9600 vt100 so that you'll have serial access from both the low level PROM, and from Linux. Basically, you should be able hookup adn use the quad ethernet card, you might just need to load the proper module, or re-compile the kernel to have support for that module. More details will help us to help you. The other solution would be to boot the machine, and then setup a ppp link (or even slip) over a serial port to another computer and then you could scp/ftp the file(s) over to a system with a working ethernet port. Depends on whether you have PPP packages installed or not. And whether you have another linux box available to act as the other end of the link. I know very little about PPP on a windows box and I don't want to go there if I can help it. Pulling the disks and putting them into another SCSI system would also let you get the data off there. Hope this helps. John

Jan. 2, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Hyper Terminal into SUN SPARC ULTRA??

by Eric Martin

Need to edit /etc/inittab. I'm not at my pc right now so I can't give exacts but basically copy one of the tty lines and replace the terminal with ttyS0 ot ttyS1 (your serial interface) On 1/1/09, Ken Jones <kjones(a)ziplink.net> wrote: > > I still have not solved how to get my AURORA LINUX package to see the added > SBUS quad ethernet card in my SUN SPARC ULTRA --so---> > > I am after some of the files that I have stored on this SAMBA server. > > I figured I could use Hyper Terminal. I have an appropriate cross over > cable with a 24 pin connector to plug into the SPARC's Terminal A or > Terminal B. > > I can configure Hyper Terminal on my PC running WINDOWS XP. > > I am stuck figuring out how to get the SUN to activate this asynchronous > interface. > > Any suggestions? > > Ken Jones (suddenly feeling very elderly)

Jan. 2, 2009

Hyper Terminal into SUN SPARC ULTRA??

by Ken Jones

I still have not solved how to get my AURORA LINUX package to see the added SBUS quad ethernet card in my SUN SPARC ULTRA --so---> I am after some of the files that I have stored on this SAMBA server. I figured I could use Hyper Terminal. I have an appropriate cross over cable with a 24 pin connector to plug into the SPARC's Terminal A or Terminal B. I can configure Hyper Terminal on my PC running WINDOWS XP. I am stuck figuring out how to get the SUN to activate this asynchronous interface. Any suggestions? Ken Jones (suddenly feeling very elderly)

Jan. 2, 2009

ACM Swapmeet

by Bob Breznak

Hey, I just wanted to remind you about the ACM Swapmeet. Its a chance to swap, buy and sell computer and other equipment and stuff. We had a great turn out last year and are expecting a similar turn out for this year. For more info go to the swapmeet site: http://acm.wpi.edu/swapmeet - Bob ------------------ Bob Breznak 908 672 2841 robert.breznak(a)gmail.com Senior Assistant for Computer Science ACM President UPE President IEEE Webmaster

Jan. 1, 2009