(click to enlarge)

There was a draft in opensolaris.org website (though currently it had been removed) that Opensolaris 2010.05 would be the next release after being postponed to release on March this year. Again, Opensolaris lovers around the world might be disappointed because after waiting for it until the end of May there is no official release of Opensolaris. A bad news.

But wait. Today I just found in [osol-discuss] forums that Opensolaris 2010.06 will be expected to release on June 2010. The release date has not been stated yet but it is expected to be announced shortly after Oracle announces Fiscal Year results, which means in a couple of days or so.

I wish this is the last ‘gossip’ talking about the next Opensolaris version in 2010. Opensolaris 2010.06 will really come to the world. We hope that and we are always waiting for the next release.

After being postponed to release on March, we will be getting new Opensolaris version in the next few days. It is Opensolaris 2010.05. This is actually what I am (and Opensolaris lovers around the planet are) waiting for.

There are plenty of new softwares and tools included in the new release. For administrators, many new tools have been added such as Oracle Solaris 10 Containers, Triple-Parity RAID with ZFS, Splitting a ZFS zpool, Save space with ZFS Deduplication, User and Group Quotas with ZFS.

For end users, It will use GNOME 2.28 for the desktop. It’s improved with GNOME Restart Dialog and Fast Reboot.

For more details you can check on this webpage (unfortunately the page has been removed).

Opensolaris 2010.03 will be the next Opensolaris version planned to be released on the end of March 2010. Many improvements and great new features will be added such as interactive installation for SPARC, the ability to install packages directly from the repository during the install, offline IPS support, a new version of the GNOME desktop, ZFS deduplication and user quotas, cloud integration and plenty more.
The current version of Opensolaris is Opensolaris 2009.06. You can take a look at the screenshots here.

Today I just installed Opensolaris 2010.03 build 133 via Virtualbox on my laptop. Below are several screenshots of it. You can download the iso files directly from genunix.org. Enjoy…

[View with PicLens]

Opensolaris 2009.06 had been released on June 1, 2009. If you want to take a look at the latest version 2010.03, you can follow this link but it is still under development preview.
Here are some screenshots of Opensolaris 2009.06 with Gnome compiz fusion 3D window appearance make it more like Ubuntu Linux. Some improvements had been done in the system, much more stable in compiz fusion, faster reboot or shutdown (comparing to the previous release 2008.11). There is one new application that really interesting, Elisa Media Center (something like Windows Media Center in Ms Windowz Vista or Win 7) however, if you run this application the system will become damn slow

Yah, one thing still there is lack of memory management. To run a few application still need more memory resources comparing with Windows or Linux OS. Often the memory load reachs more that 90%. I think the opensolaris developers need to pay more attention to improve on the memory allocation/management in the next release.

Check out the screenshot galleries below:

[View with PicLens]

My Hardware Profiles:
Notebook Compaq Presario with Intel Pentium Dual Core 1.73 GHz, and 2GB RAM

RP-PPPoE is a free PPPoE client developed by Roaring Penguin Soft Inc. RP itself stands for Roaring Penguin.
PPPoE is a protocol used by many ADSL Internet Service Provider (ISP) to connect to theirs internet services.

If you are familiar with Linux and using PPPoE to connect to your service provider, RP-PPPoE is the best tool for this purposes and easy to install because almost all Linux distros have its binary file.

Basically Opensolaris/Solaris 10 has its own PPP client software. You can check it out by running pkginfo command.

fuad@opensolaris:~$ pkginfo |grep ppp
system      SUNWpppd                        Solaris PPP Device Drivers
system      SUNWpppdr                       Solaris PPP configuration files
system      SUNWpppdt                       Solaris PPP Tunneling
system      SUNWpppdu                       Solaris PPP daemon and utilities
system      SUNWpppg                        GNU utilities for PPP

You need to configure some files under /etc/ppp/ directory to meet your need. There are some tutorials on the net for this.
But I have experience when using this default PPP in Solaris/Opensolaris it is always failed to connect. Tailing at the ppp.log file, the modem is always hang up and the connection terminated. I dont know why this happened and does not work with IPWireless TD-CDMA desktop modem I usually use.

Since of that I choose rp-pppoe instead. It is more user friendly and easy to configure. If you are a Slackware user, you can find this tool in your system or in slackware CD/DVD. If you are an Ubuntu user, you can also find this in your system. The pppoeconf is the rp-pppoe modified by Ubuntu developer (if i am not mistaken he he he).

OK lets go to the installation.
We will install rp-pppoe software from source so you need to install SUNWgcc first. Install this software via Package Manager or simply run this command in your shell “sudo pkg install SUNWgcc”.
Then you need to download the rp-pppoe source file here http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/pppoe and then extract the file and begin installation.

fuad@opensolaris:~/sources$ tar -zxf rp-pppoe-3.10.tar.gz
fuad@opensolaris:~/sources$ cd rp-pppoe-3.10/src/
fuad@opensolaris:~/sources/rp-pppoe-3.10/src$ ./configure
[cut]
config.status: creating libevent/Makefile
config.status: creating ../scripts/pppoe-connect
config.status: creating ../scripts/pppoe-start
config.status: creating ../scripts/pppoe-stop
config.status: creating ../scripts/pppoe-init
config.status: creating ../scripts/pppoe-init-suse
config.status: creating ../scripts/pppoe-init-turbolinux
config.status: creating ../scripts/pppoe-setup
config.status: creating ../gui/Makefile
config.status: WARNING:  ../gui/Makefile.in seems to ignore the --datarootdir setting
config.status: creating ../gui/tkpppoe
config.status: creating config.h
On this platform, the following targets will be built:
pppoe pppoe-server pppoe-sniff
Type 'make' to compile the software.
 
fuad@opensolaris:~/sources/rp-pppoe-3.10/src$ make
[cut]
Undefined   first referenced
symbol         in file
dlpromisconreq                      pppoe-sniff.o
ld: fatal: Symbol referencing errors. No output written to pppoe-sniff
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [pppoe-sniff] Error 1
-------------------------------

You see there is an error when running ‘make’, the Makefile does not compile successfully because no output written to pppoe-sniff.
OK we dont need pppoe-sniff at this time so we will edit the Makefile and force not to install pppoe-sniff. Simply edit the Makefile using your favourite editor. Search pppoe-sniff lines or options and remove them. You need to understand a litte C programming language here . Then run ‘make’ again.

fuad@opensolaris:~/sources/rp-pppoe-3.10/src$ make
Type 'make install' as root to install the software.

OK compiled withour errors and ready to run ‘make install’ as root

fuad@opensolaris:~/sources/rp-pppoe-3.10/src$ sudo make install
Type 'make install' as root to install the software.
mkdir -p /usr/sbin
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 755 pppoe /usr/sbin
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 755 pppoe-server /usr/sbin
if test -x licensed-only/pppoe-server-control ; then /usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 755 licensed-only/pppoe-server-control /usr/sbin; fi
if test -x pppoe-relay ; then /usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 755 pppoe-relay /usr/sbin; fi
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 755 ../scripts/pppoe-connect /usr/sbin
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 755 ../scripts/pppoe-start /usr/sbin
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 755 ../scripts/pppoe-status /usr/sbin
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 755 ../scripts/pppoe-stop /usr/sbin
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 755 ../scripts/pppoe-setup /usr/sbin
mkdir -p /usr/share/doc/rp-pppoe-3.10
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ../doc/CHANGES /usr/share/doc/rp-pppoe-3.10
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ../doc/KERNEL-MODE-PPPOE /usr/share/doc/rp-pppoe-3.10
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ../doc/HOW-TO-CONNECT /usr/share/doc/rp-pppoe-3.10
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ../doc/LICENSE /usr/share/doc/rp-pppoe-3.10
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ../README /usr/share/doc/rp-pppoe-3.10
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ../SERVPOET /usr/share/doc/rp-pppoe-3.10
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ../configs/pap-secrets /usr/share/doc/rp-pppoe-3.10
mkdir -p /usr/share/man/man8
for i in pppoe pppoe-server ; do \
if test -f ../man/$i.8 ; then \
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ../man/$i.8 /usr/share/man/man8 || exit 1; \
fi; \
done
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ../man/pppoe-start.8 /usr/share/man/man8
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ../man/pppoe-stop.8 /usr/share/man/man8
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ../man/pppoe-status.8 /usr/share/man/man8
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ../man/pppoe-connect.8 /usr/share/man/man8
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ../man/pppoe-setup.8 /usr/share/man/man8
mkdir -p /usr/share/man/man5
/usr/bin/ginstall -c -m 644 ../man/pppoe.conf.5 /usr/share/man/man5
mkdir -p /etc/ppp
mkdir -p /etc/ppp/plugins
echo "# Directory created by rp-pppoe for kernel-mode plugin" > /etc/ppp/plugins/README
Type 'pppoe-setup' to configure the software.
fuad@opensolaris:~/sources/rp-pppoe-3.10/src$

Ahhh finish and the software has been installed successfully in /usr/sbin

fuad@opensolaris:~/sources/rp-pppoe-3.10/src$ ls -al /usr/sbin/pppoe*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  79120 2009-04-29 20:02 /usr/sbin/pppoe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   8822 2009-04-29 20:02 /usr/sbin/pppoe-connect
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 104892 2009-04-29 20:02 /usr/sbin/pppoe-server
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   9564 2009-04-29 20:02 /usr/sbin/pppoe-setup
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   5565 2009-04-29 20:02 /usr/sbin/pppoe-start
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   2116 2009-04-29 20:02 /usr/sbin/pppoe-status
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   2273 2009-04-29 20:02 /usr/sbin/pppoe-stop

Now it is the time for you to configure ‘pppoe-setup’ to suit your need. After that run ‘pppoe-start / pppoe-stop’ to start or stop dialing to your service provider.

Hope this tutorial will help you in installing rp-pppoe in Opensolaris/Solaris 10 and your comments are most welcome.