[rescue] Solaris 10 puzzle

[Phil Stracchino]

Espen Randen wrote:
> I've noticed that hostname from the GNU coreutils package will treat a
> 'hostname -s' as set the hostname to '-s'.
> 
> And after checking both /bin/hostname in Solaris 9 4/04 and Solaris 10 3/05
> for SPARC '/bin/hostname -s' will also set the hostname to '-s'.

Yes, I found this when I looked at it, and as a workaround I rewrote 
/bin/hostname to DTRT.

> I had high hopes for Solaris 10, but so far I'm not very impressed.
> Okay, DTrace and zones is really cool, but the fact that Solaris 10 has bloated
> to having problems fitting on a 9GB drive and dependency-hell that would make
> RedHat Linux look like a minimal install of NetBSD makes me reluctant to
> install Solaris 10 on any more machines at home or at work.

Yup, I was pretty taken aback by the sheer bloat, too.

On my sol8 and sol9 installs, I've gotten used to installing, then 
removing CDE and everything dependent on it, then just installing fvwm2.

(I find it easier to remove CDE post-install because Sun's install-time 
dependency checker is so crude.  Come on, Sun, the installer already 
knows what all the dependencies are, would it be so hard to have it 
automatically deselect and red-flag for your review every package that 
depends on a package you turn off, re-select all the flagged packages if 
you immediately re-enable the package, and likewise automatically enable 
and flag all dependencies of a package that you turn on?  It shouldn't 
be necessary to have the entire Solaris dependency tree memorized to 
customize a Solaris install, and the dependency listing the installer 
pops up is next to useless because you cannot go back to the package 
list without first closing it.)

Anyway, the point is, on Solaris 9 this involves removing a relatively 
small number of packages, and then you have a light, fast, bloat-free X 
desktop.  I'm not sure this is even feasible any more on 10.  I tried it 
after successfully completing my install on the second try, and 
abandoned the CDE-cleaning attempt after I had removed almost half of 
the total install and still had more than a third of the first-level 
dependency list to do.  At that point I started seriously wondering 
whether it's even possible to remove CDE from Solaris 10 and still have 
a usable system.

The moral seems to be, if you want to have any desktop login capability 
at all on a Solaris 10 box other than text console, just give in, throw 
more disk at it, and live with the bloat.


-- 
  Phil Stracchino
  Renaissance Man, Unix generalist, Perl hacker
  phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net
  phil.stracchino at ceva-dsp.com
  Mobile: 408-592-8081