If you’ve ever owned a Acer Ferrari 3400 or 4000 you know that they run extremely hot. This really sucks if you run Solaris, especially with ZFS. It will chew up processing like no other and can heat up your Ferrari so bad it might even just shut off.

This is where the Notepal by Cooler Master comes in. There are a few different models of the Notepal but I have the Notepal W1.

I purchased mine at Fry’s for $29.99 and it works really good. It’s made out of aluminum and has two fans at the bottom (powers off of USB) that suck the air away from the laptop. The website reports it will lower by 7 degrees but I am seeing up to 10 degrees. I definitely recommend this if you are having the same heating issues as I was.

I decided to buy the Atheros wireless card to replace the Broadcom card in my Ferrari that is worthless in Solaris. It’s only $45 so I figured why not. Installation was simple.. just unscrew a panel on the bottom of the laptop and put the new one in.

Booted up, Solaris loved seeing it instead of that Broadcom card. I didn’t have to do anything except create my wireless profile:

# wificonfig createprofile home essid=xxxxxx encryption=wep wepkey1=xxxxxx

dladm shows it too.

I definitely recommend this card to anyone that is looking for a mini-PCI wireless module for their laptop. Now all I need to do is upgrade to b64 to get NWAM/WPA support. test

.

.

.

.

Are you looking for reseller hosting services? Nowadays many web hosting companies are offering reseller services with good features like web site design services. Many of these companies are working by purchasing colocation hosting servers but others like hostgator are offering quality services with their own data center. Additionally these companies offer pc software as their basic feature. For the handling of such softwares webmasters need to have good IT knowledge in the form of 70-528 and 70-293 certifications.

So my brother got a PSP from his wife for Christmas, and calls me up wanting to come over to my house and transfer some mp3’s onto it to test out the audio features. Of course I had to let him try it out on my Ferrari4 running Solaris build 28.

Plugged it up via USB and right away vold picked it up and mounted it under /rmdisk which is what I expected. Got the files transferred with no problems. He is having some kind of directory problem he can’t remove from the PSP but I don’t believe it was Solaris related. Most likely a user error (sorry bro). More to come on this.

Major point: PSP and Solaris work well together.

So Im being like matty and decided to post my openssl speed blowfish results.

Maybe we can have an online archive of the best blowfish results. Instead of racing our fast cars we can race our openssl speed blowfish.
Yeah..thats how nerds do it!

Dell Optiplex GX50 (800mhz Celeron)
# openssl speed blowfish
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 5719436 blowfish cbc's in 2.99s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 1568621 blowfish cbc's in 2.99s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 402176 blowfish cbc's in 2.98s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 101703 blowfish cbc's in 2.99s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 12734 blowfish cbc's in 2.99s
OpenSSL 0.9.7d 17 Mar 2004
built on: date not available
options:bn(64,32) md2(int) rc4(ptr,char) des(ptr,cisc,16,long) aes(partial) blowfish(ptr)
compiler: information not available
available timing options: TIMES TIMEB HZ=100 [sysconf value]
timing function used: times
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
blowfish cbc 30605.68k 33575.83k 34549.35k 34830.73k 34888.60k

SunFireV240 (Dual UltraSPARCIIIi 1.5ghz)
# openssl speed blowfish
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 10016583 blowfish cbc's in 3.04s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 2739768 blowfish cbc's in 3.00s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 717012 blowfish cbc's in 3.05s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 185778 blowfish cbc's in 3.03s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 23384 blowfish cbc's in 3.01s
OpenSSL 0.9.7d 17 Mar 2004
built on: Fri Mar 19 01:05:01 CST 2004
options:bn(64,32) md2(int) rc4(ptr,char) des(ptr,risc1,16,long) aes(partial) idea(int) blowfish(ptr)
compiler: cc -KPIC -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLFCN_H -DOPENSSL_NO_KRB5 -xarch=v8 -xO5 -xstrconst -xdepend -Xa -DB_ENDIAN -DBN_DIV2W
available timing options: TIMES TIMEB HZ=100 [sysconf value]
timing function used: times
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
blowfish cbc 52718.86k 58448.38k 60181.99k 62784.38k 63641.77k

Ferrari 4000 (AMD64 Turion 1.8ghz)
# openssl speed blowfish
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 11051381 blowfish cbc's in 2.97s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 3036030 blowfish cbc's in 2.99s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 774333 blowfish cbc's in 2.96s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 196072 blowfish cbc's in 2.98s
Doing blowfish cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 24567 blowfish cbc's in 2.98s
OpenSSL 0.9.7d 17 Mar 2004
built on: date not available
options:bn(64,32) md2(int) rc4(ptr,char) des(ptr,cisc,16,long) aes(partial) blowfish(ptr)
compiler: information not available
available timing options: TIMES TIMEB HZ=100 [sysconf value]
timing function used: times
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
blowfish cbc 59536.06k 64985.26k 66969.34k 67375.08k 67534.52k

The Ferrari beat the SunFireV240.

Thanks to this guy I now have my Ferrari 4000 working under Xorg in Solaris and how nice it is. Here’s more details:

1. Download the latest Xorg snapshot.
2. un tar it, add the following lines to ./config/cf/host.def: (This file won’t exist so you have to create it)

#define ProjectRoot /opt/Xorg-6.8.99.16
#define NothingOutsideProjectRoot YES

This tells it to install into /opt/Xorg-6.8.99.16

3. Compile and install the software. What I did was downloaded Sun Studio 10 instead of messing with gcc to build it which made it a lot easier. Put /opt/SUNWspro/bin in your PATH and you are ready to go. Read the BUILD file. (make World; make install; make install.man)

4. Rename /usr/X11 to /usr/X11.solaris
5. Link /usr/X11 and /usr/X11R6 to /opt/Xorg-6.8.99.16
6. Modify your /etc/X11/xorg.conf to look like this. You should be able to start Xorg now by doing /opt/Xorg-6.8.99.16/bin/Xorg

To get Xorg working with dtlogin:

7. Copy /usr/X11.solaris/bin/Xserver to /opt/Xorg-6.8.99/bin
8. Copy /usr/dt/config/Xservers to /etc/dt/config/Xservers (probably have to create this dir) and remove the -nobanner option from the file.

So I’ve come across a bunch of problems with WhiteBox Linux’s x64 version on my ferrari, and it’s really a big piece of shit I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. I’m going to be switching over to CentOS x64 soon and I’ll have an update from there how everything is working on it.

I know this isn’t Solaris but I’ve been trying to get my Ferrari 4000 working decent with Linux and it’s hard to do because theres not much information anywhere on people using this yet. So this is what I’ve come up with so far installing on WhiteBox Linux Enterprise 4:

ATI Mobility Radeon X700 - Xorg - Install ATI drivers from website, run fglrxconfig. If your screen is dark make sure you have in the xorg.conf Device section:

Option “MonitorLayout” “NONE,LVDS”

Here is my config, running at 1400×1050.

Synaptics Touchpad - Use driver from this site. Follow troubleshooting guide if you have problems. Some things to note here are make sure you have psmouse module loaded. I had to compile this as a module because building it into the kernel didn’t work. Also I had to use kernel 2.6.12.2 because 2.6.12.3 would error when I tryed to modprobe it.

Broadcom NetLink BCM5789 Gigabit Ethernet - Use Tigon3 tg3 module.

ACPI - Use kernel 2.6.12.2 ACPI, something is funky with this though and when you unplug the laptop it sets modification times all weird. Use ‘noapictimer’ option in grub at kernel boot.

Bluetooth - Should work out of the box, although I haven’t had time to play with this yet. Mine works with the cord plugged in and not wireless.

I’ve finaly got my ferrari 4000 installed with a triple boot (XP64, Solaris, Linux). At first had some problems so I researched ways other people have done it but all I found was a triple boot, which is not exactly what I wanted. It seems like everytime I want to accomplish something I have to do it the hardest way possible that no one has done before. What I wanted was a triple boot, plus a multimedia partition for mp3s/movies/etc. to be able to access from each OS. The ferrari 4000 comes with a 100gig hard drive and this is how I ended up splitting it:

33 gig - XP64
18 gig - Solaris CR build 16
19 gig - Whitebox
26 gig - Multimedia

and that is the order I installed them in as well.

First booted XP install and installed XP on a single partition 33 gigs.

Second booted Solaris CD and installed Solaris on a single partition 18 gigs (when you do this, solaris grub overwrites the MBR).

Last I booted the Linux CD (which was Whitebox Linux release 4) and during the partition setup I set root partition as a primary and then created an extended partition and made the swap partition and the multimedia partition (vfat so I can access it from all OS’s). Also during the install the Whitebox installer will ask you if you want to install a boot loader or not (which is nice and I think all installers should do this), and I told it no because I wanted to use the Solaris GRUB which was already installed.

If your Linux operating system does not let you tell it no boot loader, you can let it install the boot loader and then boot Solaris CD and goto command prompt (Option 6). It will mount your disk under /a and you can then run /a/sbin/installgrub -m /boot/grub/stage1 /boot/grub/stage2 path to your rdsk

Edit your /a/boot/grub/menu.lst while you are here and make necessary changes. Mine looks like this:

default 0
timeout 10
splashimage /boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Solaris 11 nv_16 X86
root (hd0,1,a)
kernel /platform/i86pc/multiboot
module /platform/i86pc/boot_archive

title Solaris failsafe
root (hd0,1,a)
kernel /boot/multiboot kernel/unix -s
module /boot/x86.miniroot-safe

# new OSs
title White Box Enterprise Linux (2.6.9-5.EL)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-5.EL ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.9-5.EL.img
title WindowsXP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

Work ordered me a Ferrari 4000 and I can’t even explain in words now nice this laptop is. I’ve been working on getting solaris cr b16 running on it decently and I’m going to boot it also with Linux and XP using the Solaris GRUB. I will be posting some tips on how I got it working and other various tweaks.