Sun Microsystems may be selling servers running Linux, but that doesn’t mean it is cutting back on the evolution of Solaris. Among its plans, the company is considering offering a free, open source version of its flagship operating system, said Jonathan Schwartz, the company’s recently appointed president and chief operating officer. “Maybe we’ll GPL it,” Schwartz said of Solaris, referring to the GNU General Public License under which the Linux operating system is distributed. “We’re still looking at that.”
Sun Considers GPL License for Solaris
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If this is actually going to happen I see SUN Solaris becoming Red Hat Solaris and Suse Solaris.
Well, as far as I know, Solaris is seen as a better server OS than Linux (that’s what I hear around the net). So GPL’ing it might actually pose a threat to the Linux server-side… And since Sun is doing Linux on servers… Seems to me that they are creating their own competition…?
__________________________________________
–Dutch translator for SkyOS, v5.0–
license a BSD GPL ?
its a 1st one…
Too much code is copyrighted by other companies.
It’s hard to say what in solaris is copyrighted to who, after all they bought out their unix license and can do anything they want with that code. Also the fact that SVR4 was co developed by Sun and AT&T so that’s a significant block of code they can do what they want with, then there is all the code from original BSD as well. Any 3rd party code is probably a fairly low amount of the total sum.
If you ask me i’d say it’s all just a smokescreen, they won’t release a gpl implementation of Java after all
Hehehe
I think Sun is confused.
Amen… Don’t want to open source JAVA, why now open sourcing SOLARIS ?
To draw off the attention of this.
Since there may be some Sun experts lurking here: How does SunRay compare to this new shiney NX/NoMachine thingie ( http://www.nomachine.com/ ) which everyone is praising so high now in various X11 related forums?
Anyone knows some comparison chart? Or experience of your own?
why not?
Sun choose different licenses for their different products anyway.
They just use to most suitable one, in their opinion, for each product.
just browse http://sunsource.net
NetBeans use a variant of the Mozilla Public License,
while JXTA license is based on Apache Software License 1.1.
OpenOffice.org use dual-license, LGPL and SISSL.
etc etc.
so Solaris can change its license to be anything,
and whether it is an opensource license or not,
it is not neccessary to be the same license as Java.
Even for linux, since it can borrow good parts out of the solaris system.
Since sun is busy with getting linux on more servers its seems a logical step. Open solaris, move stuff from solaris to linux. Solaris gets a lifetime free support, company’s using solaris can hire anyone to add more code to there old software etc…
may be a good idea for SUN, after all they will still earn out of the hardware (sun hardware is top-notch, remember, compared to commodity x86). and services of course, on top of that.
but then good point about saying that solaris has non-sun parts in it, so it’s not that easy to GPL unless they want to rewrite those parts completely
Someone mentioned that a GPLed version of Solaris would be a threat to Linux. How can GPL software be a threat? Open-cource can’t be a threat to other open-source because anything positive can just be co-opted.
Isn’t Solaris a Unix also? What about SCO? How do you think they will react? Does the license Sun have allow them to do this?
bad idea….
It’ll a massive Linux->Solaris migration [i doubt it]
Or Linux will “suck” in all the best features from Solaris, and become a Unix too
In other words Solaris and Linux ll merge =].
They really like to talk about Red Hat whenever they’re interviewed.
After all Sun bought the SVR4 license some years ago, didn`t they? So it would be the same violation that SCO claims with Linus.
I think Sun will face an agony soon
Given the actual status of server hardware and server Operating Systems Sun has no more market to grow and is seeing its market going down and going as well as the profit margins and investors.
They should thimk about GPL Java (did they did that already ?)
Quote from news item…
Still, Sun has its apprehensions. “What worries us about the GPL is its capacity to encourage forking, because what’s happened in Linux is that Red Hat has forked. Not in the sense that the kernel is different … It’s forked because if you write to the Red Hat distribution, you can’t go and run on Debian.”
I am beginning to believe that this is true. I think Redhat should respond to this.
By Chris (IP: —.ACT.netspace.net.au)
They really like to talk about Red Hat whenever they’re interviewed.
That is probably because they have settled with MS, and McNeally is not allowed to criticise MS anymore.
Redhat is there new threat and partner. Weird huh. I think they are jealous of their competitors position in the market as always.
@noaname:
First of all thankyou, noname. your question prompted me to download and test NX. It is really worth while to use. I had been following a discussion in a German news forum here
http://www.pro-linux.de/cgi-bin/NB2/nb2.cgi?show.6757.2013.50000010…. and this already had made me curious.
you can get yourself an account here: http://www.nomachine.com/testdrive.php . I chose to use a Germann public NX server named “testdrive.millenux.com”. It is phantastic: they have a public server there and you can run a fullscreen KDE session on it. (I am currently visiting my girlfriend and use her Windows XP with an NX Client for Windows. There II run a fullscreen NX session. From this session I have started konqueror and browsed OSnews. Hey my girlfriend was scared to death because she first thought I had installed RedHat Fedora on it (because of the fullscreen). But you can also run it in a windowed mode. It very much feels like a VMWare session. And the speed is the same…
But now for your question:
####################
“How does SunRay compare to this new shiney NX/NoMachine thingie…”
———-
I can’t tell you — I have never used SunRays. But for sure, this NX blitz is by far the fastest remote control I ever used. (This includes “naked X”, “ssh -XC”, “mlview”, “LBX”, “DXPC”, “TightVNC”, “Windows Terminal Server”, “rdesktop” and “HOBclient”.
“…which everyone is praising so high now in various X11related forums…”
———-
…including myself from this moment on. It is just worht it and I hope Keith Packard will include it in his new X server.
“Anyone knows some comparison chart?”
———-
No, but I don’t need it anymore now. The only comparison chart would be the price chart. And here I know without looking that SunRay is far to expensive for me. And it locks me into a certain vendor. No open platform. Very expensive servers. NX lets me use it crsoss-platform — on Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X and PDAs. SunRays I can only use on SunRays and their servers….
“Or experience of your own?”
———
Yes and I thanky you for prompting me to finally try it. You should too 😉
Greetings from Hans Jörg
@noname:
Just let me add one more comment:
Even if Sun opens Solaris and opts for the GPL license on it — I don’t think this will make SunRays one iota more attractive. This will stil be a platform lock-in if you buy it and its expensive servers.
NX technology from NoMachine is GPL (see here http://www.nomachine.com/faq.php#9a ), and this lets me trust that there will be no vendor lock-in for it.
Greetings from Hans Jörg
“Still, Sun has its apprehensions. “What worries us about the GPL is its capacity to encourage forking, because what’s happened in Linux is that Red Hat has forked. Not in the sense that the kernel is different … It’s forked because if you write to the Red Hat distribution, you can’t go and run on Debian.”
I am beginning to believe that this is true. I think Redhat should respond to this.”
I am beginning to think some people need their medicine. Whats been forked now? The kernel? no wait.. thats Linux.. The GNU tools set.. umm nope. I guess I just don’t see it.
And whats is this about not being able to run software created on redhat on debian? Could you give any examples of well written software with this problem?
you can get yourself an account here: http://www.nomachine.com/testdrive.php . I chose to use a Germann public NX server named “testdrive.millenux.com”. It is phantastic: they have a public server there and you can run a fullscreen KDE session on it. (I am currently visiting my girlfriend and use her Windows XP with an NX Client for Windows. There II run a fullscreen NX session. From this session I have started konqueror and browsed OSnews. Hey my girlfriend was scared to death because she first thought I had installed RedHat Fedora on it (because of the fullscreen). But you can also run it in a windowed mode. It very much feels like a VMWare session. And the speed is the same…
Unfortunately, the MacOS X port is busted, I would love to have tried it.
Does NX also stream audio from the server? Say I play a audio stream on the session does it stream sound to the client.
SunRays also alow you to connect peripherals to the appliances, like PDAs and printers.
“Could you give any examples of well written software with this problem?”
Oracle ?
imho,
When we talking about “openness” against “proprietary”,
that “open” should be more to “open standard”.
Since the reason that we don’t want proprietary software,
is because we don’t want to be locked-in to any vendor.
And that’s what open standards deliver, not open source.
An open source software could also be a proprietary software,
if it’s not a standard complaint.
sun has ownership of unix. they can actually license unix to other companies like SCO does. i wonder if GPL’ing it would cause a licensing problem with SCO or other unix vendors?
I bet SCO wrote a letter to em about this. Schwartz shoots his mouth off too much. GPLing it would be impossible… Now if they MIT it or BSD it, thats different. It woudl be interesting to see what kind of contracts they got with AT&T, SCO, and Novell. long ago..
this is retarded. linux would take all the good things out of solaris. plus solaris would get more popular. why would they want it to be another linux? ok, we have linux, but why would we need solaris. why cant solaris just remain closed. i mean damn you why cant you offer linux AND solaris? it makes no sense there are already open source alternatives to solaris (on x86 hardware– not sparc hardware)
thanks
“it makes no sense there are already open source alternatives to solaris (on x86 hardware– not sparc hardware)”
Also on SPARC (32 and 64): OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, the Linux kernel + base, and more. We could discuss the quality and make a compare; the point is that they’re there.
It sound so me that Sun is going to relicense Solaris under the VPL: Vapor Public License
I started off with some respect for Schwartz – at least he had the resolve to ditch some of the brass and get rolling on some much-needed trimming and rationalization at Sun.
But lately comments like this are making him look listless. John – you only have about a year to differentiate yourself either as a great comeback (Apple) or a flameout acquisition target (DEC). I suggest you stop dicking around and get some products announced (forget about execution, that can come later) of products and services that keep people remotely interested in Sun as a vendor.
>> SunRays also alow you to connect peripherals to the appliances, like PDAs and printers.
Yeah it’ll be great when we get these 5000 SunRay units all hooked into our BlahFire server and get it all connected with Jini and log in using our Java WonderTwin rings…
BZZT BZZT BZZT BZZT BZZT (mom walks in)
Wake up Timmy, you’ll be late for school! Were you dreaming of dead technologies again?
dude dont act like a jerk
> Yeah it’ll be great when we get these 5000 SunRay units all hooked into our BlahFire server and get it all connected with Jini and log in using our Java WonderTwin rings…
Sun Ray is a very solid techonology and it is in fact finding wider and wider adoption from all I know. Just to name a few BIG customers: FAA, US Army/Air Force, Qwest. It is the technology that has a real promise to reduce the TCO and remove the nightmares of desktop administration. When Sun Ray becomes available for Linux, which is sometime at the end of this year, it will truly be a killer solution for the corporate desktop. I’ve been usings Sun Rays for a few years now and all I can say it is a really beautiful solution that has a lot of promise if done right.
I think Sun is worried that they’ll go down, and are looking for ways to hold on to all the hard work they put into Unix. This way, nobody can get their hard work sequestered, or get it diminished. Sort of an “Intellectual Property” insurance policy.
And then again, it may be that they woke up and ate the roses (obligatory Far Side reference):
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/Could_Sun_hold_…
“Did Sun have an uncanny bout of clairvoyance and act on its intuition by negotiating for itself the same sort of sweet deal that Berkeley got from the settlement with Novell? Beyond Schwartz’s characterization (offered in a context outside of SCO’s lawsuits) of the 10-year-old transaction as a “buyout of Unix” that involved “expansive rights,” Sun officials haven’t elaborated. Based on historical accounts of Unix found on the Web and even a recent News.com report, Novell’s buyout cost to Sun was $82 million and took place in 1994. Beyond reports of a perpetual license, not much is known about the finer details of the 1994 transaction.”
And decided that since the Operating System market has been effectively shredded by Linux, with various other Open Source OSes coming on strongly behind, what better to do that revert to their Unix roots and join in the fun? Spread the pleasure like soft butter rather than like cured cement. Make sure of a place in the Sun for themselves … ;^)
I for one would be happy to get and use Open Sourced Solaris.
There is some confusion as to whether SUN supports Linux or Solaris. An open source Solaris would dispell that confusion. Since Java is tied to their product line (JDS), and the product line is what makes the sale in this entertainment business, they will not GPL Java until they migrate to a new product line, than they probably wil decentralize Java and open it up to the community.
Another thing is that Schwartz is a behavioral thinker. He is putting things out on the table and seeing how people will respond and what choices or deals will materialize. It’s an intelligent way to evaluate the environment. His style not logical but it is behavioral, he takes into account more than logic.
the way they continually change course, opinions and attitude.
I know IBM has done some reprehensible things in the past but, once they decided to throw they weight behind Linux, they really went at it whole hog. Kernel improvements, JFS, developerWorks tutorials including some for LPI certification by Gentoo founder Daniel Robbins, TV ads and the ports of Informix and DB2.
If Big Blue has ever taken a contradictory strategy towards Tux, I’ve yet to notice. SGI also deserves a lot of credit for the XFS port, the nationwide Linux University tour and videos, the debugging and profiling enhancements and the Altix platform which showcased Linux’s scalability. Not to forget ( although not strictly Linux-specific) their Apache Acceleration project. All this during a period where SGI’s star wasn’t shining very brightly.
SUN? Whose side are they on? The Linux community? SCO? Microsoft? They should set aside some of that M$ cash infusion for some psychoanalysis for their senior staff.
Why is NOT directly supporting Linux seen as a crime? In your eyes, it would be a crime if your neighbour did not vote for the same presidential candidate as you did. Come on, “guy”, wake up in the real world, not everyone shares your opinion.
This pisses me off SO MUCH.
I agree, sun/schwartz seems schizophrenic about open source development and linux. Schwartz shoiuld not be throwing out statements like… “maybe we will GPL it”, with regards to solaris. That’s a major strategy shift which isn’t just thrown out to the media as a what if… fortune 500 companies like to see a stable roadmap.
Perhaps it was a misstep on his part but he’s a COO and my expectation is to think a little before hashing stuff out with the media.
I think this would be a bad move since I don’t see what SUN gains, it could be that more people used there product and they could offer support, but that’s kind of as much as it gets.
But if noone owns Solaris you aren’t “guaranteed” to get anything, it’s free and can be modified and contain whatever, so I don’t see why anyone would start to use it.
On the other side they already offer it for free so people can use it without paying them but they still have to develop it themself.
Anyway, I would give it a shot and use it if it was easier to get regular apps running, what is needed is something like netbsd pkg_src on solaris or gentoo portage or debian apt. I don’t care if it’s open-source or not, as a regular home user I only care about that it doesn’t cost anything so I can check it out and use it without haveing a loss.
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/software/packages.html#platform…
was already available, don’t know how good it works, but anyway, if sun made an effort and used that so people could install their regular apps fairly easy they would probably get a hell of a lot more home users.
GPL Solaris does sound interesting indeed, but surely there must too much proprietary code from too many sources (such as SCO). I suppose they could dual licence it like they have done with {Star|Open}Office[.org], but they would have a hard time maintaining binary compatability. It would be interesting to try a version of Solaris which supported more than a handful of hardware (i.e. made use of some of Linux’s GPL drivers).
I can see how GPLing Solaris could benefit Sun. People who currently pay for Solaris will continue too, because chose Sun primarily for the service and support (most of the customers who want a free (beer) Solaris are happy with Linux).
It will be interesting if they GPL Solaris, because they would only do that if they thought they didn’t have much to lose by it (i.e. (IMHO) they think that Linux has pretty much caught up, in technology terms). It will also be interest to see if they GPL both the SPARC and X86 versions.
Having said all that I still reckon it is just a case of the PR people getting carried away.
BTW, it would be funny if they GPL’d it and it turned out there was no AT&T (SCO) code and it was all BSD and Sun code.
I can see how GPLing Solaris could benefit Sun. People who currently pay for Solaris will continue too, because chose Sun primarily for the service and support (most of the customers who want a free (beer) Solaris are happy with Linux).
Sorry dude, but I still don’t see how GPLing Solaris would actually benefit Sun. Your “explanation” is no explanation at all. You only said that GPLing Solaris would not impact Sun’s bottom line – which is certainly false, because Solaris customers would now have the option of getting support from Sun or from some random company that has a lot of Solaris expertise. But even if you were right, that ALL the customers would still stick with Sun, that still doesn’t a profit make. You still don’t explain how is this BETTER.
“Oracle ?”
I managed to get it running in Debian, sure it took some effort, but it worked in the end.
I know IBM has done some reprehensible things in the past but, once they decided to throw they weight behind Linux, they really went at it whole hog. Kernel improvements, JFS, developerWorks tutorials including some for LPI certification by Gentoo founder Daniel Robbins, TV ads and the ports of Informix and DB2.
IBM is going whole hog behind linux not because they love open source or free software. It’s becuase they are mainly a services company, 50% of thier revenue almost 45 billion a year comes from global services. If they support linux they can eventually phase out a lot of OSes they have, that have been stagnant for years, AIX is still behid Solaris in terms of feartures, it runs only on Power based systems, Solaris runs on x86 hardware. Thier OS/390 and other Mainframe OSes are too expensive to maintain. IBM has seperate groups working on porting DB2 to every platform, these groups don’t even commicate and are seperate organizations for all purposes, there is no code sharing between two groups writting IBM’s own application on thier own platforms.
With linux they can move all thier development to one common platform, that actually has mindshare, and concentrate on services which is thier main cash cow. The reason they can do this is that they are not loyal to any one platform, if linux suddenly looses mindshare to say loghorn (hypothetically), I wouldn’t be to surprised to see IBM stop thier full throttle linux development and move to what ever makes money for them at that time.
SGI also deserves a lot of credit for the XFS port, the nationwide Linux University tour and videos, the debugging and profiling enhancements and the Altix platform which showcased Linux’s scalability. Not to forget ( although not strictly Linux-specific) their Apache Acceleration project. All this during a period where SGI’s star wasn’t shining very brightly.
Let’s see SGI’s own product lines MIPS and IRIX were dead, so they moved to Intel based systems to survive. Porting IRIX to intel was a more daunting effort than just adopting linux and extending it.
Both IBM and SGI have only contributed to linux enough software to make it a viable platfrom on thier systems. JFS, XFS, RCU and all the other technologies are enablers that are required by thier current customers if they were to switch to linux. Why didn’t they contribute to ext3 or ReiseFS to make them available quicker? If they love open source why not open source all their IP
like DB2, webshpere, Rational sute and tivoli.
Even though Sun is putting out confused messages, atleast they are honest about thier intentions. IBM is very hypocrytical about open source, they want others to open source their techonlogy so they can make java on linux a reality for them to sell more services. They themselves hold on to thier own porduct portfolio for dear life. I would like to see IBM put it’s money where it’s mouth is and help JBOSS or other open source projects by porting features from websphere and other IBM software over to open source alternatives.
Sun should look at FreeBSD instead of Linux.
Sun should also keep developing Solaris for the main frame computing. And keep on selling it has a rock solid system for heavy computing and big load uptime with no restart. Solaris is good at that.
Supporting a BSD would give Sun a good Operating System for *clients* in a proper (and dedicated) hardware platform (even if they also turn to PowerPC G5 CPU or the AMD64 platforms, since they stop the Sparc line). They should also hire some good User Interface Designers (There are some which left Apple that are good enough). That would be a good investement for the whole Sun sytems lines.
A leader of a big company must be (or should be, since it doesn’t look like it regarding Sun CTO) like a good General.
A General always explains details to the troops but never reveals the complete strategy, instead he shows confidence and actions to prove he owns a vision.
Sun has no apparent strategy for (at least) 2 or 3 years. They go with the tide of the moment… sad. The war is almost finished with one loser.
(even if they also turn to PowerPC G5 CPU or the AMD64 platforms, since they stop the Sparc line).
Sun hasn’t stopped the SPARC line.
Sun has no apparent strategy for (at least) 2 or 3 years. They go with the tide of the moment… sad.
This is true. Sun needs to concentrate on one solid strategy and play on thier strenghts, scalable, reliable systems. But it looks like Sun wants to keep redefining it’s self every 6 months.
@Thom Holwerda
Why is NOT directly supporting Linux seen as a crime? In your eyes, it would be a crime if your neighbour did not vote for the same presidential candidate as you did. Come on, “guy”, wake up in the real world, not everyone shares your opinion.
This pisses me off SO MUCH.
You can be as pissed off as much as you want but that doesn’t give you the right to put words in my mouth. I didn’t accuse them on any crimes but of inconsistency, backtracking and a fractured strategy.
Here’s what I’ve seen from SUN over the last 5 years:
Let’s support Intel ( badly – it really wasn’t worth a damn until Solaris 8); wait, let’s not; wait, let’s start doing it again; let’s charge for our software CDs ( I bought
3 versions) but not allow downloads; okay, let’s charge for downloads; wait, let’s give free downloads; no, let’s charge
again; aw, no more downloads; on 5th thought, let’s charge for downloads again; well, okay, free downloads are back.
We’ll make a Linux-based Desktop, stick the magical Java name on it, don’t provide any source ( even when the system is paid for, as far as I can tell) but let’s insinuate that an Open Source one is proprietary.
Let’s release the source to Solaris – okay, we did it once, now we can stop.
The only consistency I’ve seen from them is that they are devoted to proselytizing Java and their insistence that Linux is only good for the low end ( which is arguable).
IBM is going whole hog behind linux not because they love open source or free software. It’s becuase they are mainly a services company, 50% of thier revenue almost 45 billion a year comes from global services. If they support linux they can eventually phase out a lot of OSes they have, that have been stagnant for years, AIX is still behid Solaris in terms of feartures, it runs only on Power based systems, Solaris runs on x86 hardware. Thier OS/390 and other Mainframe OSes are too expensive to maintain. IBM has seperate groups working on porting DB2 to every platform, these groups don’t even commicate and are seperate organizations for all purposes, there is no code sharing between two groups writting IBM’s own application on thier own platforms.
Until Solaris 8, the only advantage I could see to having Solaris on x86 was that average Joes could run in ( slowly) on their PCs and learn how to administer it. I bet IBM could port AIX to the MacIntosh platform in no time flat.
I don’t have AIX experience ( quite a bit with Solaris x86 and some with Solaris SPARC) but a cursory glance through the comparison here:
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/aix/products/aixos/whitepapers/aixmapp…
doesn’t make it obvious that AIX is lacking. I’ll have a deeper look when I have time.
IBM is running their state-of-the-art Fishkill facility on Linux ( with their own DBMS and middleware apps on top)so that’s a big vote of confidence on their part.
Until Solaris 8, the only advantage I could see to having Solaris on x86 was that average Joes could run in ( slowly) on their PCs and learn how to administer it. I bet IBM could port AIX to the MacIntosh platform in no time flat.
Sun is now on Solaris 10, you can download the latest development builds from Solaris Express. From what you are saying solaris 8 onward solaris x86 is better than before it. Solaris 8 is now 4 years old. You will have to do better than that.
I don’t have AIX experience ( quite a bit with Solaris x86 and some with Solaris SPARC) but a cursory glance through the comparison here:
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/aix/products/aixos/whitepapers/aixmapp…..
doesn’t make it obvious that AIX is lacking. I’ll have a deeper look when I have time.
Ok all this mapping page highlights is that such and such Solaris command is equal to this particular AIX command. How can you draw a technical conclusion based on a user interface mapping?. Solaris supports more hardware than AIX for one thing. Solaris 10 has advanced features like DTrace, Predictive self healing, Advanced security features, FireEngine (fast network stack) and Zones (application containers) . I would like you to show me a AIX comparison chart on thier next release. This will validate that IBM is developing AIX to be competitive with Solaris.
IBM is running their state-of-the-art Fishkill facility on Linux ( with their own DBMS and middleware apps on top)so that’s a big vote of confidence on their part.
http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/news/semiconductor.shtml
“Yes, our evaluation process went something like this. First, we decided we needed an operating system that would run on smaller hardware, almost a PC-level platform. UNIX/AIX are very robust operating systems, but you need a fairly large machine to run then, and we wanted to allow tool applications to function independently down to the hardware level, so we ruled out AIX. That left Windows and Linux.”
Ok thier main decision factor here was to run small systems, so they ruled out AIX. This further validates my point on how AIX is limited and even IBM are hesitant to try it out for thier own facility.
The fact that they chose linux over AIX, validates my point about IBM not being loyal to one platform. Today linux is thier gig but tomorrow it may not be if markets change.
The AIX to solaris mapping page is old circa 2001. If that is the best IBM can come up with for an AIX to Solaris compasrison, then you and IBM just made my point for me.
–> “Unfortunately, the MacOS X port is busted, I would love to have tried it. ” <–
Oh — sorry to hear that. Was that on Jaguar or Panther? I am sure it will be fixed with next release. From what I heared from other users, the NX Client on Mac OS X must be even faster than on the other platforms…
–>”Does NX also stream audio from the server? Say I play a audio stream on the session does it stream sound to the client.” <–
Yes it does. No problem. Just enable it before you start the session. (It is off by default.)
–>”SunRays also alow you to connect peripherals to the appliances, like PDAs and printers. ” <–
SunRays work on a “homogenious” platform. NX is more cross-plattform than anything else.
If you run NX Clients on Linux or Unix or Mac OS X, and if your NX Server in on Linux or Solaris, and if you access Linux or Solaris applications, printing is no big problem. Use CUPS with port-forwarding and you are done.
It is a bit more problematic on NX Clients running on Windows or PDAs, as you would easily agree… But this is worked on, and hopefully by autumn there will be easy-to-use and easy-to-configure cross-platform printing support in NX.
Cheers,
Kurt [ writing this from inside an NX session ]
Oh — sorry to hear that. Was that on Jaguar or Panther? I am sure it will be fixed with next release. From what I heared from other users, the NX Client on Mac OS X must be even faster than on the other platforms..
NXDarwin won’t start on Panther.
Yes it does. No problem. Just enable it before you start the session. (It is off by default.)
Good to know that.
If you run NX Clients on Linux or Unix or Mac OS X, and if your NX Server in on Linux or Solaris, and if you access Linux or Solaris applications, printing is no big problem. Use CUPS with port-forwarding and you are done.
I think it works the same on SunRays as well. The APP on the server could print to any printer configured in the users session.
SunRays work on a “homogenious” platform. NX is more cross-plattform than anything else.
I am not debating that. NX sounds cool, but I would like to try it to draw my own conclusions.
But I think comparing SunRays to NX is unfair. A SunRay is an appliance, there is no platform, it never needs to be upgraded or patched. The majority of the work is done on the server, with the hot desk software. I am not sure if sun will port hotdesk to linux since they now sell linux software as well.
I think NX and Sunrays have different markets in general and are good technologies in their own right.
–> NX sounds cool, <–
Yes, it is.
–> but I would like to try it to draw my own conclusions. <–
Good approach 🙂
So if it currently doesn’t work on Panther, there are still Linux, Windows, Solaris, Zaurus and iPAQ clients to test 😉
–> I think NX and Sunrays have different markets in general and are good technologies in their own right. <–
You may well be right here.
So if it currently doesn’t work on Panther, there are still Linux, Windows, Solaris, Zaurus and iPAQ clients to test 😉
After I spent a few minutes debugging NX on panther, it looks like there are multiple problems.
1. The client fails to open a socket X4 in /tmp/.X11-Unix. nxproxy which creates this socket defaults to X8. I am not sure if this is the problem.
2. Running nxporxy with -p 4 creates the socket X4, the client now goes further down the connection and barfs at the X protocol compresion phase. The error message in the details tab doesn’t correlate with the dialog box it presents. Three different error messages spit out from nxproxy which have nothing to do with encryption produce one and the same error dialog about not being able to open an encrypted channel to the test server.
So much for the cross platform nature of the NX client. But if this is the quality of software I can expect from nomachine, I am sorry to say they have’nt impressed me. Their software is not free by the way.
I think they are making the case for SunRay style appliances, nobody has to debugg SunRays just to get it to connect to the server.
Anyway this is going way offtopic, I will try NX later when they have something that is not Beta quality software at best.
I will try NX later when they have something that is not Beta quality software at best.
I think I need to qualify the above statement before I get flamed. My classifying the Nx client as beta quality is not because it didn’t work on panther, but becuase the error handling is so poor. The dialog box should atleast indicate very closely where the problem might be, if say I were to call support how would the tech support person know which of the three/ more reasons caused the error dialog to be displayed.
> Sun hasn’t stopped the SPARC line.
That is not what I heard. They stopped making the sparc based client lines. Maybe I am wrong about it.
–> I spent a few minutes debugging NX on panther <–
Panther is Mac OS X 10.3. They offer the NX Client currently only for Jaguar (10.2).
–> if this is the quality of software I can expect from nomachine, I am sorry to say they have’nt impressed me <–
It’s more like you didn’t read the specs of the software you was installing. 😉
Apple’s own apps in a big part don’t run on 10.3 if they are only specified to run on 10.2. So Apple doesn’t impress you either, but you are still using their OS… 😉
–> Their software is not free by the way. <–
Look closer, please.
What do you mean “not free”? Free as in free beer or free as in liberty?
Are you saying the GPL is no Free Software license any more?
All their own NX compression libraries are released under the GPL. This is an enormously significant gift to the Free and Open Software communities! It enables the GNOME, KDE, LTSP, X.org and another projects to use it and integrate this cool technology into their own applications. It is working code and it is GPL!. Sorry if you missed to read that information on the web page.
The GPL’d stuff comes as source and you can compile it yourself. This is also functional: you can use it from the commandline, without a spiffy, glitzy, GUI interface. It also ships a package called “nxscripts.tar.gz”. In there is a commandline client which allows you to build an NX connection between two NX peers.
NoMachine sell a commercial product on top of the GPL code, which they own.
So what?
CUPS/Easy Software Products does it, Qt/Trolltech doees it, MySQL does it, WINE/Codeweavers does it, Darwin/Apple does it,…. want more?
–> Anyway this is going way offtopic, <–
Given that the heading of this story had contained “GPL License” in it, and given that you are casting doubts on the nature of NX’s license, it still has some relevance…. 😉
I hope this issue is clarified for you now. To check for the substance of my rant, please go to
–> http://www.nomachine.com/sources.php for source code (with included license statements), to
–> http://www.nomachine.com/developers.php for developer info and to
–> http://www.nomachine.com/products.php to discover in the lower right corner the hint to the GPL…
I will suggest to them that they make the GPL facts more visible (like for example in the title of the “Developers” tab…)
Cheers,
Kurt
–> …if say I were to call support how would the tech support person know… <–
If you were to call support (or ask on the mailto:[email protected] mailing list), you should provide infos as described on http://www.nomachine.com/documentation/supp-request.php ,please. This document describes how to increase the debug level and where to find the log files.
Other than that, your encountering of inconsistent and unclear GUI error messages may really reflect a specific weakness at one spot in the NX code..
But if it works, it is rock solid for me, and lightning fast, given the bandwidth I have here…
Cheers,
Kurt
Apple’s own apps in a big part don’t run on 10.3 if they are only specified to run on 10.2. So Apple doesn’t impress you either, but you are still using their OS… 😉
I did an upgrade from jaguar to Panther and not one app broke, even non apple software that was 10.2 only. Maybe you should stick to facts. I also said that, the app not running on Panther is not what didn’t impress me, it was shoddy error handling in thier code. Quality software should handle errors well, if it dies becuse it couldn’t open a socket it should say that in the error popup, not talk about encryption.
Look closer, please.
What do you mean “not free”? Free as in free beer or free as in liberty?
Are you saying the GPL is no Free Software license any more?
Free as in beer, No I did not claim that their software was closed source, I never brought up licensing.
All their own NX compression libraries are released under the GPL. This is an enormously significant gift to the Free and Open Software communities! It enables the GNOME, KDE, LTSP, X.org and another projects to use it and integrate this cool technology into their own applications. It is working code and it is GPL!. Sorry if you missed to read that information on the web page.
Well what good are opensource libraries to me as an end user. Where can I download the source for NX client for macOS X and build it to give me the exact binaries that ship in thier test.dmg image??? I wouldn’t mind debugging it further on Panther.
The GPL’d stuff comes as source and you can compile it yourself. This is also functional: you can use it from the commandline, without a spiffy, glitzy, GUI interface. It also ships a package called “nxscripts.tar.gz”. In there is a commandline client which allows you to build an NX connection between two NX peers.
I know how the GPL works, thank you. But a few libraries that make up an app doesn’t mean much to me or what I was trying to achieve. I looked into the nx scripts.tar.gz scripts they aren’t very helpful. On MacOS X the command line nxclient launches the GUI, incase you didn’t notice I did launch nxproxy from the command line, as mentioned in my previous post.
Given that the heading of this story had contained “GPL License” in it, and given that you are casting doubts on the nature of NX’s license, it still has some relevance…. 😉
Can you show me where I mentioned the word license anywhere in my post?
I said it was not free. Why would you misconstrue “not free” to mean “closed source” or licensing for that matter. I thought you were being nice by discussing NX, but it looks like you have a religious obsession with NX, so much that you can’t tolerate someones criticism, that the nxclient GUI for MacOS X is badly written.
if NX is truly open source like mozilla, openoffice or netbeans, I should have source for everything and not just a bunch of scripts and libraries.
Yes NX is offtopic on a Sun and GPL article, even if it is partially GPL’d software. Given your last comment was unnecessary becuase I did not say anything about NX’s license, I am ending my discussion with you with this post since we are already way of topic.
This document applies to version 1.3.0 or later of NX Server. Please find below the instructions on how to retrieve the relevant information from your NX installation. Be sure you include all the following information at the time you request support.
From the url you just posted. They only provide support for the server which they do charge for.
I found their trial software to be badly written, I don’t fault them for it not working on 10.3, but many times you can only find bugs when things aren’t optimal. If they haven’t ported thier client over to panther which has been out for nealy 6 months now, I seriously suspect thier commitment to cross platform support. A feature you so gleefuly gave as a plus point for NX, while comparing them to SunRay.
–> I also said that, the app not running on Panther is not what didn’t impress me, <–
Yes, you clarified that in a separate posting which I only read later.
–> No I did not claim that their software was closed source <–
OK — this wasn’t clear to me from the context. In the context was SunRay, which isn’t “free” either. And that context was also given by the “GPL License” keyword in the main story above. So my misunderstanding may be understandable.
–> what good are opensource libraries to me as an end user. <–
IF you are an enduser — they are no good. Then you want a GUI program in most cases. That’s why I hinted to the possibility for KDE, GNOME, LTSP et al to integrate NX into their applications.
But YOU, you seem to be a very special type of end-user, offering to debug NX on Mac OS X by compiling it 😉
–> Can you show me where I mentioned the word license anywhere <–
I can’t. Sorry to have mis-interpreted you. Maybe for getting more clarity in future, we could use the word “gratis” instead of “free”, if we mean “gratis”. (But I am no native English speaker….)
–> it looks like you have a religious obsession with NX <–
Hmmmm…. may in part be true 😉 Just like I had an “obsession” with CUPS before it was finally widely adopted 😉 (But I don’t think it is “religious”…) 🙂
–> I am ending my discussion with you with this post since we are already way of topic. <–
OK — thanks. Maybe there comes a better opportunity & and place to continue it sometime….
Have a good time & Cheers,
Kurt
IF you are an enduser — they are no good. Then you want a GUI program in most cases. That’s why I hinted to the possibility for KDE, GNOME, LTSP et al to integrate NX into their applications.
But YOU, you seem to be a very special type of end-user, offering to debug NX on Mac OS X by compiling it 😉
Well I like to play devil’s advocate sometimes:) I will give the NX test a try on Windows XP to see how cool it is.
I can’t. Sorry to have mis-interpreted you. Maybe for getting more clarity in future, we could use the word “gratis” instead of “free”, if we mean “gratis”. (But I am no native English speaker….)
That’s quite alright, even GNU vetrans such as Stallman seem to misunderstand the word free and gratis at times. Free has a dozen meanings in the computing and open source world, so it is understood.
Hmmmm…. may in part be true 😉 Just like I had an “obsession” with CUPS before it was finally widely adopted 😉 (But I don’t think it is “religious”…) 🙂
I too hold obsessions, some times bordering on religiousness
No harm done.
Cheers, Have fun evangelizing NX and CUPS. Thanks for a good discussion.
I will give NX another chance.
–> If they haven’t ported thier client over to panther which has been out for nealy 6 months now, <–
I believe, their Mac OS X client support started only 3 months ago. And I know they are not a big company. So it may partially be a question of resources and time, and they are not yet at the end of their Mac OS X road 😉 [ Maybe a bug report from your side would help them? ]
–> I seriously suspect thier commitment to cross platform support. <–
Well, I know their Windows, Solaris and Linux clients work. So no similar suspicion from my side here….
–> A feature you so gleefuly gave as a plus point for NX, while comparing them to SunRay. <–
This still holds true even if I subtract Mac OS X support completely… 😉
Good night,
Kurt [2:00 AM local time]
I managed to get it running in Debian, sure it took some effort, but it worked in the end.
And *that*, is the whole point that’s being made.
Bannor99: I don’t have AIX experience ( quite a bit with Solaris x86 and some with Solaris SPARC) but a cursory glance through the comparison here:
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/aix/products/aixos/whitepapers/aixmapp…….
doesn’t make it obvious that AIX is lacking. I’ll have a deeper look when I have time.
Raptor:
Ok all this mapping page highlights is that such and such Solaris command is equal to this particular AIX command. How can you draw a technical conclusion based on a user interface mapping?. Solaris supports more hardware than AIX for one thing. Solaris 10 has advanced features like DTrace, Predictive self healing, Advanced security features, FireEngine (fast network stack) and Zones (application containers) . I would like you to show me a AIX comparison chart on thier next release. This will validate that IBM is developing AIX to be competitive with Solaris.
I’d already admitted that I have no experience with AIX but, as I dig deeper, I wonder if your knowledge of it is any better than mine. I’d like to reiterate that Solaris 10 is still beta. You mentioned Solaris Zones but AIX has had Dynamic Logical Partitioning for nearly 2 years. Also, SUN has only made their Resource Manager as part of the base OS in Sparc Solaris 9 – you had to pay thousands for it previously. AIX has had their workload manager included since mid ’99. AIX also was an early mover to 64-bit while SUN pretty much brought up the rear among the large commercial Unices.
SUN also lagged with their native journaling filesystem which wasn’t reliable until Solaris 8 ( and still not enabled by default). Also according to this press release:
http://www.prdomain.com/companies/i/ibm/newreleases/200205may/pr_ib…,
AIX had self-healing and predictive failure analysis 2 years ago.
SUN’s Fire Engine is essentially a TCP Offload engine, something IBM has been doing for over 10 years on MVS:
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/info/newsltr/tcpnewc4.txt
So, tell me again how AIX lags Solaris in terms of features.
oh come on, IBM is not committed to AIX at all. They are moving their AIX users to linux. Tell me why i should even get an AIX machine.
I do believe johnathon makes decisions based on reactions of his comments(sometimes insane ones). he’s a very outspoken person personally and we just have to get used to it. It’s about time sun had someone who spoke out. Schwartz has GPL’d sun software before, but he knows he can create a license that allows no forking but remaining open source. He knows this, sun execs have said so in email ive gotten frmo them. I have no idea why he’s talking about the GPL. I guess he’s trying to stir up the press
!!!! GREAT WORK!
Assuming that you’re commenting on my posting, I never claimed anything about IBM’s commitment to AIX. In an earlier post, I’d questioned SUN’s strategy. If IBM is moving their AIX base to Linux, hey, that’s okay by me. If anything, they would have to make sure that Linux is a capable replacement.
So, you don’t have to get an AIX box but you could get an IBM server running an improved Linux.
You mentioned Solaris Zones but AIX has had Dynamic Logical Partitioning for nearly 2 years.
DLPARs are not the same as Zones. Sun has DR or Dynamic Syatem Domains for a while now. That’s more of a hardware feature than and OS feature.
SUN’s Fire Engine is essentially a TCP Offload engine, something IBM has been doing for over 10 years on MVS:
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/info/newsltr/tcpnewc4.txt
MVS is not AIX.
AIX is limited to the hardware it runs on namely power based systems. Apparently IBM themselves find this a limitation of AIX, hence the use of linux for thier fishkill facility.
Solaris runs on Xeon and Opteron based hardware. Infact a few IBM laptops and xseries servers are Soalris 9s HCL. Name one IBM laptop that IBM sells with AIX or linux preinstalled.
FireEngine is not a TCP offload engine, that is one of its features, it is a TCP stack that can handle multiple 10Gb ethernet cards on a machine.
The biggest thing AIX lacks is it’s Parent companies commitement to it as a platform for the long term, which Solaris has plenty of. Hey if AIX is not good enough to run IBMs own facility why would a customer buy power or Rs/6000 servers running AIX.
Solaris x86 doesn’t have the same complete feature set as the
Sparc platform. You make it sound as though IBM will hang AIX customers to dry. I sincerely doubt that. Even if they terminate AIX, I have no doubt that they’ll provide full capabilities for Linux.
The biggest fear for the RS 6000 crowd would be if IBM kills off the Power platform. But, considering that the aren’t many non-x86 players left and they have Apple as a customer, I don’t see this happening in the short term.
And, quite frankly, Zones doesn’t blow me away. Chroot jails are old news; what make Zones so special?
“Three different error messages spit out from nxproxy
which have nothing to do with encryption”
May please tell me more about which errors were reported
by nxproxy? Do these nxproxy errors provide enough
information? I wrote nxcomp/nxproxy and I really think
that they do.
These errors are produced by a GPL component. Are you
satisfied with them?
“produce one and the same error dialog about not
being able to open an encrypted channel to the test
server.”
nxclient does not link to nxcomp and nxproxy. This ensures
that you and NoMachine can use the same GPL software
without NoMachine having any advantage. nxclient parses the
output provided by nxproxy. nxproxy can produce a lot of
different error messages, all very detailed. The people
developing nxclient do not parse all of them and in some
cases default to suggesting that nxproxy can’t connect to
the remote server because the remote server is behind a
firewall. This is in 99% of the cases the reason why the
connection does fail. The message can be erroneous
but it’s not difficult for an expert to go deeper and check
the details in the error log, as you did yourself.
“But if this is the quality of software I can expect
from nomachine, I am sorry to say they have’nt impressed
me.”
Regarding the “quality” of the software, I’m really
waiting for a software offering the same features of NX
with the same easiness of use. X is a complex beast and I
have seen experienced Unix programmers hitting a wall
trying to set-up a LBX proxy. Trust me, NX is more complex
than a LBX proxy.
“I think they are making the case for SunRay style
appliances, nobody has to debugg SunRays just to get it
to connect to the server.”
I agree but I read an article where the head of the Sun
R&D was proud to announce that work at Sun was ongoing to
allow users to run SunRay appliances across DSL lines. If
you really want a SunRay appliance I think VNC is for you.
We dedicated a lot of effort in developing good X
compression, dealing with latency as well as with
manageability on the server. We started from the bottom
and are now building on top. Give us ten years and then
let’s run the same comparison again.
“Anyway this is going way offtopic, I will try NX later
when they have something that is not Beta quality software
at best.”
Try nxclient for Linux, then. It should be out of Beta
given that some cities in Germany are considering using
it for stuff like replacing their Windows workstations.
/Gian Filippo.
The document applies to those people who have bought
the support. The support is tied to the server. Anyway if
you had visited the list archive you would have found lot
of people getting support for free (as in gratis and beer)
on issues regarding both nxclient and nxserver. We support
people paying as well as people not paying. We just support
people paying first. How is this working at Sun?
“If they haven’t ported thier client over to panther
which has been out for nealy 6 months now, I seriously
suspect thier commitment to cross platform support.”
Apple has made available X11 for the Mac after 6 years of
OS/X development and now you want the poor people at
NoMachine doing a client in 6 months.
/Gian Filippo.
May please tell me more about which errors were reported
by nxproxy? Do these nxproxy errors provide enough
information? I wrote nxcomp/nxproxy and I really think
that they do.
These errors are produced by a GPL component. Are you
satisfied with them?
Ok here are the error messages
1.Info: Proxy running in client mode with pid ‘2123’.
Error: Can’t open UNIX connection to X server.
Error: Error 2 ‘No such file or directory’ opening ‘/tmp/.X11-unix/X4’.
2. Runnig nxproxy -p 4 creates the x4 socket and we make forward progress.
Note:- nxproxy could do with a –help option to print usage. At the very least print usage on a bad option not default to “Error: NX transport initialization failed.”
Info: Proxy running in client mode with pid ‘2137’.
Info: Connecting to remote host ‘testdrive.nomachine.com:5405’ on SSH port ‘localhost:50320’.
Info: Connection to remote proxy ‘testdrive.nomachine.com:5405’ established.
Info: Handshaking with remote proxy ‘testdrive.nomachine.com:5405′ completed.
Info: Synchronizing local and remote caches.
Info: Using cache parameters 4/262144/8192KB/8192KB.
Info: Using image cache parameters 1/1/32768KB.
Info: Using adsl link parameters 8192/80/16/4096.
Info: Using pack method ’16m-jpeg-7’ with session ‘unix-kde’.
Info: Using ZLIB data compression level 3.
Info: Using ZLIB data threshold set to 32.
Info: Using ZLIB stream compression level 6.
Info: Using remote ZLIB data compression level 3.
Info: Using remote ZLIB stream compression level 6.
Info: No suitable cache file found.
Info: Using remote server ‘testdrive.nomachine.com:5405’.
Info: Starting X protocol compression.
Error: Lost connection to peer proxy on FD#18.
Error: Connection with remote peer broken.
Error: Please report this problem to support personnel.
I am not able to make out why the file descriptors keep incrementing on each consecutive run from 15 – 19 and then back to 15. I am not sure if it is a timer based retry or a sequential retry 4 times kind of loop, or a weird race among two nxproxy processes as explained below.
Note however that these error messages might not lead to a rootcause of this problem becuase of the way I started nxproxy asynchronously from nxclient. nxproxy might have been forked by nclient as well and a race could occur.
3. The above messages change if the nxproxy -p 4 command times out before the connection is established. One i got the reason for failure to be a kill signal
All the above messages lead to a message saying cannot connect to an unencryted peer, may be behind a firewall, try enabling the SSL option.
However without looking at the source, I really can’t do mare than this, I know the source is avaliable but I don’t have the time nor the inclination to debug it further. Remember I haven’t seen NX in action, it might well be worth the endeavor but I don’t care at the moment.
nxclient does not link to nxcomp and nxproxy. This ensures
that you and NoMachine can use the same GPL software
without NoMachine having any advantage. nxclient parses the
output provided by nxproxy. nxproxy can produce a lot of
different error messages, all very detailed. The people
developing nxclient do not parse all of them and in some
cases default to suggesting that nxproxy can’t connect to
the remote server because the remote server is behind a
firewall. This is in 99% of the cases the reason why the
connection does fail. The message can be erroneous
but it’s not difficult for an expert to go deeper and check
the details in the error log, as you did yourself.
Parsing output from one command to determine state sounds like bad idea in my opnion, it leads to timing related bugs as I have just experienced and a disconnect between the two layers in terms of error handling. However, nomachine might have a very good reason to desgin that way. That’s fine by me. I have no problem with that.
Are the test servers behind a firewall, the readme doesn’t mention it, nor does the email sent at signup. Anyway, enabling SSL as the dialog suggest doesn’t help anyway.
We dedicated a lot of effort in developing good X
compression, dealing with latency as well as with
manageability on the server. We started from the bottom
and are now building on top. Give us ten years and then
let’s run the same comparison again.
I am sure you have put a lot of effort in making NX a viable platform. Like I said I went and signed up for the test to try it out becuase it looked interesting.
Please don’t take my comments in a negative way, I have nothing against NoMachine or its products. I found that the test didn’t work and the errors printed by the software weren’t helpful in pointing me in the right direction to fixing the problem. I also searched the nomachines mailing-list archives and google for answers, before I posted here.
We support
people paying as well as people not paying. We just support
people paying first. How is this working at Sun?
If you look at comp.unix.solaris you will find a lot of sun engineers helping users for free/gratis. Also http://forum.sun.com/ has a few engineers helping gratis. I have had similar luck at Apple’s forums and my cellphone companies forums as well. I personaly think that your mailing lists as well as other company’s forums are a great source of help to individuals using thier/your products.
Keep up the good work. I am sure NX will mature into a great product.
Sorry dude, but I still don’t see how GPLing Solaris would actually benefit Sun. Your “explanation” is no explanation at all.<i/>
Your right I didn’t really explain it. As I see it, the bulk of Sun’s Solaris users buy Sun because they know and trust Sun . They don’t buy software or hardware from Sun, so much as they buy peace of mind (rightly or wrongly).
[i]GPLing Solaris Sun’s bottom line – which is certainly false, because Solaris customers would now have the option of getting support from Sun or from some random company that has a lot of Solaris expertise.
As I see it, the main market for “some random” Solaris would be:
* New/non-Loyal Solaris users.
* The smaller systems of core Solaris users where the cost of Solaris couldn’t previously be justified.
These customers who otherwise might have used Linux, BSD or even MS-Windows then have an upgrade route to Solaris, which has to be good for Sun.
Error: Can’t open UNIX connection to X server.
Error: Error 2 ‘No such file or directory’ opening ‘/tmp/.X11-unix/X4’.
It looks rather informative to me.
The rest is just wild guessing, including arbitrary
considerations on why a Unix OS returns increasing FDs when
calling socket().
nxproxy might have been forked by nclient as well and a
race could occur
????
I don’t really understand what you are speaking about.
A second nxproxy process, not controlled by nxclient,
successfully connect to the remote. Connection is later
aborted when nxclient cleans everything up once its
controlled process has exited. Has you can see, no race
condition here. How can nxclient know that you ran another
nxproxy on the command line?
All the above messages lead to a message saying cannot
connect to an unencryted peer, may be behind a firewall,
try enabling the SSL option.
The nxproxy process controlled by nxclient was actually
unable to complete the connection procedure. nxclient is
wrong in reporting the reason but you were able to find
it by looking at the error log. It looks not that bad to
me.
“Parsing output from one command to determine state
sounds like bad idea in my opnion, it leads to timing
related bugs as I have just experienced and a disconnect
between the two layers in terms of error handling.”
Sorry but you didn’t experience any “timing related bug”.
In your raw guessing you have completely missed the point.
There is no “disconnect between the two layers”. There is
a socket open between nxclient and nxproxy. The two
processes communicate using this socket. If you think that
this is a bad idea you should consider that X, HTTP, SAMBA,
FTP, DNS etc. work this way. It’s a Unix thing. Would have
an output more similar to “NX/1.1 200 OK” better matched
your expectations? We have something like that in nxclient
to nxserver communication. We chose to give nxproxy a
more user-friendly output as we assume that nxproxy can
be used on the command line, even without nxclient.
Anyway, this is becoming more and more off-topic at each
iteration. I’ll be glad to respond to any of your
objections in the nxusers list, given you will have some
more time to dedicate at this in future.
/Gian Filippo.
I don’t really understand what you are speaking about.
A second nxproxy process, not controlled by nxclient,
successfully connect to the remote. Connection is later
aborted when nxclient cleans everything up once its
controlled process has exited. Has you can see, no race
condition here. How can nxclient know that you ran another
nxproxy on the command line?
Yes I am going to assume you didn’t understand what I just explained.
The connection goes nowhere with the ” can not open /tmp/.X11-Unix/X4″
message. That is the original bug.
The workaround that makes it go forward as mentioned is step two is running nxproxy -p 4 (which creates the socket x4) from a second terminal. This makes the whole connection proccess go further as evidenced by the second set of error messages. If this is not done the damn thing ends with the error message from step 1 (your original bug).
Why does the connection in the nxclient go to the X protocol comperssion phase now that a second nxproxy (hand started by me to port 4004, x4 socket) from a different process?
That doesn’t sound like how http, ftp or any other protocols work.
I am sorry you are the one who didn’t understand the scenario of what the bug is. Your so-called helpful error messages, along with your assanine design confused you even more.
If this is how nomahince treats bug reports from potential customers, I am sorry you have a long way to go before you become a viable comapany. I have absolutely no more interest in you products.
I was being nice in my previous post, think that you as an employee volunteered to help. I even spent time debugging a bug for you, If you think that It was my duty for some reason because your product is GPL’d, I am sorry you are absolutely mistaken. GPLing you software doesn’t get you free debugging.
I’ll be glad to respond to any of your
objections in the nxusers list, given you will have some
more time to dedicate at this in future.
Sorry I will not be a NX user any time soon. Your pityful attempt at “customer service” left a bad taste in my mouth. If as a representative of your company you go around trying to argue and discredit people who try your product out and offer you help in debbuging an issue, I am sorry to say I find that absolutely shameful. Why do you think your product or even your company is worth my time? Do you have a false notion that your product is so superior that after your arrogant behaviour I would still pour my precious time in making it work and do your job for you.
I will not comment this except for saying that nxclient can
have thousands of such bugs and I’m sure that you just went
through one of them. I just found irritating your jumping to
the conclusions and criticizing the overall “quality” of the
sofware and even the “design” without having any idea of
what you were speaking about. And this just because nxclient
is wrong reporting an error.
If you change your mind and are still interested in this
topic I will glad to explain in private or on the lists
how the X server is shared among the connections, how
nxclient runs it, if needed, after having successfully
negotiated the session with the server and before starting
the NX transport and how this process can fail for reasons
that, day by day, we are trying fix in our lame effort of
shipping a reliable client for MacOS/X. 😉
Sorry for bothering you all.
/Gian Filippo.
AIX really isnt as feature rich as solaris, I use both of the machines. I wouldn’t invest in AIX either.
Why would I want to run linux on a power machine? It’s not even a native OS. AIX outperforms linux on the power as of right now. I don’t feel like doing ibm or hp’s STUPID MIGRATIONS.
I’m sticking with sun. And I would HATE to see Solaris GPL’d. If it was BSD’d then I’d be HAPPY about it. I might a well fork it and close the source
Sun – Do what Apple did. Apple released darwin and open source community forked it and added new features. It’s basicly free code to apple. they can close it and do what they want. So why don’t you BSD the core part of solaris? It’s the best business decision. Incorporate what the “community version” adds to the commmercial closed version and everything is happy. NEVER get ride of the closed community version though
GO FOR IT!