January 2011 Archives

Oracle’s Möbius Strip Of Stupidity

FacePalm, Software Comments Off

Jan 262011

I need to patch and update some Solaris/SPARC boxes, using the latest Solaris Patch Cluster from Oracle. Nevermind the flash animation that their support website consists of, the best part of the process so far has been this: The zip file that the patch cluster is distributed as is continually failing to unzip successfully on the box. So I finally just unzipped it on my laptop. It unzipped fine. I checked the README file, and I found this:

If you experience problems unzipping this patch cluster please refer to MOS article 1020109.1 ‘Unzip of Solaris 10 Recommended Patch Clusters and Solaris 10 Sun Alert Patch Clusters fails’, available from:

Oracle Support URL

Which contains this helpful explaination:

The size of the Solaris 10 patch clusters now exceeds the size limit for the standard unzip utility. Patches need to be applied to resolve this issue.

It’s like a Möbius strip of stupidity.

Removing The AT&T Boot Screen From A Samsung Captivate

Android Comments Off

Jan 162011

Anyone who has played around with custom ROMs on their Samsung Captivate (particularly if you started with the Rogers SGH-I896) knows that there is an AT&T logo when you first boot the phone. It’s mildly annoying for those of us who don’t actually have an AT&T phone. Well, I’ve found a solution.

First, an explanation of how the boot sequence works. When you first power on the phone, it’s the responsibility of the boot loader (similar to a BIOS on a regular computer*) to display an initial graphic on the display. The boot loader then loads the kernel, and then it’s the kernels turn to display a graphic on the screen. The kernel loads the rest of the ROM, and then the ROM gets a chance to display a boot logo or even boot animation. The instructions below will show you how to change the first boot logo.

Bufferbloat: Finally It Has A Name

Networking Comments Off

Jan 092011

I’ve seen an explosion of discussion in the last couple of days regarding something called Bufferbloat. It seems that Bell Labs’ Jim Gettys has been investigating poor network performance at his house, and has stumbled onto a network phenomenon that he’s termed bufferbloat. Essentially, bufferbloat is when networks are configured with excessive buffers which leads (perhaps counter-intuitively) to poor network performance.

Jim has written a series of blog posts as he has investigated this problem. You can find them all here. He freely admits that he’s not the first to have stumbled across this problem, though he certainly seems to have successfully coined the best term for it. Bufferbloat has in fact long been identified as an issue by those who build their own routers. I remember reading about the phenomenon years ago (though it did not have a name at the time) and avoiding bufferbloat has in fact been the cornerstone of my own home network configurations for over five years now.