Thursday, August 23, 2007

Solaris Patches

I'm making a solaris patch for a package. This has been a very educational experience.
Either Sun haven't documented this very thoroughly or I'm just managing to miss the current accurate howto document. Looking at other people's posts it looks like others are in the same boat.

Some notes on what I've found:

- All solaris patches have a unique id. They have to be of format XXXXXX-YY where X is a 6 digit unique id identifying what your patching and YY is the version. It also allows you to put capital letters infront which means you can put your company infront and not have to worry about clashing with anyone else.

- read the /usr/lib/patch/patchadd script - it contains the error codes information like the allowed version id format.

- If you doing a patch add and getting something like:

The patch or patch_list 123456-01 cannot be found in
/opt/mydir.


Check your error code you are getting error code 34 which is "Incorrect patch spool directory". It may mean that like me you haven't added a .diPatch file.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Weather Culture Shock

We've been back 2 days now. Since then it has been grey, rainy, chilly and other blahy Sydney winter things. It's kind of like a grey Switzerland Autumn day. We just left summer.

Well we just left summer from a country a long way from an ocean with excellent central heating so 15 degrees there means put on a jumper when you go outside unless your doing exercise. 15 degrees here means where thick socks and a thick polarfleece inside. Weather Culture Shock.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Bunch


Bunch
Originally uploaded by bristley
We went to Paris to see the last stage of the Tour de France again. We took the new TGV - 4.5 hours Zurich to Paris. For July 29th we were standing in the rain on the loop of the final laps. Lots of fun as usual.

We're Back

We flew back to Sydney yesterday. We arrived in Zurich at the beginning of March for what was supposed to be a 2 1/2 month trip. 5 1/2 month laters we're back. I finished work on the 3rd August and we then went on a small cycle tour from the Bodensee to Salzburg.

On Saturday we left our serviced apartment with our bikes and small backpacks and rode to the Zurich Hauptbahnhof - that's the main train station. Our previous cycle tours have been on mountain bikes with slicks and racks with our gear in panniers. For this trip we had road bikes and so we're carrying clothes on our backs. An interesting experiment for us.

For Dear Reader's birthday I had selected a cycle tour book from the German "Bikeline" series that was around the right length for 10 days and we'd decided to start with that. It was the "Bodensee Koenigsee" ride. That's Lake Constance to a lake in Germany about 20 km from Salzburg.

Our first challenge was to get to the Bodensee. We really wanted to get to Lindau but on inquiring at the train station, because it was Saturday in the holiday season - August all the bike reservations on the direct trains were taken. Instead we caught the train to Romanshorn which has a bike carriage - childrens playground on the top level and half the carriage for bikes on the bottom level. From Romanshorn we caught ferry across the Bodensee to Friedrichshaven. Then we rode about 20km around the lake to Lindau and the start of the ride.

A friend at work in Switzerland had described riding on the Bodensee Rundweg (the path around the Bodensee) once - saying that you needed to book a slot to fit in. There were so many people riding this route it was unbelievable. Some people were out for day trips - others were riding with massive panniers and giant tents and sleeping bags on the back. Groups of friends and solo riders. Old and young. When passing through some villages there were more cyclists than anyone else. Even after being in Switzerland - it was a lot of bikes.

More exciting tails to come :-)