Updates...

Well, Matt commented that a zfs trashcan probably wasn't worth the effort, so I won't be persuing that anymore :(

I do however have a complete working prototype and diffs, so if anyone is interested at all, do drop me an email.

I started a discussion on implementing per file versioning in ZFS, and the long and lengthy thread was insightful to say the least. Most agreed that it was cool, but perhaps a specialized API for user apps to access versioning information would be the way to go, instead of a straightfoward userspace interface like VMS.

While/since all I talk about is ZFS nowadays, I've been reading through the code slowly and over and over again: richlowe thinks a writeup of how certain codepaths operate would be useful to the community at large. While maybe some of you grok C code, and some of you wrote the damn code, I personally find english documentation much easier to parse. It would be nice for those of you who are interested to drop me an email: I'll then do writeups in zfs-code, and it can be corrected by all before I commit it to a wiki (i'm looking at genunix.org baby! )

Later.

Insightful snippet seen on dtrace-discuss

"...More than anything, what we (or at least I) learned
from DTrace is that if you want to get big wins, you don't make it
incrementally faster to do existing work -- you eliminate work entirely by
addressing its source higher in the stack of abstraction."

Bryan Cantrill, Solaris Kernel Development

Community NIC Driver diskette/CD

Thanks to J. Keil for the below mentioned: check it out if you want to improve your install experience. :)

Community Boot Driver ITU Diskette/CDROM for Solaris Nevada x86

Interesting sound bite

“To D-BUS people, every problem seems like a D-BUS problem.”
—Erik Troan

Back to the drawing board

Matthew Ahrens pointed out several huge gaping holes in my current prototype for "zfs_trashcan". He also gave helpful advice on a better approach.

I've rewritten my design document, and will concentrate on my rewrite of said code this week. :(

On hindsight, I suddenly appreciate a design document. It fleshes out my ideas, and makes me reflect on what I really want to achieve. Following this line of reasoning, I can appreciate why there is a need for the ARC process for code integration into Solaris/OpenSolaris.

My first and currently only prototype came out of me hammering away until I had something working. So yes, I'm an amateur programmer, but I'm getting better.

Stay tuned. :)

sparc-on-intel translator

Sparc-on-Intel translator due in weeks

Basically a JIT compiler translating SPARC instructions to Intel/AMD instructions.

The question is: how much will it cost you, and does your support contract cover it?

Presenting clicky...

I decided to do some python and javascript dabbling just for a change of pace.

After 3 days of dabbling, i've implemented a simple web based RSS reader for my own use entitled "clicky".

Tools I used:

webpy : very Pythonic and easy to start with.

script.aculo.us (and prototype.js): used to provide Ajax magic like scrolling, hiding RSS entries as well as reloading feeds.

feedparser: Awesome universal feed parser written in python.

Total number of lines of code in the current implementation:
127 (python + markup)
49 (CSS stylesheet)

(I was a bad boy and mixed markup with code. But it feels oh so good!)

Screenshot attached below for your viewing pleasure.