OpenSolaris on the HP 6710b

As you can probably tell from the Twitter posts, my HP 6710b got a makeover with OpenSolaris installed on it. I had to ditch MS Windows as I found out (to my horror) that it was root-kitted and was transmitting data without my knowledge to some unrecognisable IP address. Needless to say, I immediately trashed the entire Windows installation after backing up my data.

The installation for OpenSolaris went relatively smoothly. What worked out of the box were VGA, touchpad, sound, wired and wireless networks and PCMCIA. I didn't try video-out as I didn't have the appropriate cable with me. But most of the core functionality was there, and I was pretty happy with it.

OpenSolaris needed a few tweaks here and there though. I will list all the tweaks here.

1) Firefox and Thunderbird
Since I use both programs extensively in my line of work, I updated both to the builds listed on this page. Both are installed to the /opt/sfw directory.

2) Respositories
Besides the default OpenSolaris repository, I use SunFreeware at http://pkg.sunfreeware.com:9000/. Not really much there though, and one of my pet peeves with OpenSolaris is the *tiny* number of choices you have. If the IPS package you want doesn't exist, you pretty much have to compile from source.

3) 3G Vodem
I use the Huawei K3520 / E169 a lot in my line of work, so it's imperative I keep my lines of communication clear. As the E169 is a combo-device and has both mass storage and the HSDPA device built-in, the presence of both devices confuses the OS, and going into the device with tip solved the issue.

# tip /dev/term/1
connected
ATZ
OK
at^u2diag=0
OK
~.

My chat scripts for Vodafone NZ 3G.

root@opensolaris:/etc/ppp# cat ./vodafone-chat
ABORT 'BUSY'
ABORT 'NO CARRIER'
ABORT ERROR
"" AT&F
TIMEOUT 60
SAY "Calling Vodafone ...\n"
OK ATZ
OK AT\136u2diag=0
OK ATE0V1E1X1\136SYSCFG=2,2,3FFFFFFF,1,2
OK ATS7=60
OK AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","www.vodafone.net.nz"
OK AT+CGQMIN=1
OK AT+CGQREQ=1
OK "ATD*99***1#"
REPORT CONNECT
CONNECT

root@opensolaris:/etc/ppp/peers# cat ./vodafone
term/1
230400
debug
logfile /var/tmp/pppd.log
crtscts
asyncmap a0000
idle 300
passive
defaultroute
usepeerdns
:0.0.0.0
noccp
novj
lcp-echo-interval 0
lock
persist
modem
noauth
connect "/usr/bin/chat -V -t15 -f /etc/ppp/vodafone-chat"

4) Cisco VPN
Can't leave home without it. I used the prebuilt packages available at this website for installation.
http://blogs.sun.com/devxwill/entry/opensolaris_part_3_vpnc
I used the included pcf2conf program to convert the existing PCF profiles I had for my existing customers. No drama.

5) Multimedia
Multimedia on OpenSolaris is a joke, to say the least. I've never believed in paying for codecs to decode multimedia content, and yet, OpenSolaris packages include Codeina, a pay-for utility for selecting codecs to install. Not good especially if the intention is to make OpenSolaris a universally accepted desktop OS.

Instead, I went here to get my multimedia Gstreamer plugins. Mplayer and Totem just worked out after the installation. I also put some skins into /usr/share/mplayer/skins just to get rid of the default bright blue one that came installed.