Determining the Memory and Disk Space on a Solaris System

If you need to determine the amount of memory in a Solaris system, you can use the prtconf command. The second line of output will show the amount of memory in the system.

# prtconf
System Configuration:  Sun Microsystems  sun4u
Memory size: 384 Megabytes
System Peripherals (Software Nodes):

SUNW,Ultra-5_10
...

Or you can use prtconf | grep Memory to get just the amount of memory in the system.

If you need to determine the disk space in the system you can use this soldiskspace BASH script to display the disk space in GigaBytes (GB). You may need to modify the first line in the script to point to the actual location of bash on your system, e.g. /usr/local/bin/bash on Solaris 2.7 systems. The script uses the prtvtoc command and is based on the BASH script provided by Sandra Henry-Stocker, ITworld.com in an article titled Calculating overall disk space published on December 23, 2004 on ITworld.com . A full explanation of how the script works is available in the article.

The script must be run as root. To use the script, issue the command chmod 700 soldiskspace to make the script executable.

# ./soldiskspace
Disks:
    /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2: 8 Gbytes
    TOTAL: 8 GB

Zip file for script: soldiskspace.zip

An alternative method of determing the disk space on a system is to use iostat -En. Using that command on the same system as used in the example above shows the disk space in the second line of output below. The command also shows the manufacturer and model number for the CD-ROM drive in the system. The size value should be ignored for the CD-ROM drive.

# iostat -En





c0t0d0          Soft Errors: 0 Hard Errors: 0 Transport Errors: 0
:  Size: 8.62GB <8622415872 bytes>
Media Error: 0 Device Not Ready: 0  No Device: 0 Recoverable: 0
Illegal Request: 0

c0t2d0          Soft Errors: 0 Hard Errors: 52 Transport Errors: 0
Vendor:    LG    Product: CD-ROM CRD-8322B Revision: 1.05 Serial No: ºÝþºÝþºÝþ
Size: 18446744073.71GB <-1 bytes>
Media Error: 0 Device Not Ready: 52 No Device: 0 Recoverable: 0
Illegal Request: 0 Predictive Failure Analysis: 0

References:

1. Calculating overall disk space
   Sandra Henry-Stocker
   ITworld.com
   December 23, 2004

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Emprex DVDRW 1116IM Drive

I installed an Emprex DVDRW 1116IM dual 16x double layer drive in a system that I'm setting up with Fedora Core 5.

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World Time Zones

If you need to know the local time somewhere else in the world or the current UTC, aka GMT or Zulu, time, a useful site is, www.timeanddate.com. From The World Clock - Time Zones page, you can see current times throughout the world and GMT time.

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Maintaining Wikipedia's Accuracy

There was an article on The New York Times website today, titled Growing Wikipedia Revises Its 'Anyone Can Edit' Policy that discusses the way Wikipedia maintains the accuracy of its contents.

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia maintained by volunteers, which provides information on a multitude of topics. It is a free alternative to other online encyclopedia's, such as Encyclopedia Britannica.

Wikipedia allows anyone to edit most articles. So how does Wikipedia prevent articles being defaced by online vandals who can think of no productive way to spend their time or those with an axe to grind. It does so through volunteer administrators who help maintain the quality of the information on the website.

[ More Information ]

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John Glenn Versus Howard Metzenbaum

I received an email that was purportedly based on comments by Senator John Glenn of Ohio comparing the lives lost in the war in Iraq to casualties in previous wars fought by America. At the end of the message was an exchange between Glenn and Howard Metzenbaum, which purportedly occurred on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Unlike some such email messages, there was some truth in this message, but also a fair amount of distortion and misattribution of comments.

[ More Info ]

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PBS Distribution of TV Programming over the Internet

Robert Cringely's June 8 column, Local Heroes: Could the Key to Successful Internet Television Be...PBS? suggests that PBS might be a good conduit for distributing television programming over the Internet, i.e. IPTV, for not only their own programming, but for commercial programming as well.

He suggests that PBS affiliates could establish relationships with the ISPs in their area, colocating servers at the ISPs, which would distribute the programming to the ISPs' subscribers.

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