I recently got a new laptop for work, and had to install a bunch of stuff. For what it’s worth here’s what made it in within the first couple of days:
I was asked to outlline what I’d expect someone to decide before they started a performance test exercise. A quick look at StickyMinds shows this document, which looks very good. It is, however, 8 pages long, which is about 7.5 pages longer than I need if my target audience is going to bother with it. Here, then, is my simplified version. Slightly cryptic, perhaps, but workable (at least for a web server, which is what we’re dealing with).
Purpose?
*Performance Test – see what it will do
*Stress Test – see the most it will do
*Load Test – see what happens when it does more than that
*Sizing – Guide to customers on hardware requirements
Test platform?
*Number of machines
*Machine specs
*Network spec
Test Application?
*Low complexity to concentrate on platform
*High complexity to simulate real-life loads
*Think times emphasize load or real-life use.
Finally, how will results be measured?
*Throughput (or equivalents)
*Constraints (e.g. is app under test memory bound, CPU bound, network bound)
*Recommended hardware – e.g. X users per Y GB of memory and Z GHz of processor.
A while ago I posted on my adventures getting OpenSolaris networking to move from its natural state of notworking (see what I did there?) on a mac mini. Well today I installed the latest release candidate of 2008.11, the forthcoming update, and it went much more smoothly. You still have to install a driver (tip – usb keys work fine for file transfers), but once done restarting networking worked first time.
A new feature in OpenSolaris is NWAM, the NetWork Auto Magic, um, thingy. It’s a handy tool that automatically configures your network connection. Unfortunately it unhandily has no GUI at the moment, though one is in the works, so if it doesn’t work right first time you can quickly get lost in text files and Google searches. In my case I wanted it to do its normal magic, but to use a static IP address at all times. Here’s how I did it:
svcs svc:/network/physical This should show that ‘nwam’ is online and ‘default’ is disabled. If it doesn’t, off to Google with you!
Edit the file /etc/nwam/llp so that it says something like yukonx0 static 192.168.1.50/24 – yukonx0 is the name of your network adapter (mine is for a Mac Mini ethernet port), 192.168.1.50 is the IP you want to assign, and /24 shows that your subnet mask is 255.255.255.0. Your values will vary.
Edit the file /etc/nsswitch.conf and add dns to the hosts line, to give hosts: files dns.
Now delete the default route entry (this may well not exist, but it’s safest to remove and recreate): route delete default 192.168.1.1 (your default route may be different). Then add the entry back in permanently: route -p add default 192.168.1.1.
Finally restart nwam with svcadm restart svc:/network/physical:nwam and wait for a moment. It should tell you that it’s connected with IP 192.168.1.50 (or whatever you selected). Once that’s done you should be able to connect to the Internet, and more importantly be able to reboot and have it still work. Though it shouldn’t be necessary, if it’s not working immediately try rebooting.
First of all, don’t. Just don’t. But if you must, here’s the driver to get the ethernet port to work on a Mac Mini under OpenSolaris. You’re welcome.