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Happy Anniversary to the OpenIndiana project!

Release date: Sept 14, 2011

OpenIndiana oi_151a was released on 14th September 2011, exactly one year after our first release, oi_147! Our latest build brings a wide variety of enhancements, including being our first build based on Illumos.

Installing or Upgrading

If you are currently running OpenSolaris, please see Upgrading from OpenSolaris. If you are currently running OpenIndiana, please see Upgrading OpenIndiana.

For information on installing, please see Installing OpenIndiana

Downloading OpenIndiana

ISO images and Torrents are available from:

Also please see our mirror sites at http://wiki.openindiana.org/oi/Mirrors

New features in OpenIndiana oi_151a

OpenIndiana Kernel & Core Userland

OpenIndiana oi_151a is based on Illumos. Notable changes to the kernel and core userland since OpenIndiana's oi_148 release includes:

  • KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine)

OpenIndiana oi_151a now includes KVM, the open source Kernel-based Virtual Machine, as a basic virtualization solution along with the QEMU package! This KVM port includes virtualization extensions for Intel VT.  Using KVM, a user or system administrator can run multiple virtual machines running unmodified x86_64-based operating system images for Linux, BSD, or Windows images. Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware: a network card, disk, graphics adapter, etc.

For information on using KVM, please see 7.3 KVM

Spec Files Extra Repository

A wide variety of software is now available through the Spec Files Extra repository, OI-Userland, and third-party community package management systems.

  • AbiWord (2.8.6)
  • Arora Web browser (0.11.0)
  • Blender (2.49.2)
  • ClamAV (0.97.1)
  • Drupal (7.8)
  • ffmpeg (0.8.6)
  • GCC (4.6.2)
  • ghc (Glasgow Haskell Compiler) (7.2.1)
  • git (1.7.7)
  • ImageMagick (6.7.2-6)
  • Inkscape (0.48.1)
  • MPD (Music Player Daemon) (0.16.2)
  • Mplayer (2.0.99)
  • mpg123 (1.13.3)
  • Netatalk (2.2.0)
  • PostgreSQL database (9.1.1)
  • Postfix (2.8.5)
  • Openbox (3.5.0)
  • Qt (4.7.3)
  • Scribus (1.4.0)
  • Stellarium (0.11.0)
  • Sylpheed (3.1.1)
  • Tightvnc (1.3.10)
  • Transmission (2.22)
  • VLC (1.1.11)
  • Wine (1.3.34)
  • x264 (20111012)
  • XFCE desktop environment (4.8.3)

Community packages contributed and ported by other package maintainers/ISVs:

Known issues

Here is a list of known issues that are still outstanding:

See https://www.illumos.org/projects/openindiana/issues for more known issues and detailed information

  • OpenIndiana svn_151 support on Adaptec 6xxx (1497)
  • SFE's runtime/gcc package breaks VirtualBox. See SFE notes for a workaround.
  • i/o hang with mega_sas driver (618)
  • cpqary3 driver is old and causes panic in oi_151 (1441)
  • Chinese input method lost in b151 (1084)
  • ZFS time-slider and auto-snapshots not working due to missing zfssnap-roleadd SMF service (1179)

Reporting bugs

Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help fix bugs and improve the quality of future releases. Please report bugs through the provided bugtracker system:

If you want to help out with bugs, the OpenIndiana bug team is always looking for help.

Participate in OpenIndiana

As a community maintained distribution, we depend on community members getting involved. There are a wide variety of ways you can help us, from blogging and talking about OpenIndiana, adding content to our wiki, through to helping us developing the operating system.

If you would like to get involved, the quickest way is to jump on IRC and talk to our developers directly.

More information

You can find out more about the OpenIndiana distribution project, please see:

Note: oi_151a Release Notes originally written by Ken Mays (kmays). Please contact for any major corrections or changes.

Note for Wiki Maintainers

Note this page referenced in pkg-gate so please do not rename.

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26 Comments

  1. Anonymous

    Alasdair:

    Thanks for all the hard work. Two questions:

    1. Is the iso grabbed from http://dlc-int.openindiana.org/151a/ the stable version? If so, can we drop the "dev" in the file names? ie OI-stable-151a-x86.iso
    2. I wrote a comment in your Alasdair on Everything blog entry: http://blogs.everycity.co.uk/alasdair/2011/05/adjusting-drive-timeouts-with-mdb-on-solaris-or-openindiana/ regarding the software package used for clustering. Since Oracle just screwed up the Oracle Solaris Cluster license, and Open HA for OpenSolaris only works with 2009.06, we are missing a HA solution for active active NFS over shared storage.(Is RSF-1 the only option?)

    Thanks.

    1. Alasdair Lumsden

      Hi - the isos on http://dlc-int.openindiana.org/ are not public releases and are release candidates. I'd wait until the 14th if you can!

      Also it's still a dev release, the stable branch is hopefully due before the end of the year. But it'll be based on oi_151, which we consider "fairly stable". The stable branch is really about security fixes.

      Also sorry I haven't responded to the blog comment - I can't log into my work blog at the moment. We wrote our own clustering solution, I'm afraid I have no knowledge of RSF-1. I'd recommend looking into Nexenta's commercial offering if you have a budget - if you need clustering, then you should be able to justify the budget for it. Clustering on the cheap is a recipe for disaster!

      1. Anonymous

        Thanks for clearing it up.

        We already use RSF-1. The problem is that we are always looking out for better alternatives. Sarcastically speaking, even though you said "clustering on the cheap is a recipe for disaster", yet you recognize the need to "write your own clustering solution" for the same obvious reason as our search for a RSF-1 alternative.

        It is unfortunate that OpenHA has no activities right now, even it is imported to the illumos codebase. I am hoping that someone can work on the iHac project and deliver an "open source" clustering solution that can rival Solaris Cluster 3.3u1's per core licensing <-Seriously, it is not even per socket.

        Sorry for the rambling. Keep up the great work and I would love to see the stable one hit the street ASAP. Thanks.

  2. Anonymous

    Happy Anniversary OI. Thanks to all involved for their hard work!

    1. Alasdair Lumsden

      Thanks for using OI! (smile)

  3. Anonymous

    Congratulation to the OI community for its first stable release!

    What happened to the URL to Intel KMS and DRM driver? It also mentioned the radeon KMS and DRM driver. I wonder what graphic chips are supported in these.

  4. Anonymous

    Thats a great news! Will install it tomorrow. Congrats to the OI team (smile)

  5. Anonymous

    Great to see that the Open Solaris movement is still fighting fit!

  6. Anonymous

    Congratulations on OI's first birthday and its release of oi_151a. Thank you for all your hard work.

  7. Anonymous

    Any word on the UEFI support for newer motherboards? I currently run Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.10 beta 1 on my desktop using GPT and UEFI boot for both and would like to use this in the same way.

  8. Anonymous

    Congratulations to your success.

    I would like to ask two questions for further development of OI:

    • Someone is working on the ability to read and write Ext2, Ext3 file system and other (eg, ReiserFS, NTFS, etc.)?
    • What is the situation in the support platform SandyBridge?

    Have a nice day. WASP

    1. Anonymous

      As to the comment (the below is valid for 148, 148b and 151a):

      "What is the situation in the support platform SandyBridge?"

      I am running a Supermicro X9SCA-F, Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31270 @ 3.40GHz CPU, after adding the following to /etc/system and rebooting the system appears to be quite stable without any issues.

      set apix:apic_timer_preferred_mode = 0x0

      you can verify the setting with the command - look for "mode = 0"

      echo apic_timer::print apic_timer_t | sudo mdb -k

      The above setting will use a slightly less efficient "oneshot_timer" code path instead of the "deadline_timer" code path, where the "deadline_timer" seems to have an AMI BIOS issue with this motherboard.

      Refer to https://www.illumos.org/issues/1333 for details.

      Jon

  9. Anonymous

    Installation of 151 worked well for me.

    Happy one year and good luck in the future.

    Best regards
    CNN

  10. Anonymous

    Does this release include ZFS features compatible/interchangeable with Solaris 11 express (v31 or newer)? Or have their ways split for good?

  11. Anonymous

    Many thanks and congratulations guys! I use OpenIndiana since build 148, and I can assure it is a formidable OS, with excellent strength and reliability for a being a project in development stage. One of the real jewels of the open-source world.

  12. Anonymous

    Hi, yes it would be interesting to know which zpool version this release contains (smile)

    1. Anonymous

      The zpol upgrade command shows the zpool version.

      $ zpool upgrade -v
      This system is currently running ZFS pool version 28.

      The following versions are supported:

      VER DESCRIPTION
      — --------------------------------------------------------
      1 Initial ZFS version
      2 Ditto blocks (replicated metadata)
      3 Hot spares and double parity RAID-Z
      4 zpool history
      5 Compression using the gzip algorithm
      6 bootfs pool property
      7 Separate intent log devices
      8 Delegated administration
      9 refquota and refreservation properties
      10 Cache devices
      11 Improved scrub performance
      12 Snapshot properties
      13 snapused property
      14 passthrough-x aclinherit
      15 user/group space accounting
      16 stmf property support
      17 Triple-parity RAID-Z
      18 Snapshot user holds
      19 Log device removal
      20 Compression using zle (zero-length encoding)
      21 Deduplication
      22 Received properties
      23 Slim ZIL
      24 System attributes
      25 Improved scrub stats
      26 Improved snapshot deletion performance
      27 Improved snapshot creation performance
      28 Multiple vdev replacements

      For more information on a particular version, including supported releases,
      see the ZFS Administration Guide.

      $

      =====

      The zfs upgrade -v command shows the zfs version:

      $ zfs upgrade -v
      The following filesystem versions are supported:

      VER DESCRIPTION
      — --------------------------------------------------------
      1 Initial ZFS filesystem version
      2 Enhanced directory entries
      3 Case insensitive and File system unique identifier (FUID)
      4 userquota, groupquota properties
      5 System attributes

      For more information on a particular version, including supported releases,
      see the ZFS Administration Guide.

  13. Anonymous

    Hmm ... Careful about that old version of the Apache server!

  14. Anonymous

    Just made a successful update. System is up and running (smile) Congrats!!

  15. Anonymous

    KVM is neat but for those of who want Xen are there plans to make OI run as a Dom0?

    I have hardware that runs Xen nicely but can't run KVM.

    1. Alex Viskovatoff

      Oracle dropped Xen, which means that Illumos would have to develop it itself. But there is little point in a vendor supporting more than one virtualization technology. In any case, the idea of running Solaris on top of a hypervisor is perverse.

      So no, it will never happen.

      1. Anonymous

        I wouldn't say never... someone just needs to step up and do it. Chances of that happening are slim to none, but it could happen.

      2. Anonymous

        Alex,

        Why is this idea perverse, would you care to explain? Simply stating that it is, carries little weight.
        It would seem to me a rather powerful solution to have Xen using ZFS slices in stead of LVM, kind of Zones on steroids. Perhaps even meld the two.

  16. Anonymous

    is it possible to create one usb install image instead of two? with graphical live system, but with possibility to boot in text mode and perform "server" install?

  17. Anonymous

    What happened to sunstudioexpress? It can't be added via pfexec or the package manager as I was able to do it prior to 1.51. Can this be obtained elsewhere or do I have to use Oracle Solaris Studio 12.2 now?

  18. Anonymous

    I've tried following the build instructions but had to make numerous tweaks along the way. The source code in the repository CANNOT be compiled without modification and the build instructions are confused and incomplete. How about posting the CORRECT documentation for compiling the OS? The current documentation on compiling is such a mess that it is useless. Very disappointing and unprofessional.