Monthly Archives: June 2009

GNOME Metacity dual screen issue in OpenSolaris 2009.06

Posted by Praveen Kumar on June 3, 2009 3 comments

With the latest OpenSolaris 2009.06, maximizing windows managed by Metacity (GNOME) will maximize the windows across both screens. This is due to an issue that Metacity was trying to use a wrong Xinerama type. This issue is fixed in the mercurial repository. However, the fix was not on time to make it into the final release of OpenSolaris 2009.06. But, there is a quick workaround for this issue. Here is the set of instructions.

Step 1. Backup your current metacity.

$ pfexec cp /usr/bin/metacity /usr/bin/metacity.orig

Step 2. Download the fixed Metacity binary from developer’s site and replace the original binary.

$ wget http://www.gnome.org/~erwannc/bugs/8748/metacity -O /tmp/metacity
$ pfexec cp /tmp/metacity /usr/bin/metacity

Note: Don’t do this in one step using wget -O /usr/bin/metacity. This broke my system.

Step 3. (Optional) By now, your new Metacity should have already started working. If not, replace the current instance by hand.

$ metacity --replace

Happy dual-screening on your OpenSolaris 2009.06!

Creating OpenSolaris live USB sticks

Posted by Praveen Kumar on June 2, 2009 5 comments

OpenSolaris 2009.06 was announced yesterday. You can download the live CD image (ISO) from here. Here is the set of instructions to create a live USB stick from the live CD that you have downloaded.

Step 1. Install distro-construct.

$ pfexec pkg install SUNWdistro-const

Step 2. Generate the USB image from CD image.

$ pfexec usbgen osol-0906-x86.iso osol-0906-x86-usb.img /tmp/osol

Step 3. Copy the generated USB image on to the USB stick.

$ pfexec usbcopy osol-0906-x86-usb.img

On executing the above command, you will be shown the list of removable media and asked to select the one to use with usbcopy. If you have inserted only one USB media, you will see only one entry to choose from. Please note that you may have to unmount the USB media from your GNOME file manager or command line, before usbcopy starts.

Once usbcopy completes, your OpenSolaris live USB sticks are ready to boot a live environment and perform installation. I will be in Community One West, Deep Dive sessions today (Jun 2, 2009) at Intercontinental Hotel, San Francisco. If anyone needs to make their USB media an OpenSolaris live media, please contact me.