Something old - something new

No - I'm not going to be married (been there - did it - bought the ring - still happy).

This was a day in which all extremes came together. Talked about Oracle Complex Event Processing (still need to learn something in there), while I was helping some colleagues to solve some Oracle AS 10.1.2 issues. And in between I was investigating some EBS with Database Vault and TDE after a morning session about the strategy for our Oracle unit.

For me this proves that even if you teach an old dog some new tricks, there is always an audience for the previous show, while still performing the bread and butter business today.

Problems installing Oracle IDM on a 64bit Linux

I need to install an Oracle IDM on a 64bit Linux.
In order to get this running I need a 64bit WebLogic Server. As this is not delivered with an included JDK I downloaded the Sun 1.6 JDK for 64bit Linux systems.

When I then tried to install the WLS I always received an "out of disk" error.

The magic option to pass to the self-extracting WLS is the following:

java -Djava.io.tmpdir=/apps/tmp -jar ./wls1032_generic.jar

OOW 2010 submissions

I have just added three submisions for OOW 2010.

Automate the creation of extra Coherence machines based on Grid Control data
Use Oracle VM to learn Oracle technology
Build a Coherence cluster using Oracle VM to speed up Oracle FMW

Customize the VM template

One size does not fit all.
The Oracle VM template comes with just the twm windows manager. Since my days in University I dislike this thing. For me it is Motif.

So in order to get my favorite Windows manager up and running I need to install it.
Luckily Oracle offers a public yum server. Do the following:

cd /etc/yum.repos.d
wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el5.repo

Edit this file and set the stanza to enabled for the corresponding entry. The template is based on EL5 Update4.

Then just run
yum install openmotif

Afterwards I modify the xstart file in the /home/oracle/.vnc directory to use mwm instead of twm.
In order to access the vncviewer I also need to modify the iptables.

Add a line into the iptables to enable access in the port range 5900-5950. This will enable the access of the custom vncserver, as well as the vncserver which runs on the VM Server. The second vncserver acts as a console for the VM image. Depending on the order in which the VM's are started the vnc port changes. Therefore I use a port.

I'm too lazy to change the hostname of the WebCenter VM Template

I could change the hostname of the VM template for the WebCenter. This would be done on the OS using the standard Linux way (change /etc/hosts, /etc/sysconfig/network). However as the Oracle Application Server OC4J is still configured with the template hostname (haovm007) I would need to changethis. Now - as a lot of you know - the hostname and domainname change in the OC4J is not the easiest tasks of the Application Server Administration.

So I decided to build a WebCenter machine from scratch.
A) It is easier
B) I learn all the steps (probably have to install it more than once)
C) I configure it as I would like to have it
D) It is more fun

Problem with a WebCenter VM template hostname

The beauty of the Oracle VM templates is of course the ease with which you create a new machine. But then it has to work, or at least it must be customizable.

I have created a new machine from a WebCenter VM template.
During the boot it asks for the network configuration. This seems to work, as ifconfig returns the correct settings. However the machinename is not used. I entered webcenter1 but the template still has the haovm007:



While I am a Bond fan I'd rather see my own name for the machine. Let's see how this can be corrected.

Screw up and repair

I thought it worked - but of course I forgot the Oracle VM Manager on my second machine.

It still displayed the ServerPool1 that I had created previously.
In order to begin with a clean slate you might need to drop the database in the Oracle VM Server.

Login to the server as root and execute the following commands:

service stop ovs-agent
rm -rf /etc/ovs-agent/db
service start ovs-agent

Then the external disk needs to be added again:
[root@ovm utils]# ./repos.py --new /dev/sdb1
[ NEW ] 6ad759c5-d706-4b3a-9d14-bcffafc61fc3 => /dev/sdb1
[root@ovm utils]# ./repos.py --list
[ ] 6ad759c5-d706-4b3a-9d14-bcffafc61fc3 => /dev/sdb1
[root@ovm utils]# ./repos.py --root 6ad759c5-d706-4b3a-9d14-bcffafc61fc3
[ R ] 6ad759c5-d706-4b3a-9d14-bcffafc61fc3 => /dev/sdb1

The filesystems were back again and also the directories in /OVS.

Now back to importing a VM Template.

Finally my OVM looks like it should

I rebuild my OVM server for the n-th time this morning. Problem was that it was difficult to have the external disk mounted on the /OVS directory.
I tried to add a shared virtual disk - which I formatted as an ocfs2 disk to the existing disk. I found this excellent posting http://geertdepaep.wordpress.com/2008/06/09/oracle-vm-and-multiple-local-disks/ that described the process and guided me into the correct direction. Although the disk was visible in the repos.py script I was unable to see it in the Oracle VM Manager.

Now I thought that I need to build the server and format the filesystems myself.
Sorry I have no screenshots here as the installer runs on the machine itself.
During the installation the two disks (internal 50 GB and external 1 TB) are shown as /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. In the disk setup utility in the installer choose the option to define a custom layout.

The installer offers a predefined layout, which it would normally apply to the available disks.
I decided to have three filesystems on the internal disk. This will be /, /boot and a swap filesystem. On the external disk I gave away the complete disk and formatted it as an ocfs2 filesystem.
During this I received a lot of errors on the screen, stating that there was an error while setting the type of the filesystem to ocfs2. However I continued - ignoring the errors - and finally ended up with this disk layout:

[root@ovm ~]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 54G 953M 50G 2% /
/dev/sda1 99M 45M 49M 48% /boot
tmpfs 287M 0 287M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sdb1 931G 315M 931G 1% /var/ovs/mount/6AD759C5D7064B3A9D14BCFFAFC61FC3
[root@ovm ~]#


so, now the fun can begin, as I finally got to the point where I have my 1 TB disk fully exposed for my Oracle VM server.