Andreas' Adventures

Recently I had a lot of disk errors on my Oracle VM server. The errors indicated that some scsi problems were manifesting itself with: unable to enumerate USB device on port 2 After unloading and reloading the ehci_hcd it seems to be gone.

Today I tried to cut some corners and use a silent.xml file for WLS 10.3.3 for a silent installation of 10.3.2. To my amazement on a clean machine I received the following error: oracle@xxx001:/opt/oracle$ java -Djava.io.tmpdir=/opt/oracle/tmp -jar /nfsstage/wls1032_generic.jar -mode=silent -silent_xml=./silent/wls_silent.xml -log=/tmp/wls.log Extracting 0%....................................................................................................100% The local BEA product registry is corrupted. Please select another Middleware Home or contact Oracle Support I checked the wls_silent.xml file and found that it includes Coherence, which was not bundled with the 10.3.2 version. So I modified the 10.3.3 silent_xml file from value="WebLogic Server/Core Application Server|WebLogic Server/Administration Console|WebLogic Server/Configuration Wizard and Upgrade Framework|WebLogic Server/Web 2.0 HTTP Pub-Sub Server|WebLogic Server/WebLogic JDBC Drivers|WebLogic Server/Third ...

Nobody likes to write documentation, and I'm not that different. But today I was very happy and said "Thank You" to myself. A while ago I needed to install some software for a project. Now after my vacation, which apparently wiped a lot of my mind's hard disk clean, I needed to repeat the installation for a new environment. Reverting back to my own documentation saved me a lot of time. Maybe I should create a video on YouTube with my impersonation of Steven Balmer's monkey dance and substitute the words "Developers, developers..." with "Document! Document! Document!". So take it from me: writing documentation before your vacation keeps you longer in your post-vacation mode ;-)

A few posts ago I mentioned that the silent install was very slow. Still had this on my to-blog list, so here is the clarification. It turned out that somebody had the idea that we needed some kind of virus protection on the Linux boxes. Each time something was written to the disk the virus protection kicked in. Imagine what this is doing to your installation performance :-(

When using the Oracle Database for the storage of WebLogic Portal settings you need to modify the database.properties and run the create_db.sh script. In the database.properties the example uses the Pointbase, so the values in the Oacle section are filled with placeholders. When replacing the jdbc string be carefull not to remove all @ signs. The original value is: oracle.url=jdbc:oracle:thin:@@DB_HOST@:@DB_PORT@:@DB_NAME@ The fisrt @ after the 'thin:@' needs to remain there. Otherwise you will get a sql exception when you run the create_db.sh script.

It seems that I'm all into silent installs these days. Trying to do a WebLogic installation in silent mode. Went to the documentation, as a few things have changed since the early BEA days. So I found the sample file for the silent.xml . Without big thinking I copied the sample like this: &ltbea-installer&gt &ltinput-fields&gt &ltdata-value value="D:\Oracle\Middleware_Home" name="BEAHOME"&gt &ltdata-value value="D:\Oracle\Middleware_Home\wlserver_10.3" name="WLS_INSTALL_DIR"&gt &ltdata-value value="WebLogic Server/Core Application ServerWebLogic Server /Administration ConsoleWebLogic Server/Configuration Wizard and Upgrade FrameworkWebLogic Server/Web 2.0 HTTP Pub-Sub ServerWebLogic Server/WebLogic JDBC DriversWebLogic Server/Third Party JDBC DriversWebLogic Server /WebLogic Server ClientsWebLogic Server/WebLogic Web Server Plugins WebLogic Server/UDDI and Xquery SupportWebLogic Server/Server Example...

Yesterday I did my first ever silent install. Nothing fancy yet. There are two possibilities: a) Silent install is dead slow or b) There is something wrong with the machine or the storage Bottom line is, it took me 1.5 hours to just install the database software. I need to investigate this, as this is not what I had in mind. Continuing now with the listener and the dbca in a silent manner.

... or Google Chrome has a problem with counting ;-)

I finally have made the jump over to Australia. After a somewhat bumpy first week (oh man - what a jet-lag) I started to settle down. On my project I will do a lot of stuff with Coherence, WebLogic Portal, the OSB, Grid Control and a RAC database. I'm looking forward to do this. This is part of re-inventing myself, while being in a nice place. I will also try to blog some of my experiences in http://yetanotheraustraliablog.blogspot.com/

After some first baby steps with Oracle VM I wanted to push this thing a little bit further. So my idea was to have more than a couple of VM's running simultaneously. The Oracle VM told me however that I had not enough memory to do this. So I was sitting in front of my dedicated laptop and told the screen that there should be 4 GB inside. The laptop however had one of his funny days and told me (using free and top) that really nothing more than 572 MB would be inside the machine. Hmm - when a machine tells me something I am the first to listen. So I shutdown everything, got my screwdriver, opened the memory compartment and had a look. Indeed 1 bank of 2GB. I didn't check the second bank as this is hidden underneath the keyboard. Closing the machine and powering it up, I prepared myself for another round of telling it that it should recognize a little bit more than 572 MB. I examined the dmesg and still it told me that there was only 572 MB inside. Now imagine, you have just see...

Another thing I came across when dealing with the OSB was that the Workshop throw an error and didn't start at all. When you end up with a large dialog box showing a list of startup parameters (which all originate from the workshop.ini file) have a look at this site: http://wiki.oracle.com/page/How+to+get+Oracle+Workshop+for+Weblogic+10GR3+working+in+Linux?t=anon

During the startup of the Eclipse Workshop in my OSB environment I encountered the following error: “requested array is larger than heap” The solution (from the OTN forums) is to delete the publish*.dat from the following directory: FMW_HOME/user_projects/workspaces/YOUR_WORKSPACE/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.wst.server.core/publish/

I am busy installing the latest version of the Oracle Enterprise Manager. Obviously I need a database for this. In order to protect my resources in the Oracle VM image that use I switched off all extra Database options. Among others the Partitioning option is offered. Well - during the installation of the OEM I found out the hard way that the Partitioning option is required for the database. I know that the OEM creates a lot of partitions - which will then get emptied during the data consolidation process. I happened to forget this. The funny thing is that the OEM installer checks this and comes back with a warning box, stating: Using the Partitoning option is strongly recommended. Being a wise guy I tried to ignore this. But when Oracle says that they STRONGLY RECOMMEND something they mean it. So I am deinstalling and reinstalling the database software as I write this ;-)

Just for your convenience: When you start an Oracle VM image from the commandline with xm create -c ./vm.cfg you will see that the boot process continues until the login is displayed: EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. type=1403 audit(1272761495.554:2): policy loaded auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 Enterprise Linux Enterprise Linux Server release 5.4 (Carthage) Kernel 2.6.18-164.0.0.0.1.el5xen on an i686 soa.mydomain.local login: In order to get back to your commandline type CTRL-] and you will get back the control.

Yesterday I received a farewell email from my dear colleague David Calcano. After years with Accenture he is moving into a total different area, leaving us with all the mess of Oracle and SOA. I always admired folks who know more than I do, and the more they know more than me the more I dream of becoming like them. And then they turn out to be brave enough and do something completely different. I will keep www.nosecodeproductions.com on my radar - and I know that with people like David on board they can only succeed! And now back to the scared and meek folks who just keep on doing the same - me ;-)

Although I am busy moving to Oracle VM I needed to access one of my systems on VMWare on my laptop which I had not used for a while. The console of VMWare did not load. Ok - I though his might be due to some networks which I had disabled on Windows. Enabled them - no result. Checking the VMWare services I found out that the VMWare Host Agent was not running. So I restarted it. Crashed again. Obviously the next step is to check the Windows event viewer. To my surprise the System Log could not be displayed. Needless to say I had to fix this first. Clear the Log typically solves this and I was lucky this time. Back to the VMWare Host Agent. Started it agian - still crashes. I found the following error: The VMware Host Agent service terminated with service-specific error 4294967295 (0xFFFFFFFF). Checking the VMWare log. Log for VMware Server, pid=7444, version=2.0.2, build=build-203138, option=Release, section=2 [2010-04-24 12:20:34.264 'App' 2600 info] Current working directory: C...

I was worried as I ran into a problem with the Database Vault security. I configured a new realm in a database where the Oracle E-Business Suite is running. The main idea was to have a user for the OBIEE that should have only limited access. Together with some colleagues we made sure that the OBIEE user had the correct grants on some tables and views inside the EBS schema (APPS, AR, GMS, PA). I created the realm and added the OBIEE user as a participant. Everything seemed to work. Then I disabled the realm and even removed the OBIEE user from the realm, but still Oracle Answers was capable of accessing the APPS schema objects. Took me a day and finally I reread the manual. I understood my error. The purpose of the DBV is to lockout users with system privileges, such as the SYS or SYSTEM user. Now the account of the OBIEE user does not have these system privileges except CREATE SESSION. In order to access any object the OBIEE user relies on discretionary grants (e.g. the AR user grants ...

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.

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

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