I applied to speak at RMOUG Training days 2017. A big conference out in Denver in early February 2017. I was out there a couple of years ago had a great time. It's really an outstanding event.
I was accepted! Thats great news! But now I actually have to create this presentation that I submitted in the abstract! Yikes!
Monday, October 31, 2016
Friday, August 19, 2016
we do not use cloud? Hmmm maybe it's time for a new spin on things
As everyone might be slightly aware Oracle Corporation has done a huge pivot from their perspective 10/15 years ago. Cloud is everything ... you want cloud ... you need cloud ... you need "our cloud" ... yada yada ...
So I'm working on at least one new presentation for the last part of this decade ( submitted to RMOUG ) and maybe this new brain fart should be the next one.
We do not use cloud ... as a logical step child to Moan's brilliant "Why you probably don't need RAC" ...
So I'm working on at least one new presentation for the last part of this decade ( submitted to RMOUG ) and maybe this new brain fart should be the next one.
We do not use cloud ... as a logical step child to Moan's brilliant "Why you probably don't need RAC" ...
Monday, August 8, 2016
working on a new presentation for RMOUG/Hotsos 2017 makes me ... grumpy
Well its time for coming up with a new presentation or two. I just volleyed in an abstract for RMOUG 2017 ( there's still some time to get topics into the review process ).
I have to do the same thing for Hotsos get topic submitted. I hope I do get picked up by one of these conferences ... but not both ha ha because its not easy getting work approval for just one event. So time will tell.
The bad thing about doing these abstract submissions involves actually creating a presentation to go along with the terminology and ideas that one promised in the abstracts. For me I'm fairly lucky because I have the opportunity typically of picking one of the presentation slots in our NEOOUG January meeting and getting material ready for that meeting plus practicing it once in front of a relatively sympathetic audience.
I have to do the same thing for Hotsos get topic submitted. I hope I do get picked up by one of these conferences ... but not both ha ha because its not easy getting work approval for just one event. So time will tell.
The bad thing about doing these abstract submissions involves actually creating a presentation to go along with the terminology and ideas that one promised in the abstracts. For me I'm fairly lucky because I have the opportunity typically of picking one of the presentation slots in our NEOOUG January meeting and getting material ready for that meeting plus practicing it once in front of a relatively sympathetic audience.
Sunday, July 31, 2016
linux servers that do not boot up on /dev/sda make me grumpy
*** An old post from cached version of my blog that google took away ...
We are working on a set of upgrades to our environment and replacing a set of very stable but now old IBM x3650 servers ( currently running 5.7 ) with a set of new Dell R 710 servers.
New Dell servers on Oracle Linux 6.2 ... using red hat compatible kernel aka:
2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64
The new dell boxes have an internal raid controller ( Perc H700 ? ) and are connected to EMC direct attached storage using emulex HBA's. All operating system and linux software installed on internal disks ( mirrored ) ... all database stuff going to be on EMC storage.
Our new servers had a very strange set of behaviors when booting up from internal disks. Most of the time they would boot up and see the first internal raid drive as /dev/sda ( so /boot partition is on /dev/sda1 ) ... but at other times they would see /boot on a different device ( for example /boot on /dev/sdi1 ).
The entries in /etc/fstab for 6.x systems now apparently use UUID entries ... ( for example ):
UUID=e6964e7e-62a9-450c-a66e-a411b40a4ed9 / ext4 defaults 1 1
So when the servers came up on a different boot drive they would run ok ... looking strange ... but we ran into a different problem using ( still trying to use ... don't get me started ) a backup linux imaging product ( Acronis ) that just did not understand at all backing up or restoring a system when it was not running from /dev/sda.
Logically it seemed pretty straight forward. Force a way somehow so that first internal drive is always on /dev/sda.
We pay Oracle for linux support so open a ticket with them. We now have a solution but it took a very very long time for oracle linux support to come up with solution. Might be a by product of working with a junior level person ... might be from a strange new problem. Tried all sorts of stuff initially with udev rules ... nope none of this worked at all.
Eventually the solution that is now deployed and working involved removing lpfc ( emulex ? HBA support ? ) modules from the initramfs image that is invoked on first boot up. Of course we run stuff on EMC storage and yes eventually after booting our HBA's are working just fine.
Anyway here is what we had to do to get this working in our 6.2 redhat compatible kernel environment. It is some low level pretty esoteric linux stuff and well beyond what I wanted to have to deal with ... but it is working nicely.
Step 1: get the latest available dracut rpm's and stick them into directory for updating:
dracut]# ls -ltr | more
Step2: Update to latest rpm's ... ( not sure why the 100% 50% 100% stuff gone from below )
rpm -Uvh dracut*.rpm | more
Step 3: Verify installation of new dracut rpms
# rpm -qa | grep dracut
Step 4: Now change to the /boot directory and create a new initramfs image file.
Use this command: dracut --omit-drivers lpfc initramfs-$(uname -r)-no-lpfc.img
# dracut --omit-drivers lpfc initramfs-$(uname -r)-no-lpfc.img
Step 5: Check img file created ...
# ls -ltr *.img | more
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15875365 Jan 11 13:39
initramfs-2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64-no-lpfc.img
Step 6: Verify that no lpfc moduels are in the new initramfs image file
# zcat *no-lpfc.img | cpio -t | grep lpfc | more
Agove output is correct ... if you see something like this ... lpfc is still in the img file:
Final step ... create an entry in /etc/grub.conf to point to the new initramfs img file.
Copy the current /etc/grub.conf to something else.
Change the default= value to point to new lines at the end of the /etc/grub.conf file. My change was to change default=1 to default=2.
Add in new lines at the end of grub.conf ... my entries looked like this ( this is just part of my grub.conf file ).
***
At this point the change should be complete ... start rebooting and test ... do we always come up on /dev/sda?
For me yes this finally fixed the problem.
My guess is that I will have to revisit all of this when doing next OL linux update. Probably going to sit out 6.3 and eventually move from 6.2 up to 6.4 ... probably will have to rebuild new initramfs image and of course test.
I hope this saves some other poor geek time ... it sure took us and oracle support a long time to get this working correctly!
We are working on a set of upgrades to our environment and replacing a set of very stable but now old IBM x3650 servers ( currently running 5.7 ) with a set of new Dell R 710 servers.
New Dell servers on Oracle Linux 6.2 ... using red hat compatible kernel aka:
2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64
The new dell boxes have an internal raid controller ( Perc H700 ? ) and are connected to EMC direct attached storage using emulex HBA's. All operating system and linux software installed on internal disks ( mirrored ) ... all database stuff going to be on EMC storage.
Our new servers had a very strange set of behaviors when booting up from internal disks. Most of the time they would boot up and see the first internal raid drive as /dev/sda ( so /boot partition is on /dev/sda1 ) ... but at other times they would see /boot on a different device ( for example /boot on /dev/sdi1 ).
The entries in /etc/fstab for 6.x systems now apparently use UUID entries ... ( for example ):
UUID=e6964e7e-62a9-450c-a66e-a411b40a4ed9 / ext4 defaults 1 1
So when the servers came up on a different boot drive they would run ok ... looking strange ... but we ran into a different problem using ( still trying to use ... don't get me started ) a backup linux imaging product ( Acronis ) that just did not understand at all backing up or restoring a system when it was not running from /dev/sda.
Logically it seemed pretty straight forward. Force a way somehow so that first internal drive is always on /dev/sda.
We pay Oracle for linux support so open a ticket with them. We now have a solution but it took a very very long time for oracle linux support to come up with solution. Might be a by product of working with a junior level person ... might be from a strange new problem. Tried all sorts of stuff initially with udev rules ... nope none of this worked at all.
Eventually the solution that is now deployed and working involved removing lpfc ( emulex ? HBA support ? ) modules from the initramfs image that is invoked on first boot up. Of course we run stuff on EMC storage and yes eventually after booting our HBA's are working just fine.
Anyway here is what we had to do to get this working in our 6.2 redhat compatible kernel environment. It is some low level pretty esoteric linux stuff and well beyond what I wanted to have to deal with ... but it is working nicely.
Step 1: get the latest available dracut rpm's and stick them into directory for updating:
dracut]# ls -ltr | more
total 140
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 114884 Jan 11 13:29 dracut-004-284.0.1.el6_3.1.noarch.rpm
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 21524 Jan 11 13:29 dracut-kernel-004-284.0.1.el6_3.1.noarch.rpm
Step2: Update to latest rpm's ... ( not sure why the 100% 50% 100% stuff gone from below )
rpm -Uvh dracut*.rpm | more
warning: dracut-004-284.0.1.el6_3.1.noarch.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 Signature,Y
Preparing... ##################################################
dracut ##################################################
dracut-kernel ##################################################
Step 3: Verify installation of new dracut rpms
# rpm -qa | grep dracut
dracut-kernel-004-284.0.1.el6_3.1.noarch
dracut-004-284.0.1.el6_3.1.noarch
Step 4: Now change to the /boot directory and create a new initramfs image file.
Use this command: dracut --omit-drivers lpfc initramfs-$(uname -r)-no-lpfc.img
# dracut --omit-drivers lpfc initramfs-$(uname -r)-no-lpfc.img
Step 5: Check img file created ...
# ls -ltr *.img | more
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15875365 Jan 11 13:39
initramfs-2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64-no-lpfc.img
Step 6: Verify that no lpfc moduels are in the new initramfs image file
# zcat *no-lpfc.img | cpio -t | grep lpfc | more
87575 blocks
Agove output is correct ... if you see something like this ... lpfc is still in the img file:
lib/modules/2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64/kernel/drivers/scsi/lpfc
lib/modules/2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64/kernel/drivers/scsi/lpfc/lpfc.ko
Final step ... create an entry in /etc/grub.conf to point to the new initramfs img file.
Copy the current /etc/grub.conf to something else.
Change the default= value to point to new lines at the end of the /etc/grub.conf file. My change was to change default=1 to default=2.
Add in new lines at the end of grub.conf ... my entries looked like this ( this is just part of my grub.conf file ).
title Oracle Linux Server (2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64 ro root=UUID=e6964e7e-62a9-450c-a66e-a411b40a4ed9 rd_NO_LUKS LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rd_NO_MD quiet SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 rhgb crashkernel=auto KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rd_NO_DM
initrd /initramfs-2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64-no-lpfc.img
***
At this point the change should be complete ... start rebooting and test ... do we always come up on /dev/sda?
For me yes this finally fixed the problem.
My guess is that I will have to revisit all of this when doing next OL linux update. Probably going to sit out 6.3 and eventually move from 6.2 up to 6.4 ... probably will have to rebuild new initramfs image and of course test.
I hope this saves some other poor geek time ... it sure took us and oracle support a long time to get this working correctly!
Saturday, June 25, 2016
its been a crazy week in Cleveland
Well ha ha will get back to blogging stuff about Oracle soon. We had a crazy end of the season for our basketball winning in game 7 on the road at the Oracle arena ( is that in San Francisco ? Maybe across the bay in Oakland I think ).
Cleveland isn't used to winning championships its been wild around here. I think though that maybe we can get used to it eventually!
Peace out everyone!
Cleveland isn't used to winning championships its been wild around here. I think though that maybe we can get used to it eventually!
Peace out everyone!
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Back in action blogging after well an unfortunate incident
Hi people it's me John Hurley @grumpyolddba former owner of grumpyolddba.BlogSpot.com ... Last year a busy year and not many blog postings. It turns out that google may yank away your blog and have no way of recovering it if you don't keep logging in and posting periodically. There's some kind of 90 day rule.
So my bad apparently and I will work at some point at putting back some of my ( many years worth ) of prior content. Probably I should use a different platform that I can back up at some point?
Anyhow I want to thank all of the presenters and attendee's from this years Great Lakes Oracle Conference 2016 ( Great Lakes Oracle Conference 2016 ). We grew again slightly this year in attendance going over 400 and we were back in downtown Cleveland at an amazing venue the Cleveland Public Hall. We will be back there again next year.
Along with several others we are starting to find lucky victims to keynote and do workshops for us next year so if you see that lucky email from me or twitter contact ... well you know the drill.
Big thanks also to Rumpi Gravenstein @rgravens our conference chair and Pete Dinin NEOOUG new President along with the rest of our leadership team for stepping up and contributing.
So my bad apparently and I will work at some point at putting back some of my ( many years worth ) of prior content. Probably I should use a different platform that I can back up at some point?
Anyhow I want to thank all of the presenters and attendee's from this years Great Lakes Oracle Conference 2016 ( Great Lakes Oracle Conference 2016 ). We grew again slightly this year in attendance going over 400 and we were back in downtown Cleveland at an amazing venue the Cleveland Public Hall. We will be back there again next year.
Along with several others we are starting to find lucky victims to keynote and do workshops for us next year so if you see that lucky email from me or twitter contact ... well you know the drill.
Big thanks also to Rumpi Gravenstein @rgravens our conference chair and Pete Dinin NEOOUG new President along with the rest of our leadership team for stepping up and contributing.
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