Posts

I struggled to connect to the console of a newly created VM. The VM was created using Oracle VM Manager (OVMM) and despite efforts to install the required packages I could not use the console button in the Manager interface. I noticed that the VNC server built into the VM was listening on 127.0.0.1 only (on the OVM server), you can see this if you check the file vm.cfg for the guest. Without analysing how the OVMM would try to connect to the VNC server on the other host I decided to create an ssh tunnel from my Mac to the OVM server: ...

Just a simple trick to import ISO files to the repository using Oracle VM Manager (OVMM). The import function supports imports through protocols http, https and ftp. If you want to do this in the supported way you can use a simple web server to serve the ISO files for you. Python comes with a simple http server built in. If you have python installed (which is the case on both the OVM server and the OVMM host) you can start it with: ...

This post is a mixture of experiences from a recent project and an overview on how to use RAT in a project. Real Application Testing (RAT) is a licensed feature for the Enterprise Edition (EE) of the Oracle database. It was released on 11g, but can be used to test migration of databases from 9i and 10g to 11g (assuming that the source databases have a required version/patch). The term Real is, I reckon, used to hint at a more authentic testing process. The tests are executed based on a capture from a real production system. ...

For the second time I have been involved with a proof of concept (PoC) where testing of an alternative hardware platform was the goal. Common for both PoCs were: The other option was Exadata Real Application Testing (RAT) was used to replay production recordings on the new hardware. And for the second time I have concluded that sales people take this too easy. It is not easy and assuming you will outperform previous platform just because you have a bunch of less expensive flash disks, cache cards, and more is arrogant at best. ...

Oracle User Group Norway (OUGN) organizes the biggest Oracle user conference in Scandinavia. As of March 28, 341 DBAs, developers, managers, sales people, and more have figured out why. Read on for more reasons if you have not registered yet. This year we are breaking many of our own records, for example we have 66 speakers from 15 different countries. We have added another track with a total of 8 different tracks. ...

Vårens store høydepunkt er OUGN sitt vårseminar. Her er programmet og her kan du melde deg på . Drar du til Oslo for å delta på konferansen anbefaler jeg at du flyr inn dagen før for å bli med på et annet stort høydepunkt, nemlig et dagskurs med Cary Millsap i Oslo . Dette er et kurs både for utviklere som integrerer mot Oracle database og for Oracle DBA-er. En bedre presentasjon av kurset finner du på påmeldingssiden . ...

OSL - CPH - SFO. Starting on my route in a few hours. Really look forward to see tweeps and a bunch of people from the worldwide Oracle community. Lots of good presentations of course, but also bloggers’ meetup, Oaktable world, RAC Attack, Anchor Steam, and more. I’ll speak at the Bulgarian Oracle User Group conference 22nd to 24th of November. I have heard from many that this is a good conference. First time in Bulgaria means this will be a triple excitement; giving a presentation about something I have thought a lot about, seeing a new country and meeting a possibly different culture. ...

Here is an easy command to find corrupt XML-files on a Linux box. A couple of days ago I had a problem with OBIEE and weblogic. Googling and search on My Oracle Support indicated that the failure may be caused by a corrupt XML file. And you know that there are many of them in an OBIEE installation. In fact MOS in Doc 1475146.1 blindly suggests to move a bunch of them to a backup location, because in some cases they had become corrupt for some strange reason. I was not satisfied with just deleting a few random files that have caused problems for others earlier, I wanted to find the file. ...

If you don’t know what procrastination is you could start your own blog. Start a post with something like “I worked with … and decided to write three posts about it”. Procrastination is what you experience before the last post is ready; seemingly simple things take forever to get out the door. This post is important for my own record and shows how to salvage data from a large table with several corrupt blocks. I also had a learning experience I wanted to remember, explaining the redundancy of information here. Previous post was about how to map out tables and the corrupt blocks in a temporary table (that is, not a table created as a global temporary table, but a table you’ll drop when you’re finished.) ...

Sometimes download from Oracle Technology Network (OTN) is really slow, but it may not be Oracle’s fault. Oracle is using Akamai Technologies to distribute the software. You can see this if you do an nslookup on download.oracle.com and see it resolves (finally) to a host under akamai.net. They have servers all over the world and when things work as they are supposed to the box on your end should connect to a host physically near you and not on another continent. If your download is really slow find the IP address that your DNS resolves for download.oracle.com (or the host you are downloading from) and then use a geo-lookup site to see where it is located. ...