Laurent Schneider

RTFM is not the best answer …

man crontab
SunOS 5.10          Last change: 10 Nov 2005

User Commands                                          crontab(1)
     A crontab file consists of lines of  six  fields  each.  The
     fields  are  separated by spaces or tabs. The first five are
     integer patterns that specify the following:

     minute (0-59),
     hour (0-23),
     day of the month (1-31),
     month of the year (1-12),
     day of the week (0-6 with 0=Sunday).

so far so good. But read this

     Each of these patterns can be either  an  asterisk  (meaning
     all legal values) or a list of elements separated by commas.
     An element is either a number or two numbers separated by  a
     minus sign (meaning an inclusive range). Time specified here
     is interpreted in the timezone of the cron(1M) daemon, which
     is  set system-wide in /etc/default/init. Entries do not use
     the invoking user's timezone. The specification of days  can
     be  made  by  two  fields  (day  of the month and day of the
     week). Both are adhered to if specified as a  list  of  ele-
     ments. See .

See .

Let’s imagine you want to run a job today, Thursday May 15, 2008 at 2:15pm
You write:
15 14 15 05 4 /tmp/run-my-job

The job will be run Today at 2:15, next year Friday May 15, 2009 at 2:15pm and next week Thursday May 22, 2008 at 2:15pm…

The correct method is to use
15 14 15 05 * /tmp/run-my-job

Specifying both day of week and day of month is not what I expected

How can I read user input in plsql?

kind of

begin
  write('Enter a value for x : ');
  read(x);
  write('you enterred '||x);
end;
/

the short answer is : you cannot do that.

Ok, let’s try to do it in Linux !

$ cat interactiveplsql.sql
set feedb off

create or replace directory tmp as '/tmp';

declare
inFile utl_file.file_type;
outFile utl_file.file_type;
x varchar2(40);
begin
inFile := utl_file.fopen('TMP','in','R');
outFile := utl_file.fopen('TMP','out','W');
utl_file.put_line(outFile,'Enter a value for x : ');
utl_file.fflush(outFile);
utl_file.get_line(inFile,x);
utl_file.put_line(outFile,'you enterred '||x);
utl_file.fclose(inFile);
utl_file.fclose(outFile);
end;
/

quit

$ mknod /tmp/out p; mknod /tmp/in p
$ (cat /tmp/out &);(sqlplus -s scott/tiger @interactiveplsql &
);cat>/tmp/in
Enter a value for x :
ABC123
you enterred ABC123

Maybe you have a firewall in your company, only your PC can access the production server, only you have the root password in prod, and your company spend a lot of money in security, but you dare using xhost +.

This is a huge security hole, because it gives anyone access to your X resources, not only your display, but also your mouse and your keyboard, so anyone can read/modify/corrupt what you are typing/clicking. It is a bad habit to use xhost+. Even using xhost +localhost give access to your keyboard to anyone on localhost…

So what else could you use ?

The simplest is probably ssh tunnelling.

lsc@chltlxlsc:~> ssh -X oracle@localhost
Last login: Fri Max  2 10:24:09 2007 from localhost
oracle@chltlxlsc:~> xterm -e true && echo success
success

Another way to do this is to use X cookies.

lsc@chltlxlsc1:~&gt; xauth extract ~/my-x-cookie $DISPLAY<
lsc@chltlxlsc1:~&gt; setfacl -m u:oracle:r ~/my-x-cookie
lsc@chltlxlsc1:~&gt; su - oracle -c "DISPLAY=$DISPLAY bash"
Password:
oracle@chltlxlsc1:~&gt; xterm -e true && echo success
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

xterm Xt error: Can't open display: :0.0
oracle@chltlxlsc1:~&gt; xauth merge ~lsc/my-x-cookie
xauth:  creating new authority file ~oracle/.Xauthority
oracle@chltlxlsc1:~&gt; xterm -e true && echo success
success

No need to type all. Here is my alias

alias oracle='
  xauth extract $HOME/my-x-cookie $DISPLAY;
  setfacl -m u:oracle:r $HOME/my-x-cookie;
  su - oracle -c "export DISPLAY=$DISPLAY;
    xauth merge $HOME/my-x-cookie; 
    bash"'

Novell SLES10 Oracle Database
Originally uploaded by laurentschneider.

The orarun package to be installed in SLES10

How neat is Suse!

I downloaded the DVD SLES10 on Novell.com. At the installation time, appart from Gnome, Development, X Window, there are a few new categories. One of them is called Oracle Database, and guess what, it installs all what I needed for Oracle. It creates an oracle account, with oinstall as primary group and dba as secondary group, it sets usefull things like ORACLE_HOME.

Ok, let’s unlock the account

chltlxlsc1:~ # usermod -s /bin/bash oracle
chltlxlsc1:~ # passwd oracle
Changing password for oracle.
New Password:
Reenter New Password:
Password changed.

Ok, let’s install. SLES10 is not recognized as a certified OS yet. The DISPLAY thing has to be manually set too.

oracle@chltlxlsc1:~> ./runInstaller  -ignoreSysPrereqs
Starting Oracle Universal Installer...

Checking installer requirements...

Checking operating system version: must be redhat-3, SuSE-9, 
redhat-4, UnitedLinux-1.0, asianux-1 or asianux-2
                                      Failed <<<<

>>> Ignoring required pre-requisite failures. Continuing...

this is one of the friendliest installation I have ever made…

Download of the pre-release version of Suse Linux Entreprise 10 is now available
http://www.novell.com/linux/prerelease.html?sourceid=prerelease1

I just download and installed Oracle Application 10g Release 3 on my linux box.

The version released this week is very light! No ldap, no database, well, a light one…

Application Server 10g Release 3 x86: 531 MB
  Included:   
    * Oracle HTTP Server
    * Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE (OC4J)
    * Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Application Server Control
    * Oracle Business Rules
    * Oracle TopLink

Application Server 10g Release 2 x86: 2 GB
 Included:
    * Oracle HTTP Server Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE (OC4J)
    * Oracle Application Server Web Cache
    * Oracle Application Server Portal
    * Oracle Application Server Wireless
    * Oracle Sensor Edge Server
    * Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Application Server Control
    * Oracle Database Server 10g (10.1.0.4.2)
    * Oracle Internet Directory
    * Oracle Application Server Single Sign-On
    * Oracle Application Server Directory Integration Provisioning
    * Oracle Application Server Delegated Administration Services
    * Oracle Application Server Certificate Authority
    * Oracle Application Server Forms Services
    * Oracle Application Server Reports Services
    * Oracle Application Server Personalization
    * Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer
    * Oracle Security Developer Tools
    * Oracle Application Server Guard
    * OracleAS Backup and Recovery Tool

I tried to install on my notebook, and, o surprise, it works…
the only thing that was missing and required was public domain korn shell, pdksh, which is easy to find by googling

Last friday I installed RAC on my Suse10. Today, I installed Grid Control.

Of course it is not supported.

The packages I neeeded additionaly are db1 and openmotif.

It did not work 100%. I finally started the iasconsole (emctl start iasconsole), and within the iasconsole, I restarted the failed elements.

I created the repository manually (sysman/admin/emdrep/bin/RepManager)

Hi,
[EDIT]
I did read Dizwell article about Linux 10g Laptop RAC. The article is no longer available
[/EDIT]

I have just installed RAC 10gR2 on Suse10.

The document above guided me thru the steps.

Specific Suse10 :
- raw devices are configured by editing /etc/raw with values like raw1:loop1 and must be activated with rcraw start (+ chkconfig -a raw for persitence)

To take care :
- read point 8 to survive reboot…

Specific 10gR2 :
In 10gR2, MAXINSTANCES must not be specified by create controlfiles. In 10gR2, the controlfile can grow dynamically. Even if I created my controlfile with maxinstances=1, I can do alter database add logfile instance 'RAC2' ; alter database add logfile instance 'RAC2' ; alter database enable instance 'RAC2';, which is simply great! CREATE CONTROLFILE just belongs to the past!

Installation:
I had to run vipca manually as root at the end of the root script of the crs installation. I also removed my existing oracle_homes and rebooted before installing database software again. The VIP interface must be configured in /etc/hosts and DOWN (ifconfig down eth0:2).

Conclusion:
The doc written by Amit Poddar on Howad site is usefull. Enjoy rac’ing on your pocket desk calculator!

I prefer and recommend using Oracle on a supported version, like Suse Entreprise 9, because the installation is fair. The Installer does complain on SLES9 what is missing.

Ok, I just received a brand new notebook, I decided to go to Suse 10, and, Ô Miracle, the installation was pretty easy! I surely installed C++ development tools (how can I survive without a C compiler), but I missed the libaio and libaio-devl. Well, I installed it afterwards and my create database statement succeeded.

Sincerly, installing Oracle 10gR2 on Suse 10 is no longer a pain as it was before with non-supported versions.

I am so happy

Well, my gnome evolution ms-exchange connector is still not working, but this I will fix asap