VMware vs. Oracle support issue

Just found NOTE:249212.1 about Oracle support when running on VMware. Basically, they provide support up until they think it might be a VMware issue, then you get to prove to Oracle that the issue is theirs.

Pretty typical when a platform isn't "certified". But a nasty business practice.

Strange. Back in 2004 VMware and Oracle had a parternship.

... then about a year ago, Oracle releases Oracle VM, and boom, they're not going to certify on VMware. Stupid.

FYI...apparently Oracle does work on VMware, and according to a blog on their site, it runs *best* on VMware.


Strange. Is this just Oracle taking a support stance via not certifying to lure customers away from VMware onto their shiny new toy? Or is there some fundamental problem with VMware that Oracle is saving us from?

It's unlikely. I think someone in the VMware world might have gotten under the skin of one of the higherups at Oracle, cause they have certified Solaris 10 containers:

# Oracle does support Oracle non-RAC databases (10gR2, 10gR1, and 9.2 for SPARC and 10gR2 and 10gR1 for x86-64) with Solaris 10 non-global (local) Containers on the existing supported platforms for SPARC and x86-64. See metalink note 317257.1 for best practices document for deploying Oracle database in a Solaris 10 non-global Container
# Oracle RAC does not work in Solaris 10 local Containers.
# Oracle does not support Oracle with Solaris 8 or 9 containers on a Solaris 10 Operating Environment or any other combination not mentioned in the statement listed above. NOTE:567849.1


Still looking around for a rationale on why Oracle won't certify on VMware.

Provisioning, Patching, and Grid Control

Attempted (again) to get 10.2.0.4 Grid Control to patch a few databases. Fail. Hard.

Eventually, we found the following glorious DocID on Metalink: 427577.1. Bookmark it now.

It identifies a few patches you'll need to install on GC in order for patching to work. Or you end up with some very irritating, strange, and mostly undocumented errors:

ERROR em.paf_jobs executePAFCommand.142 - Problems with the directive urn parameter format.

oracle.sysman.emgc.provision.UrnException: The URN, 'null', is not properly formatted

There are others, not totally related:

There was an error saving 'p4898608_10.2.0.4_2000' below 'OracleSoftwareUpdates' in the deployment library

Fixed that one by deleting from Deployments>>Provisioning select and deleted p4898608.

There's a really handy guide to look at -- grid-automation-deployment-procedures.pdf Found that to be pretty useful.

Couple more random things:
1) Setup your software library: info here
2) Run the metalink & opatch update scripts. Now.
3) Patch the system from the docid above.

Should work. Hasn't for me yet, but when it does I'll post the last lil bits.

Clean Up Indentations in vi

Pasting or adding to existing scripts can often get ugly. To help clean up, you can set tab and shift widths to custom sizes in vi.

To set the length of tabs to n spaces:

• :set tabstop=n

To shift a block of text n spaces:

• :set shiftwidth=n


• mx


• >


• move cursor to end of block)


• `x

To use spaces instead of tab characters with future presses of the TAB key (vim only):

• :set expandtab

Multi user screen

Setting up screen for multiple users...

# screen -S screen_name
ctrl-A :addacl add someone_else,and_another_someone_else
ctrl-A :chacl username -w "#"
ctrl-A :multiuser on

They can connect to your screen via

# screen -x owners_user_name/screen_name

Obviously replace owners_user_name with whoever started the first screen, and change someone_else, and_another_someone_else, and screen_name to the useful settings....

More good tricks here, including some fancy tabs for the bottom of your screen

Fun with chmod

To carefully add permissions to files in a directory tree, keep capital letters in mind.

The following is dangerous:

chmod -R a+x directoryname

That would give execute permissions to all files underneath directoryname.

To give execute permissions to only files that currently have execute permissions use:

chmod -R a+X directoryname

That would give execute permissions to only those files that already have some other execute permission -- great for allowing others to look in directories.

Fun.

Redirection for the win

Fancy pants way to diff the contents of two directories.

diff <(ls exe) <(ls exe9ibkup)

Sed tricks

Find something in files and replace it with something else.
find . -name "somefiles" -exec sed -i 's/this/that/' {} \;

For an or condition...
sed 's/this/that/g;s/other/totheother/g'

Hey guess what, that inline flag -i doesn't work with Solaris 8's default sed install. We've already badgered our Solaris admin enough for one day, what else can we do?

Perl pie.

perl -pi -e 's/foo/bar/g' filename*

Awesome.