Month: January 2013

UltraEdit on Fedora 18…

I was using UltraEdit 3.3 on Fedora 17 with no problems. After the upgrade to Fedora 18 it continued to work fine. Then I noticed there was a newer build of 3.3 on the IDM website, so I downloaded and installed it. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. I guess it was a later build for Fedora 17, not a new Fedora 18 build.

I dropped the guys at IDM an email and they did a new build straight away and it worked fine. This build is available from the website now.

It’s nice when people write cool apps and back them up with good service when you need help!

Cheers

Tim…

Dune Messiah…

Dune Messiah is the second in the Dune series written by Frank Herbert.

I got a few warnings from people that the sequels to the original book were not so good. I have to admit it lacks the direction and thrust of the first book, but it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. In fact I actually quite enjoyed it. It does ramble a bit at times, but it was nice to see some of the other characters getting fleshed out a bit.

This book and the next book, Children of Dune, were combined into the Children of Dune TV mini series. Having seen that, I’m expecting Children of Dune to be a bit random. We shall see. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 18 : The winner is MATE (so far)…

I’m a few days into Fedora 18 and I think I’ve come the the conclusion that the desktop that best suits *me* is MATE. The journey to this point has been a rather long and meandering one. Let’s cut it short and start at GNOME2.

  • GNOME2 : I was happy and all things were good.
  • GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell) : When it became the default Fedora window manager I went with the flow and stuck with it for a few months. At the time I thought it was OK. I even wrote some posts saying I kinda liked it. After a while it started to get on my nerves and I switched.
  • LXDE : That lasted about 10 minutes. Nuff said!
  • XFCE : I stuck with this for quite a few months. It’s very simple and very quick. There are a few rough edges, but nothing that really made me squirm.

Once I installed Fedora 18 I felt like I needed a change. A quick return to GNOME3 convinced me that I now truly hate it.

  • Cinnamon : The first impression was very good. It’s not officially “supported” on Fedora, but is in the repo. The Fedora version seems a little buggy, which is where the problems began. I started trying to arrange my desktop and stuff just didn’t work. I have a feeling that Cinnamon may end up being my desktop of choice in the future, but for now I’ll have to pass for something that works properly on Fedora.
  • KDE : I’ve had brief dalliances with KDE over the years. The people who love it seem almost fanatical. Every time I’ve tried it, it has driven me nuts. I had made a decision that Fedora 18 was probably going to be the version where I become a KDE fan. Two days was all I could take. I don’t know what it is about KDE, but I can’t handle it. It is by far the prettiest window manager. I look at it and I feel like I want to use it. Trouble is, when I start I feel like it is getting in my way. I can’t really put my finger on it. It just isn’t for me.
  • MATE : So we come full circle. MATE is a fork of GNOME2. I read something recently that says it uses most of the plumbing of GNOME3, but has the “traditional” GNOME2 feel.  I installed it and it felt like coming home. After a few months of being out in the cold, MATE was a hot fire, a pair of warm slippers and plate of beans on toast with a bit of cheese on top. Fantastic! My desktop is very simple and functional. The interface does not get in my way. It’s not going to make Linux the desktop of choice, but I think a lot of long time Fedora users will try it and like it.

I understand that open source is all about choice, but it seems such a shame that we have so many talented people all working on different window managers, none of which quite hit the mark. It just makes you wonder what could happen if they all worked together. Of course, it would never happen, but you can dream…

If I’m honest, OS X is better than any of these interfaces. I think Windows 7 probably is too. The bonus with having your interface dictated to you is you just get on with things and make do. The Linux desktop is definitely a case of “Freedom is slavery“. Being the Linux fan I am, I will just have to continue being a slave…

I reserve the right to change my mind at any time, so when next week I’m telling you Windows 8 is awesome, so be it. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 18 : Upgrading from Fedora 17…

I’ve just got to the end of a real upgrade of a Fedora 17 server to Fedora 18. The basic process goes like this.

  • Download the Fedora 18 ISO.
  • Update your current Fedora 17 system by issuing the “yum update” command and restart once it is complete.
  • Install the “fedup” package. “yum –enablerepo=updates-testing install fedup”
  • Run the fedup command pointing it to the Fedora 18 ISO you downloaded. “fedup-cli –iso /home/user/fedora-18.iso –debuglog=fedupdebug.log”
  • Check for errors in the log and correct if found.
  • Reboot the machine and select the “System Upgrade” option from the Grub menu.
  • Wait!

The system came up OK after this, but there are some gotchas. The first thing I did on completion was to run a “yum update” and lots of things were broken. Why? Well, after a lot of messing around and manually updating individual packages I finally figured out:

  1. Google Chrome, Skype and VirtualBox were all holding on to F17 versions of packages so yum was not able to update them.
  2. I also had a bunch of packages from the RPM Fusion repository that seemed to confuse things. If you are using that repository I suggest you manually update it using these commands.

    wget http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-18.noarch.rpm
    rpm -Uvh rpmfusion-free-release-18.noarch.rpm

  3. The dropbox repository is failing, so add “enabled=0” to the “/etc/yum.repos.d/dropbox.repo” file.

So IMHO, when you are going to do an upgrade, I would advise to remove any packages that didn’t come from the Fedora repository before starting, or be prepared to spend a few hours cleaning up afterwards. If I had stuck to just packages from the Fedora repository I think the upgrade would have been seamless. As it is, it was a bit of a pain, but now it’s all good.

I think I will have a little rest before trying another. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Update: I just did an upgrade to another machine. By taking my own advice and cleaning up first it was really easy. 🙂

Fedora 18 and Oracle 11gR2…

After several abortive attempts I finally got hold of Fedora 18 last night. Those mirrors are getting a real battering at the moment. 🙂

The first job was to do a basic installation.

I’d seen a few things written about the new installer, not all of which were positive. IMHO the installation was a really nice experience. It is very different to previous installers, which probably freaks some people out, but I think it works really well.

Once the installation is complete it’s pretty much business as usual. You’ve got newer versions of most of the packages, but to be honest I don’t really focus to much on that. I just keep doing “yum update” every few days and work with what I’ve got. 🙂

One thing that did take me by surprise is how much a hated GNOME Shell. I’ve written several times in that past that I thought it was OK. It was my default environment for quite a few months, but after spending an extended period on XFCE at home and Windows XP at work, I can safely say that I seriously don’t get GNOME Shell. Fortunately, Fedora 18 comes with a whole host of window managers including GNOME, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, Cinnamon and MATE, so I’m sure you’ll find something there that you can work with.

The next job was to see if Oracle would install on it.

Every time I do this I think to myself it’s going to be the last time. It’s far more sensible to use a VM and install the database on a supported distro. Oracle Linux is free and a supported platform, so messing around with installs on a non-supported distro, like Fedora, really doesn’t make sense. Maybe this will actually be the last time. 🙂

So what next? I’ve got some physical servers running Fedora 17 as the host OS which will have to be upgraded. I think I’m going to play around with Cinnamon and MATE before I do that. If they don’t work for me it’s back to plain and simple XFCE for my window manager. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle 11gR2 RAC Installation on Oracle Linux 5

As promised in a recent post, I’ve updated the Oracle 11gR2 RAC on Oracle Linux 5 article. It now uses VirtualBox 4.2.6, rather than 3.2.8 as it was before, and Oracle Linux 5.8.

I’ve purposely left it as an 11.2.0.1 installation as you can get this from OTN without needing access to My Oracle Support (MOS). The process works just as well for 11.2.0.3 and I would recommend you use that if you do have access to MOS. Remember, if you are doing the RAC installation on Oracle Linux 6 you are going to need 11.2.0.3, so OL5 might be the right option if you are playing around with this at home with no access to MOS.

Cheers

Tim…

Captain Support and Outlook.com…

This morning I was called because my mom’s email wasn’t working. As usual, no clear explanation of the issue was available. This sounds like a job for Captain Support!  The problem turned out to be Microsoft had switched her from the Hotmail interface to the Outlook.com interface. A quick explanation of the new interface and she bravely decided to stick with it, rather than switching back to the original Hotmail interface. I’m sure Captain Support will be needed a few times in the coming days… 🙂

I’ve mentioned before, I think the Outlook.com interface is probably the neatest looking web mail interface around now. I prefer the look of it to Gmail. The problem is I am so invested in the Google ecosystem I couldn’t switch even if I wanted too. The real issue here is I’m not a normal user. There are a lot of users out there like my mom who are completely stumped by the slightest change to the interface. At one point my mom said she felt like getting rid of the computer. To someone like me that seems like an extreme reaction, but for her the computer had become unusable.

What’s she going to think when she gets Windows 8? 🙂

On that subject, a couple of people in the office are now using Windows 8 at home and it’s not proving too bad. One of the guys is running it native. One is using Classic Shell. Not surprisingly, they spend most of their time in the desktop pain, trying to avoid the interface formerly known as Metro. Resistance is futile…

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle 11gR2 RAC Installation on Oracle Linux 6

I spent today updating my Oracle 11gR2 RAC installation on OL6 article. The original article used an older version of VirtualBox , which meant some of the screen shots looked a little dated. It’s now updated to VirtualBox 4.2.6, so it should be a little less confusing for anyone who is new to VirtualBox.

I’ll probably update the OL5 RAC article some time this next week, since that article uses VirtualBox 3.2.8, which is pretty much ancient history now. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

RHCE Certification Articles…

Just before I started my current job I was planning on doing the RHCSA and RHCE exams for a bit of fun. In preparation for that I started to write the revision notes for each of the exam objectives. I got to the end of the RHCSA exam objectives, then my plan kind-of stalled, what with starting the new job etc.

Over the Christmas holiday I got some time to start the notes for the RHCE exam. If anything, the syllabus for this exam is a little simpler as many of the sections follow the same basic format. This full list of RHCE exam objectives includes the links to all the articles I’ve written to cover the objectives. There are still 5 to complete, but hopefully I’ll get those done soon.

The new articles I wrote include:

Some of the existing articles on the site got some changes to reflect other objectives, including:

Remember, these articles are targeted specifically at the exam objectives, rather than trying to provide everything you need to know about the subject. In my opinion, some of the exam objectives are rather too simple, missing out the more interesting and useful features of the software. In some cases I’ve added some extra information beyond the objectives, marking it as not part of the exam, or linked or other articles that give some ideas of other uses.

Once I finish the next batch of articles, I guess I should consider sitting the exams. I’m pretty confident I could get through them now if I had access to my notes, but in the exam you just have “man”  and “info” pages, so I would have to commit some of the stuff to memory to get through them. Although I’ve been using Linux for over a decade, the fact I don’t do system administration on a daily basis means some of the more obscure tasks aren’t committed to memory.

It would be nice to get the articles finished and exams done before Oracle 12c is released, or I will be distracted for a while learning all that stuff. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…