Tag: installation

Fedora 39 and Oracle

Fedora 39 was released recently. Here comes the standard warning.

Here are the usual suspects.

I like messing about with this stuff, as explained in the first link.

I pushed Vagrant builds to my GitHub.

If you want to try these you will need to build a Fedora 39 box. You can do that using Packer. There is an example of that here.

What’s New?

So what’s new with Fedora 39? You can read about it here.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Database 19c on Oracle Linux 9 (OL9): Installation Articles and Vagrant Builds

Earlier this year I wrote a rant about the lack of product certifications on Oracle Linux 9 (OL9).

One of the points I made was we are having to replace OL7 servers, but were forced to go to OL8 because Oracle 19c was not certified on OL9, and Oracle 23c on-prem is not available.

This blog post by Mike DieTrich changed all that because now 19c is certified on OL9, provided you are on patch 19.19 or above, and are on the correct version of UEK or the RHEL kernel. See Mike’s post for details.

Installation Articles

Of course, this triggered some installation articles.

Vagrant Builds

There are database, RAC and Data Guard vagrant builds here.

Odd Occurrence

I noticed something a little odd when doing these builds using the 19.21 RU patches.

For the database and Data Guard builds I used the DB RU and OJVM combo patch, and I was still forced to fake the distribution using the CV_ASSUME_DISTID environment variable. For the RAC build I used the GI RU and OJVM combo patch, and I didn’t need to fake the distribution.

I went back to the DB build, and instead used the GI RU and OJVM combo patch, and I no longer needed to fake the distribution. So it looks like there is something different about the database patches between these two types of RUs that slightly affect the installation process. It’s no big deal, but it might catch you out.

Oracle 19c is old. Why do you care?

We are in the process of replacing a load of VMs that are currently running OL7, and we want to go to OL9. Prior to this announcement were were going to have to do one of two things.

  • Migrate to 19c on OL8, which would be OK for 23c when it drops, but not ideal as building an OL8 box now seems like a fail.
  • Wait for 23c on-prem to drop and move to 23c on OL9. The problem here is we could run out of time waiting for 23c to come.

This announcement gives us a new option.

  • Migrate to 19c on OL9, then upgrade to 23c when the on-prem version drops.

This third option is way better for us!

Remember

There are a couple of things to remember.

  • You need to be on 19c to upgrade to 23c, so getting your 19c database on an OS that is supported for 23c is important. We’ve had confirmation that 23c will be available for OL8 and OL9 on release.
  • The extended support waiver for 19c was increased from 1 year to 2 years. Mike also wrote about this here. That means you get free extended support for 19c until April 30, 2026.

Conclusion

This is massive for us. I’m very happy!

Cheers

Tim…

Video : Ansible : Installation and Configuration

In today’s video we’ll cover the installation and configuration of Ansible.

The video is based on the following article, and will be the first in a series of videos.

You might find some useful stuff here.

The star of today’s video is Neil Chandler, who took time out of his busy bathroom schedule to record this clip.

Cheers

Tim…

Video : Oracle Database 21c Express Edition (XE) Installation

In today’s video we’ll demonstrate how to install Oracle Express Edition 21c on Oracle Linux 8.

The video is based on this article.

Here are some other things you might find useful.

The star of today’s video is Martin Widlake, doing his best Monty Python impression.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13.5

The release of Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13.5 was officially announced last week, but I think it’s been available for download for a little longer. The first I noticed was the official announcement though. 🙂

That prompted the usual flurry of articles.

As well as the articles, you can find the Vagrant builds of Cloud Control 13.5 on Ol7 and OL8 in my Vagrant GitHub repo here.

Our current installation is running on an Oracle Linux 6 VM, so I was just about to start a new build on a new OS, which would have the added bonus of allowing us to use Oracle 19c under the hood. Now I can go straight to 13.5, which is nice.

I’ve mentioned before, we use EMCLI to add targets and jobs into Cloud Control, so rather than upgrading as I normally do, this time I’ll probably do a clean build on the new kit and gradually migrate services across to it.

Happy upgrading! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Video : Install Docker on Oracle Linux 7 (OL7)

Today’s video is a run through installing the Docker engine on Oracle Linux 7 (OL7).

You can get the commands mentioned in this video from the following article.

You can see my other Docker posts and builds here.

The star of today’s video is Robyn Sands, formerly of the Oracle Real World Performance Group, and now something to do with some fruit company… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Video : Oracle Linux 8 Installation

Today’s video is a quick run through a manual installation of Oracle Linux 8.

I put out a number of articles about Oracle Linux 8 when the beta was first released. I’ve now updated them where appropriate.

I’ve also gone through my Vagrant builds for 18c on OL8 and 19c on OL8. They work fine, although there isn’t a Vagrant box for OL8 yet, so I had to make my own using the method similar to this.

Remember, OL8 has only just come out, so the database is not certified on it yet. I’ve put at note a the top of the database installation guides saying as much.

The star of today’s video is Mahir M. Quluzade. He was grinning most of the way through filming this. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Dbvisit Standby 9 Installation on Linux (and Vagrant)

The folks at Dbvisit recently released version 9 of their Dbvisit standby product.

It’s been a while since I last played with the product, so I downloaded the free trial and gave it a whirl.

I have to admit I forgot just how easy it is to work with. It feels pretty much like “unzip and go”. The result of my playtime was this article.

I also knocked up a Vagrant build, so I can easily recreate it. You can find that here.

I stuck to a basic configuration of a single instance primary (node1) and standby (node2), with the console on a separate VM (console). If you want to try something more exotic, or you are using Windows, you can get more information from the Installing Dbvisit Standby documentation.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. This isn’t a sponsored post. I’ve known the folks at Dbvisit for years so I keep an eye on what they are doing.

Oracle Database 19c (19.3) : Installations, RAC, Data Guard etc.

A few weeks ago I put out a post about 19c installations and all that good stuff. That post was using the 19.2 release, which was not the official on-prem release of the product. Now Oracle 19c (19.3) has dropped and is available from here, and here, this post is just to say all those builds have been updated to use this 19.3 release. I also noticed the 19c preinstall package is available from yum.oracle.com.

Not surprisingly, I took the Vagrant and Docker builds I did for 19.2 and just changed the environment variables holding the software zip names, and everything worked just fine. Here are the associated articles, with those minor edits to reflect this version change.

I’ve committed a whole bunch of stuff to GitHub.

  • Vagrant build of 19c on OL7 with APEX and ORDS (here).
  • Vagrant build of 19c on Fedora 29 (here).
  • Vagrant hands-off build of 19c RAC on OL7 (here).
  • Vagrant hands-off build of 19c Data Guard on OL7 (here).
  • Docker 19c on OL7 build (here).
  • Docker 19c RPM on OL7 build (here).
  • Docker compose (here) and swarm (here) stacks.

Automation is awesome! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Database 19c : Installations, RAC, Data Guard and Upgrades

I’ve been playing around with Oracle Database 19c on LiveSQL since it was upgraded, and I pretty much thought that would be what I was stuck with until the on-prem release, as I don’t have an Exadata and it’s not on Oracle Cloud DBCS yet. Having seen a bunch people doing stuff on VMs, I got a bit frustrated and looked on eDelivery and low and behold the 19c software is available for download, even if you don’t have a Exadata CSI. I’m sure 18c was restricted during this period…

I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be supported to use this for anything real (that wasn’t Exadata of course) until the on-prem drop, which will probably be 19.3 if they repeat what happened for 18c, but it does allow you to have a play.

Having a bunch of Vagrant environments for 18c already, meant it was pretty easy to test a whole bunch of 19c stuff within a few minutes, as most of the basics are very similar. Just minor changes to package recommendations. As a result I’ve pushed out the following stuff in the last couple of evenings.

Along the way I’ve committed a whole bunch of stuff to GitHub.

  • Vagrant build of 19c on OL7 with APEX and ORDS (here).
  • Vagrant build of 19c on Fedora 29 (here).
  • Vagrant hands-off build of 19c RAC on OL7 (here).
  • Vagrant hands-off build of 19c Data Guard on OL7 (here).
  • Docker 19c on OL7 build (here).
  • Docker compose (here) and swarm (here) stacks.

It should be obvious, but remember this is literally the first time I’ve done this stuff with 19c, so things will change over time. I just wanted to try some stuff out to see what happened, and have some test environments to play with while I’m checking out the new features. Once the real on-prem drop happens I’ll bring these up to date.

If nothing else, this is once again proof of how awesome automation is. A few minor tweaks and boom, there’s a new set of test environments. 🙂

Now I can get back to doing what I was meant to be doing… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…