General

Disable password ageing on Windows 2008 Server Standard

Jan 10, 2009 guides, os, virtualisation by Jeff

Password ageing in Windows 2008 Server Standard edition (the one I generally use) is set to automatically requre passwords to be changed after 42 days…obviously a Douglas Adams fan responsible for that bit of the codebase!

NOTE – I don’t have access to other version of Windows Server (2003 or 2008) so I can’t speak for them, but I imagine it’s the same on them too.

That’s annoying for home use, where I have tons of VMs for research that I use periodically, so I asked my brother Steve how to stop this happening and he gave me some simple instructions…

First start the Local Security Policy editor by typing secpol.msc in the start/run box..

secpol.msc

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Set Password Ageing off.msc

Seems to have done the trick.

Kinda handy having a brother who’s an MCSE and a VCP too. Useful when I get stuck with OS or VM stuff for my Oracle research!

By the way, if anyone happens to be looking for some skilled contract resource in the Virtualisation field (VMWare, ESX Server etc…) then Steve has just become available…please feel free to contact me, or Steve, via his website

General

Fedora 9 on Hyper V on Windows 2008 Server x64 – Firefox IPv6 DNS issue

Aug 30, 2008 firefox, hyper-v, linux, virtualisation, windows by Jeff

I’ve been playing with Hyper V this week and came across an issue with Firefox, whereby I thought that the networking setup for Fedora 9 on a Hyper V virtual machine wasn’t working.

The environment is Windows 2008 Server on x64 with the RTM release of Hyper V. I then created a VM and installed Fedora 9 x64 from a DVD ISO – it took a while as I started with a multiple CPU, standard network adapter approach and it kept crashing during the install; when I changed to single CPU and “Legacy” network adapter it installed cleanly – given that Fedora isn’t a “supported” Hyper V OS I can’t really complain.

The problem I then came to was that it appeared that DNS wasn’t working, i.e. in Firefox, if I stuck in a URL, it came back with an error rather than showing the page. I then proceeded to go off on a wild goose chase checking all the Fedora networking setup and reading about Hyper V and it’s “synthetic” network adapter approach, but still couldn’t solve it. Everything seemed to be installed and configured exactly as everybody who had written about it had said…so it should be working right?
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It was…but the problem is that Firefox was trying to resolve the name of the URL using IPv6 rather than IPv4…and my network was configured without an IPv6 DNS – I don’t need IPv6 and I’m perfectly happy with IPv4 so that’s what I use. I only discovered this by chance as I wondered whether it might be a Firefox issue (everything else ruled out kinda thinking), so I used the Konqueror web browser to see if it had the same issue and hey presto it was working fine whilst Firefox wasn’t.

How to fix Firefox? Well, basically as indicated in this post on the OpenSUSE website – essentially, you go to the URL “about:config” in Firefox, filter for “network.disable.IPv6” and set it to TRUE instead of FALSE (double click it to change the value). Then it all works fine.

General

OS trials and tribulations

Aug 22, 2008 os, virtualisation by Jeff

I got tired of my apps not working on 64 bit Vista so I figured I’d bin the dual boot Vista 64 and Enterprise Linux 5 and just go Linux. EL5 wasn’t up to date (kernel wise) and I was unable to easily bring it up to date, without paying Oracle a licence fee, so I figured I’d just used Fedora 9 instead.

Then I saw this from Tim on ESX and I figured that sounded like a good idea…so I spent some time trying to get that working…only to realise that ESX needs SCSI for the disks (or one of the very specific SATA interfaces – that I don’t have)…so that idea also ground to a halt. ESXi, being more restrictive than ESX on hardware compatability, didn’t even install, whilst ESX managed to install after a bit of effort, but I couldn’t create any VMFS filesystems – that’s when I RTFM’d that it was not going to work without SCSI – even after much surfing travels.

I do hope that they get ESX to work with more SATA (i.e. mine) so I can use it…seemed like a good idea for my home research requirements. Never mind, will have to manage with Fedora 9 for now.
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I’ve got Fedora 9 installed now and it was reasonably painless, except that the networking wasn’t working when it booted up – no access to the internet. After a bit of surfing, I found the website of Mauriat Miranda, who seems to have some great stuff, including an installation guide for Fedora 9, which covers the fix to my networking issue.

Big thanks to Mauriat there.

General, News

PC for manly men?

Jul 12, 2008 benchmarking by Jeff

So, after suffering a hard disk failure, I figured it was time to buy a new PC for (Oracle) research purposes and the choice seemed to boil down to:

Buy a Dell or HP high end PC from their website and pay serious money for it.
Pick a proper server off Ebay – cheaper but may have pitfalls including warranty, dodgy sellers and delivery. (it was interesting to look for E10K Sun boxes on there)
Spec a PC myself and get a box shifter to build and ship it.
Upgrade my current PC with a selection of new bits.

I chose #3 and bought it from a company call Scan. I’m pretty happy with the result and the service I received although due to some DOA parts it took a little longer than I’d hoped…at least they had the problems to deal with instead of me!

#1 is expensive and you’re sort of limited to the options they offer. I costed up something similar to what I’ve ended up buying and it was nearer 3,000 pounds rather than the 1800 ish that I paid.

#2 is cheaper than #1 but these type of machines are really noisy, albeit solid pieces of kit and more akin to what I’d work on during my day job.

#4 and #3 are similar except for who gets the grief of making all the new bits work together, and every time I try to build things myself I get grief with it (usually parts arriving DOA or incompatible with each other). Scan had to deal with a DOA motherboard and CPU amongst other things…rather them than me.

So, #3 it was…and it arrived a few days ago.

Specification is:

Tyan S2932 Server motherboard
Two, dual core AMD Opteron 2218 2.6GHz processors
8Gb of RAM (4 x 2Gb DDR2 667MHz)
Six, 1 TB Samsung HD103UJ Spinpoint F1, SATA 300, 7200 rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ drives
Antec P190 midi tower case

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Pictures (Click on them for bigger images) below:

Not quite an “enterprise server” and I’m sure it pales into insignificance against any of the kit Kevin uses, but pretty quick.

I’ve configured it for dual boot of Vista 64 Ultimate and Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 (using EasyBCD) and I’m about to start doing some installations and benchmarking…should be fun.

I installed VirtualBox on the Vista 64 OS and it’s working very nicely…well, it’s set up and working…we’ll find out how nicely it’s working when I install Oracle and HammerOra and give it a bit of a kicking!

Who knows, I might even find time to blog about it!

Benchmarking, General, News, Oracle

Oracle Optimized Warehouse Initiative (OWI)

Apr 15, 2008 ASM, DW, OWI, RAC by Jeff

I enjoyed a trip out of the office today with my manager. We went down to the Oracle Enterprise Technology Centre, in Reading, to hear about the Oracle Optimized Warehouse Initiative. It was basically a half day pitch from Oracle and Sun today, although there are other dates with different hardware vendors (IBM, HP and Dell).

It was an interesting day, although I didn’t really hear anything new, per se. I think the main things I took away from the session were:

The availability of a set of reference configurations providing matrices which cover various permutations of user count, storage cost focus, warehouse size and hardware vendor.
The possibility of using the reference configurations either minimally, to simply cross check a proposed hardware specification for a given workload, to ensure it seems appropriate, or going the whole hog and using an “out of the box” reference configuration, delivered to your office, fully configured with all software installed, in a box, ready to run in your data.
Oracle are pushing RAC and ASM heavily in the DW space – no surprise there.
HammerOra and ORION are used by Oracle and the hardware vendors to assess the reference configurations…and there is nothing stopping you using them for your own benchmarking efforts

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It was interesting to hear about the Proof Of Concept facility that Sun has, in Linlithgow, Scotland. The facility allows Sun (and an Oracle customer) to take a server off the production line and, working with the customer, test their workload on that machine to see if it’s going to work or not. Neat, and since we’re going to be using some Sun kit for a DW shortly, it sounds like an opportunity.

Funniest thing of the day for me, was the last slide in the pitch given by Mike Leigh of Sun which had the title “The Power of 2” and was illustrating the benefits to customers of Oracle and Sun as a united force. I didn’t really take much notice, as I was too busy smiling, as I looked at the title and it made me think of Doug and his Parallel Execution and the ‘Magic of 2’ paper (the Magic of 2 bit actually being from this paper by Cary).

If you’re building a warehouse, or just want to get an idea of whether your hardware is appropriate for the job, it’s probably worth reading up on the OWI.

General, Social

Start the new year with a game of tag!

Jan 9, 2008 social by Jeff

Thanks to Doug, I’ve been “tagged” – he’d obviously noticed I’d been sleeping, blog-wise, for some time and decided that I should come out of hibernation!

The idea behind the tagging being to “learn more about the people you interact with using New Web”.

So, here are eight pieces of trivia about myself:

1. I am the son of a couple of geordies. My dad being a miner and my mum being a machinist and taxi driver in her time. Mum and dad were married at Gretna Green. Mum is also fairly rare in that she is a successful heart transplant patient of nearly ten years.

2. I love animals – all animals really, but in particular dogs, and in particular Boxer dogs, and even more particularly white boxer dogs – and no, to scotch a common myth, not all white boxer dogs are deaf – it’s the same percentage as all breeds of dog that are deaf – around 20%.

3. I’m not a vegetarian, despite my love of animals, however my wife is pretty much a vegetarian…which obviously makes life interesting in the kitchen department.

4. If I wasn’t an Oracle person then I’d be a chef. In all truth, the only reason I haven’t switched from being an Oracle person to a chef is that I don’t think I could earn as much money in that field. Yes, Gordon Ramsey earns millions but it’s taken him decades to get there and I’m not sure I’m as capable in that field as I am in the Oracle one. So the plan will be to work in Oracle until such time as I think I’ve comfortable and then I’ll switch to something in the arena of food and drink.

5. I love car racing – particularly Formula 1. Some wifes are “Golf Widows” – mine is an “F1 Widow” and calls me a “saddo” whenever I’m surfin’ on my laptop in the evening and she spots me looking at the ITV 1 Formula 1 website. Obviously I think I could go a fast as Lewis Hamilton but I’m all too aware that I’d probably end up looking like Richard Hammond if I tried!

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7. Speaking of ideal holiday…my favourite place is the carribean, but then what’s not to like there! My favourite island being St Lucia since that’s where I got married to Amanda.

8. I have a burning desire to live in another country – preferably somewhere hot. Whether my desire is fulfilled who knows…watch this space!

That’s my eight things…so over to a new set of people to continue the chain…I’ve no idea if these folk have been tagged or not yet – apologies if they have and the chain isn’t extended but ultimately, isn’t that inevitable?

Kevin Closson
Tanel Poder
Nicholas Goodman
Mogens Nogaard
Anjo Kolk
Pete Finnigan – how ironic with this tagging being effectively a virus!
Eric S Emrick
Christian Bilien

General

CALIBRATE_IO Poll

Sep 25, 2007 dba, poll, tuning by Jeff

After Doug’s comment on my earlier blog on CALIBRATE_IO, and after seeing Kevin using Mr Poll to do a RAC poll, I’ve now created a poll for the results people are getting from this CALIBRATE_IO routine in 11g.

If you’d like to contribute please visit using the following link:

Oracle 11g CALIBRATE_IO Results
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No prizes for the “biggest”…Kevin is bound to have something in his lab that beats us all! 😉

Thanks

Category: General