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Re: Oracle and Linux
by Peter Ross 05 Nov '14

05 Nov '14

Hi, From: "Avi Miller" <avi.miller(a)gmail.com> >> On 5 Nov 2014, at 12:42 pm, Peter Ross <Petros.Listig(a)fdrive.com.au> >> wrote: >> >> I have to admit not really to understand the "support this or that >> virtualisation" > > I misused some words and apologise: In the case of Oracle in particular, > there is a difference between "supported" and "certified" - we support > Oracle products on any platform to the best of our ability, but if we > can't reproduce the issue internally, we may need to engage the > HW/virtualisation vendor. Thanks for clarification. I think I did not differentiate the two words as well. >> And I have not read: "Product XY only works on Dell T610 and HP ML 150".I >> can install it on a "no name box" as well. Why not on any VM? > > We have hardware certification[1], just like we have virtualisation > certification. Oh, I did not know that. >> (BTW: Is Oracle DB supported in a Oracle VirtualBox?) > > Yes, for development and test purposes. Not for production use, AFAIK. > Then again, the performance you'd get in VirtualBox probably doesn't meet > your production needs anyway. That could be right. But I am actually not that sure how much it matters. As I was "toying" with Oracle VM I moved a Zimbra Server running on Ubuntu. From FreeBSD/VirtualBox to Oracle VM (Linux/Xen) I did not "feel" a difference. Maybe a benchmark question: Which benchmarks would you run to compare the two in various ways? If I have a bit time I like to try it. I find it difficult to compare them in "normal usage" if you do not migrate all VMs from one solution to another (on the same hardware) because the overall load of a system has an impact on a VM as well. I also tend to have a bit of "space" on the servers to avoid bottlenecks. Usually I do not over-allocate (sorry, there is a better word I just cannot remember just now) or at least not much. The space is also used as a buffer if I have to migrate VMs/services suddenly (e.g. caused by a failing machine) The result may differ on different hardware as well. E.g. I could imagine to have different results if I try the two stacks on a 32GB modern hardware - or on a 5 years old machine with 8 GB only. Depends where I find a bottleneck. > Hope that makes things a little clearer from our perspective. Yes it does:-) Thanks Peter

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Virtualisation compatibility (was: Oracle and Linux)
by Toby Corkindale 05 Nov '14

05 Nov '14

On 5 November 2014 12:42, Peter Ross <Petros.Listig(a)fdrive.com.au> wrote: > I have to admit not really to understand the "support this or that > virtualisation" > > A virtualisation presents a "virtual computer" and this may slightly > differ depending on the virtualisation solution. > > But the same goes for physical machines. > > And I have not read: "Product XY only works on Dell T610 and HP ML 150". I > can install it on a "no name box" as well. Why not on any VM? > > The ERP solution [not Oracle, btw] I am dealing with in-house runs on > Tomcat. Tomcat and Java are designed to live "everywhere". > > Of course the software is certified on Linux X and Windows Y only.. So, in theory virtualisation should be roughly the same everywhere. And something like the JVM is designed to work almost everywhere. And usually it all works OK. However sometimes you get bizarre incompatibilities -- the one I'm thinking of is OpenVZ and the JVM. I don't know why, but the jvm just doesn't work right under OpenVZ -- it's a well-known issue. (And one which I believe points out that openvz has been flawed all along; I wouldn't trust *anything* under it as a result) Anyway, given such occurrences exist, I could see why software vendors might not approve of their stuff being run in certain VMs. If they've found it causes support headaches, they might just not want to go there any more. T

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Re: Oracle and Linux
by Peter Ross 05 Nov '14

05 Nov '14

Hi Avi and all, From: "Avi Miller" <avi.miller(a)gmail.com> > We support most virtualization platforms including VMware, Hyper-V and > Oracle VM. We also support most operating systems. Certification has also > broaden to include RDBMS on Windows running on Hyper-V (with Oracle Linux > certification on Hyper-V in progress). I have to admit not really to understand the "support this or that virtualisation" A virtualisation presents a "virtual computer" and this may slightly differ depending on the virtualisation solution. But the same goes for physical machines. And I have not read: "Product XY only works on Dell T610 and HP ML 150". I can install it on a "no name box" as well. Why not on any VM? (BTW: Is Oracle DB supported in a Oracle VirtualBox?) The ERP solution [not Oracle, btw] I am dealing with in-house runs on Tomcat. Tomcat and Java are designed to live "everywhere". Of course the software is certified on Linux X and Windows Y only.. Practically I do not get any Linux support because "Windows is standard" downunder. So I'm told. Not to mention that I install an older version because the new one "is not launched in Australia yet". It's available in Europe since April.. In one case I spoke to technical support in Germany to get some clues and confirmation. They were helpful but contract issues prevent them from supporting me continuously. I could have installed it under FreeBSD I guess. Wouldn't make any difference, support-wise. Did I mention that I love proprietary software? ;-) Regards Peter

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SUSE next version out within hours
by Mike 05 Nov '14

05 Nov '14

SUSE Linux next version is about to be released and my broadband allocation has plenty left to do this - but the SUSE release occurs just after the broadband expiration. So I will have to wait, with a large balance, until tomorrow - baah I am interested in this as SUSE has a different 'take' on what users want - some of my favourite utilities are hard to get and they are like torture to install - this was predictable - just bad timing. Mike

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Subsequent documents printed out in code
by Carl Turney 02 Nov '14

02 Nov '14

Hi All, Have searched a while, but can't even find the relevant forum where my problem would be best addressed. ***** Background: Recently installed Linux Mint MATE * Qiana on my desktop and laptop (64 & 32 bit versions respectively). Have a Lexmark E230 monochrome laser printer, which the Mint install/setup routine handled easily and effortlessly. It prints documents perfectly, whether I'm printing PDFs from Document Viewer, Word docs from LibreOffice, or ASCII text from the Pluma text editor. ***** Problem: (On the 64-bit desktop, haven't tried the 32 bit laptop.) Whenever I print a second document, regardless of which of the above apps I'm using, I get printer code, instead of the desired document. For instance... PJL ENTER LANGUAGE = PCLXL ) HP-PCL XL;1;1;Comment Copyright Artifex Software, I (then a new page, and the full range of random ASCII characters -- e.g. foreign letters, emoticons, etc.) I have to turn my printer off and on, for every item I want to print. Grr. (Note: If I'm in LibreOffice and ask it to print multiple copies, I don't have any problems.) ***** Question: Any suggestions on =whose= forum I should direct this problem to? e.g. Mint, Ubuntu, Debian, CUPS, some printer driver developer group, etc.? (Note: I've found the Linux Mint forums the worst I've ever encountered. And I've probably used well over a dozen in the past decade. Lots of people asking questions, and nearly zero responses from anyone knowledgeable.) Thanks =very= much guys, Carl Turney Bayswater, Melbourne * BTW: MATE is pronounced "MAH-tay". I have an Argentinian friend who loves the locally-famous drink which the GUI is named after.

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Free Ksplice for Ubuntu/Fedora
by Avi Miller 01 Nov '14

01 Nov '14

Hey guys, I'm not sure if you're all aware, but we make Ksplice updates freely available for Ubuntu[1] and Fedora[2]. Ksplice patches are provided for the LTS versions of Ubuntu and the latest two stable releases of Fedora (19 and 20 at the moment). If you've wanted to play with Ksplice technology and are not an Oracle Linux Premier Support customer, you can do it for free with either of these two products. If you want to see Ksplice in action on a RHEL box, you can get a 30-day trial[3]. If you're unaware of what Ksplice is, it's rebootless kernel patching of security and bug fixes. Ksplice is in the same space as Kpatch and kGraft, but is a far more mature technology and is able to currently patch far more of the kernel in runtime than its competitors. For more information, see https://www.ksplice.com/paper Cheers, Avi [1] https://www.ksplice.com/uptrack/download-ubuntu [2] https://www.ksplice.com/uptrack/download-fedora [3] https://www.ksplice.com/rhel-signup

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Btrfs news: 3.17.2 (and others) released
by Chris Samuel 31 Oct '14

31 Oct '14

Looks like Greg KH has released these 4 kernels, each with btrfs patches: drwxrwxr-x 2 chris chris 4096 Oct 31 19:09 3.10.59 drwxrwxr-x 2 chris chris 12288 Oct 31 19:09 3.14.23 drwxrwxr-x 2 chris chris 16384 Oct 31 19:09 3.16.7 drwxrwxr-x 2 chris chris 20480 Oct 31 19:09 3.17.2 If you're using one of those series with btrfs you'll be wanting to upgrade.. -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC

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Re: OpenSuse with Btrfs (and limitations), Chris Mason describes Btrfs as "stable"
by Peter Ross 31 Oct '14

31 Oct '14

Hi, From: "Russell Coker" <russell(a)coker.com.au> > On Fri, 31 Oct 2014, "Peter Ross" <Petros.Listig(a)fdrive.com.au> wrote: >> The article also mentions some speed issues especially in relation to >> databases. > > COW filesystems use different blocks on disk every time a file is written > to. Yes. >> I would be interested to know what Oracle says to databases on ZFS on >> Solaris - and Btrfs on Linux systems (the later not supported by Oracle >> yet, I believe, the first I am not sure about) > > The same performance issues apply to BTRFS and ZFS. The significant > difference is that L2ARC and ZIL can mitigate such problems So Btrfs does not have this kind of features, I understand. Thanks for pointing this out. >> My gut feeling: Use Btrfs for "bread and butter" work and not if you need >> 101% reliability. With backups and mirrors and failovers (which may be >> in place anyway) you may be fine. > > If you want good reliability then you need backups and mirrors anyway. Yes, no doubt. But failover is a bit more tricky if you are dealing with instable nodes. It is harder to catch an error (which triggers a failover) if there are many ways to fail and some quite unexpected. For the purpose of explanation: A switched off computer is easier to detect than some data inconsistency which may "sleep" for a while before being detected. You are buggered if you have two nodes with different issues then. >> I just do not get my head around why a subvolumes is called subvolume if >> it is (according to the FAQ) comparable to a file system - you just can >> have many of them in a pool. > > A subvolume is represented inside BTRFS in much the same way a directory. You > can't mount one subvol without operating on the rest of the filesystem, so if > a filesystem is corrupted such that it can only be mounted RO then that > applies to all subvols. My tube may be glued to a wheel so you may have to replace the wheel in order to replace the tube. But I doubt that it makes my tube a wheel;-) Something that is represented in much the same ways as a directory does not look like a volume to me. Every "subvolume" has a root, it can be mounted everywhere on the system - as a file system does. It is organized on top of a block structure which abstracts from physical devices (usually referred to as logical volumes) and creates a directory structure on it - as a filesystem does. My way of thinking of things and analogies and my imagination feels slightly tricked by btrfs terminology;-) But I won't continue arguing. I have been walking through the mountains in a fog and I looked at a map and tried to make sense, until my friend rotated the map by 180 degrees and we realized how much we lost orientation... I guess you walked through the Btrfs forest a bit longer than me. Talking of forests - that's how I would call the whole "bunch of filesystems" directory structure on top of a pool because you can have many trees (filesystems) with their own roots in it (while a traditional block device has one only) Cheers Peter

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Re: OpenSuse with Btrfs (and limitations), Chris Mason describes Btrfs as "stable"
by Peter Ross 31 Oct '14

31 Oct '14

From: "Avi Miller" <avi.miller(a)gmail.com> >> On 30 Oct 2014, at 6:33 pm, Andrew McGlashan >> <andrew.mcglashan(a)affinityvision.com.au> wrote: >> >> Hi Avi, >> >> On 30/10/2014 12:33 PM, Avi Miller wrote: >>> FYI, while it's not the default filesystem, you can do the same on >>> Oracle Linux 6 and 7 when using btrfs as the root filesystem and >>> installing yum-plugin-fs-snapshot. btrfs is available in the default >>> Oracle Linux 7 installer as a filesystem option and if you want to >>> install OL6 with a btrfs root, use the UEK-based boot ISO and a network >>> install source. >> >> I believe the point was that it was "stable" subject to some serious >> omissions for things you would like to do .... particularly with >> "receive" being "totally disallowed" ... > > Yeah, not sure why SUSE chose to disallow those features. Most of those > (with the exception of the truly in-development stuff like RAID5/6) are > allowed and supported on Oracle Linux. We believe btrfs to be stable even > with those features active. The article also mentions some speed issues especially in relation to databases. I would be interested to know what Oracle says to databases on ZFS on Solaris - and Btrfs on Linux systems (the later not supported by Oracle yet, I believe, the first I am not sure about) I am using ZFS, and compare Btrfs to it (e.g. to use similar technologies on Linux machines). At the moment I stick with FreeBSD where I can (and can choose) because overall it makes some work easier for me while doing the same job in many cases. BTW: Oracle VM (A Xen based virtualization host) surprised me recently. The standard installation configured plain ext(ext3, I think but not sure) filesystems on a standalone server and later warned me about using it as the storage space for the VM disks (unfortunately I forgot exactly what it was, it was about "missing features" on it - and it was not the obvious about local storage which is not shared). (I have replaced it by something more bizarre so I cannot confirm details anymore, sorry) Sometimes I just write to share information;-) It was not meant to be a particular endorsement or the opposite. My gut feeling: Use Btrfs for "bread and butter" work and not if you need 101% reliability. With backups and mirrors and failovers (which may be in place anyway) you may be fine. It would work in my work environment, I reckon. I just do not get my head around why a subvolumes is called subvolume if it is (according to the FAQ) comparable to a file system - you just can have many of them in a pool. So please call it a "filesystem". It is not a volume at all. The pool is! But that may be too late to change. It is just a bit like calling a tube a wheel - but only on my bicycle. My wheel got a puncture. Can you replace it? So for "my bicycle" you have to relearn terminology - or I get a new wheel instead a new tube because you "misunderstood". Regards Peter

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Re: OpenSuse with Btrfs (and limitations), Chris Mason describes Btrfs as "stable"
by Peter Ross 31 Oct '14

31 Oct '14

From: "Avi Miller" <avi.miller(a)gmail.com> Hi, > >> On 31 Oct 2014, at 9:58 am, Peter Ross <Petros.Listig(a)fdrive.com.au> >> wrote: >> >> The article also mentions some speed issues especially in relation to >> databases. > >> The standard installation configured plain ext(ext3, I think but not >> sure) >> filesystems on a standalone server and later warned me about using it as >> the storage space for the VM disks (unfortunately I forgot exactly what >> it >> was, it was about "missing features" on it - and it was not the obvious >> about local storage which is not shared). > > Local storage on Oracle VM is ext3 because it only stores the Dom0 > software. The actual VM disk storage is either on OCFS2 (on FC/iSCSI > shared storage) or NFS. We require OCFS2 for its clustering capabilities. > You can use extra local storage as VM disk storage on Oracle VM 3.3 now > too, which is also formatted OCFS2. I expected this. I did not give the install a SAN disk and it took all available diskspace to format with ext3. Maybe I just forgot to click/unclick something during installation, not sure. I made a "dumb install" and thought: Let it take care of the details, don't change defaults. > Because it's a subvolume. :) It's not a filesystem, because subvolumes > appear in their parent volumes, but can also be mounted independently. <nit-picking> I never mount volumes, I mount filesystems. According to "Unix philosophy", it does not matter where filesystems are, you can mount them everywhere in a filesystem tree which has one root. And the btrfs default is mounting in the parent .. filesystem which is on the same pool. </nit-picking> Regards Peter

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