tiistai 25. tammikuuta 2011

Yum updates for Oracle Enterprise Linux 5

Oracle Enterprise Linux (variant of Red Hat Enterprise Linux) is one sure choice when it comes to Oracle supported operating systems. Unfortunately the distribution doesn't include all required packages for such elementary software like Database 11g. System tools can be used to fetch updates from Oracle - if you have support contract.
Oracle has published public Yum repository which everybody can configure and use. Anyway Yum is de facto standard of updating RHEL systems and OEL doesn't have any repository configured out of the box so here is what you should do (from http://public-yum.oracle.com):

Fetch Oracle public Yum repository definition file
cd /etc/yum.repos.d
wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el5.repo

Then set enable=1 for your system repositories in the fetched configuration file. Running OEL 5 update 5 they would be entries [el5_u5_base] and [ol5_u5_base].

Update your kernel
yum install kernel

Update Oracle required standard packages
yum install oracle-linux

Reboot your system
reboot


Oracle has also created oracle-validated RPM including common required packages and kernel settings. Oracle Support Note 728346.1 discusses this a bit more. To prepare your environment for Oracle software installations, issue
yum install oracle-validated


Then, if you are still later missing any required packages you can install them with command
yum install [required package]


Yum is superior to plain rpm as it fetches latest available RPMs for your system from the configured repositories, manages dependencies automatically and handles download & install.

tiistai 18. tammikuuta 2011

VMware Server 2.0.2 on 64 bit Fedora 14, Ubuntu 10.0.4

Having more than 4 gigs of memory for running Oracle Fusion Middleware is essential, and it requires 64 bit operating system. As lot of things are often run as VMware images there's a problem: VMware does not support latest 64 bit Linux releases. With some help it can be done. Radu Cotescu has written scripts that virtually solve the problem.

Fedora 14

I spent considerable amount of time trying to get VMware working on Fedora 13 but finally gave up as it seemed impossible, and didn't find anybody who would have gotten it working. Now Fedora 14 fortunately is working. Here's how:

Turn SELinux to disabled, if it's not already
vi /etc/sysconfig/selinux
and set following:

SELINUX=disabled
reboot

Update kernel and install needed packages:
yum update kernel
yum install kernel-devel-`uname -r` xinetd gcc gcc-c++ perl-devel perl-ExtUtils-Embed wget vim-enhanced

In your working directory, fetch & unpack Radu's script and VMware Server:
cd [working directory]
wget --no-check-certificate http://codebin.cotescu.com/vmware/vmware-server-2.0.x-kernel-2.6.3x-install.sh
tar xvfz raducotescu-vmware-server-linux-2.6.3x-kernel-release-1.5-1-g71f8b66.tar.gz
cp [location of VMware server]/VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.x86_64.tar.gz .

Run install & configure (which will fail until next step):
./vmware-server-2.0.x-kernel-2.6.3x-install.sh

Additionally Fedora needs one change to VMware configure script:
vi /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl
Around line 2702 replace

[...]
    if (-e $answer . '/linux/utsrelease.h') {
      $uts_headers .= "#include <linux/utsrelease.h>\n";
    }
[...]

with

[...]
    if (-e $answer . '/generated/utsrelease.h') {
      $uts_headers .= "#include <./generated/utsrelease.h> \n";
    }
[...]


Finally run configure:
/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl


Ubuntu 10.0.4

Ubuntu has similar process, but no need to edit VMware configure script. Just fetch & unpack Radu's script and VMware Server, run install and configure. (You might want to upgrade kernel before starting).
cd [working directory]
wget [http://codebin.cotescu.com/vmware/vmware-server-2.0.x-kernel-2.6.3x-install.sh]
tar xvzf raducotescu-vmware-server-linux-2.6.3x-kernel-592e882.tar.gz
cd raducotescu-vmware-server-linux-2.6.3x-kernel-592e882/
cp [location of VMware server]/VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.x86_64.tar.gz .
tar xvzf VMware-server-2.0.2-203138.x86_64.tar.gz
./vmware-server-2.0.x-kernel-2.6.3x-install.sh
..and follow install process, just press enter as default for everything.


Firefox 3.6.x Console plugin doesn't work

As of writing VMware Server console plugin does not work in Firefox 3.6.x, you will get "Cannot access virtual machine console. The request timed out" error. Solution is to use Internet Explorer or downgrade to Firefox 3.5.9 until it works.

Any version, locale and platform version of Firefox can be fetched through a www.mozilla.com URL, so for instance fetch 3.5.9 package from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.5.9&os=linux&lang=en-US. Then unpack and run.
cd [working directory]
tar jxpvf firefox-3.5.9.tar.bz2
./firefox/firefox
On Ubuntu you probably get "./run-mozilla.sh: 399: ./firefox-bin: not found" and need to install libraries to support running 32 bits applications:
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

Then just access http://127.0.0.1:8222 (or whatever port you specified) and VMware Server should be running smoothly.


Additional notes

Intel Virtualization Technology must be enabled to run 64 bit guest operating systems on Intel processors. On Lenovo T410 this seems to be disabled by default, so it needs to be enabled in BIOS setup.

Network proxy must be configured for yum and wget if you're installing inside corporate network.


Helpful links:

http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-install-vmware-server-2-on-a-fedora-14-desktop-kernel-2.6.35
http://www.marcosorfila.com/site/vmware-server-202-on-ubuntu-1004
http://radu.cotescu.com/how-to-install-vmware-server-2-0-x-on-ubuntu-9-10-karmic-koala/
http://www.marcosorfila.com/site/installing-older-versions-of-firefox-in-ubuntu-1004-64-bits/