L’ASM, le Clermont Foot et le SCBA ne manquent pas de partenariats. Il ya les rugbymen qui essaient de contrôler la météo, tandis que footballeurs et basketteurs font des packs communs à prix réduits.

En Auvergne, le temps peut changer rapidement, tout bon Bougnat qui se respecte le sait bien. Prudente, l’ASM a donc décidé de signer un accord d’une durée de quatre mois avec les sociétés Numtech et Weather Measures, filiales du Groupe SETH, portant sur un suivi météorologique ciblé du stade Marcel-Michelin. Différents capteurs seront placés à plusieurs endroits du stade afin de pouvoir effectuer des mesures, comme la température de l’air ou la température du sol, le tout avec des prévisions entre 3 et 5 jours.

Ensemble, le Stade clermontois basket Auvergne et le Clermont Foot ont décidé de remettre en place leur opération “Pack Foot + Basket”. Le but ? Proposer un billet pour un match au Stade Gabriel Montpied et un à la Maison des Sports pour le même prix qu’un billet unique. Ainsi, pour 10 euros en catégorie 1 et 15 euros en catégorie 2 vous pouvez assister à Stade clermontois-Fos sur Mer (vendredi 27/11 à 20 h à la Maison des Sports) et à Clermont Foot-Dijon (mardi 1/12 à 20 h au Stade Gabriel-Montpied). Les places sont disponibles aux guichets des deux clubs en prévente ou le soir de matchs.

J-B

Morgan Parra, ainsi que Yannick Jauzion sont ressortis blessés de la victoire de l’équipe de France de rugby contre les Samoa samedi soir. Parra se plaint de douleurs aux ischio-jambiers, tandis que Jauzion a mal à une cuisse. Les deux joueurs passeront des examens ce dimanche pour connaître la nature exacte de leurs blessures.

Week-end difficile pour l'ASM

Difficile journée pour les clubs de Clermont. Trois matchs et trois défaites… Heureusement que ce n’est pas tous les week-ends comme ça.

 

Traumatisé par la coupe. Ca devient une habitude. Tous les ans, les footballeurs du Clermont Foot rendent les armes face à un club de division inférieur. Cette fois les hommes de Michel der Zakarian se sont inclinés aux tirs au but, face à Yzeure, club de CFA, lors du septième tour de la coupe de France. Pourtant tout avait bien commencé pour les clermontois. Benatia ouvrait le score dès le 36e, mais un relâchement de la défense en début de deuxième période permettait à Yzeure de revenir à la marque par Boulate à la 49e. Galvanisé par cette égalisation, les Yzeuriens multipliaient les frappes au but. Mais Bouysse multipliait les parades. Le gardien Rouge et Bleu est même sauvait par son poteau sur un ultime coup-franc à la fin du temps réglementaire. S’en suive la prolongation qui ne donnera rien. Le Clermont Foot entame la séance des tirs au but confiant. Pour sûr, au cours de son histoire, le club n’avait jamais perdu une seule séance en coupes nationales. Seulement, la frappe du clermontois Chaussidière échoue sur la barre, tandis que Ougna convertissait le sien et envoyait son équipe au prochain tour (4 tab à 3). A noter que seulement deux clubs représenteront l’Auvergne au 8ème tour de la coupe de France. Thiers (CFA 2) s’est imposé (6-1) à Saint-Germain-des-Fossés (PH) et accompagnera Yzeure. Tandis que Montluçon (CFA) a perdu (0-0, 2 tab 4) face à Nevers (CFA 2), et Cholet (CFA 2)a sorti Moulins (Nat) (3-2).

Huit défaites en neuf matchs. Le Stade Clermontois basket Auvergne a été encore défait en championnat de Pro B. Cette fois, c’est Brest qui a largement corrigé les hommes de Régis Racine 98-80. Une défaite qui plonge un peu plus les clermontois dans les bas fonds du classement de Pro B. Avec une seule petite victoire pour huit défaites, le SCAB est bon dernier.

Un truc qui cloche. Franchement cette défaite fait tache. Alors que l’ASM a mené tous le match, un essai de Couet-Lannes à la sirène a permis à Biarritz de repartir du Marcel-Michelin avec la victoire (13-16). En pagaille d’internationaux n’étaient pas là, pourtant un autre élément s’était invité au stade : le vent. En première période, il était du bon côté. Du côté Jaune et Bleu. Deux bourrasque détournaient joliment deux pénalités du maitre à jouer basque, Dimitri Yaschvili. Assez pour mettre l’ASM en confiance et sur une relance de Yaschvili, Cudmore contre, passe à Wepener, puis James et enfin Baby qui va aplatir le cuir. James- titulaire surprise – transforme et à la 26e l’ASM mène 7-0. Une pénalité de chaque côté et un carton jaune pour Floch et les 30 acteurs retournent au vestiaire sur une marque flatteuse de 10-3 pour les Jaunards. En seconde période, entre pesée dévastatrice de Karmichael Hunt et jeu au pied retrouvé de Yaschvili, les deux équipes se retrouvent à la 70e avec un score de 13 à 9 pour l’ASM. A la 75e Baby loupe la pénalité de la gagne. Car cinq minutes plus tard, sur une touche, le BO part au large. Peyrelongue fait sauter pour Bolakoro qui pénètre la défense et passe à Couet-Lannes qui n’a plus qu’à plonger dans l’en-but (13-14). AL sirène retentie, Yaschvili transforme le BO signe le hold-up de l’année en s’imposant 13-16. Première défaite de la saison pour les Jaune et Bleu qui continue sur leur mauvaise série. Nul doute que Vern Cotter a dû faire trembler les murs des vestiaires du Marcel-Michelin.

J-B

In the previous post, I have tried to explain how to install Grid Infrastructure on your VirtualBox instance. In this post, before moving to the next post in which I will be explaining RDBMS 11g Release 2 configuration, I wish to look at a new tool shipped with Grid Infrastructure, namely ASMCA(ASM Configuration Assistant).

We will not be going deep with ASMCA in this post but rather it will be just like a first contact with aliens. ASMCA is a very capable and accompanying tool with the new capabilities of ASM like ADVM or ACFS.

Starting with ASMCA

	Starting ASMCA is simple. Go to your GRID_HOME set ORACLE_SID to +ASM and run asmca binary. [oracle@localhost ~]$ export ORACLE_HOME =/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/grid [oracle@localhost ~]$ export ORACLE_SID = +ASM [oracle@localhost ~]$ $ORACLE_HOME/bin/asmca   As you will notice there is already one disk group namely DATA listed under Disk Gruops pane. This is the one created during Grid Infrastructure installation. Now click on Create to create our FRA diskgroup.
	As you click on Create button a new dialog to create your new disk group will appear.  Enter FRA for Disk Group Name textbox. Choose External(None) radio button to choose external ASM redundancy. Notice that not all disks (asm disks) are available for your use (this controlled by two radio buttons in Select Member Disks pane) Select all three disks for FRA. Now click on Show Advanced Options button to see RDBMS and ASM compatibilities.
	Notice that ASM and Database Compatibility fields are both set to 11.2.0.0.0 This means ASM instance will allow you to use all new features introduced in 11.2 for this diskgroup but the minimum RDMS instance can use this diskgroup should be in 11.2 release. Click on Hide Advance Options button and then OK to complete diskgroup creation.
	ASM will do the necessary initializations to create FRA diskgroup and switch back to initial screen after it is done.
	As you see FRA is created and mounted by your ASM instance.
	Now right click on your DATA diskgroup. In the list ASMCA allows you to Add Disks into the diskgroup Edit Attributes of the diskgroup Manage Templates for the diskgroup Mount/Dismount the diskgroup Drop the diskgroup Choose Edit Attributes from the list to see attributes of DATA diskgroup.
	As you see ASMCA enables the attribute fields those are possible to modify and disables the static ones (the ones fixed in creation of diskgroup). Click X to close this window.
	Click on Exit button to leave ASMCA.

ASMCA is the youngest member of Oracle *CA family. It seems that ASM users will be using it actively for management by the new features in 11g Release 2. Such as,

• ASM Volume (ADVM) Management
• ASM File System (ACFS) Management
• Read-only snapshot management

Continuing our seven-part blog mini-series entitled “7 Things You Need to Know About Oracle 11gR2″, Integra Senior DBA Jason Buchanan, recently one of just twelve people from around the world hand-picked by Oracle to participate in the Oracle 11gR2 final beta, offers his thoughts on the CRS to Grid transition in Oracle 11gR2:

Oracle 11g Release 2 provides a streamlined upgrade solution for the database and supportive products such as CRS and ASM. It’s important to take into consideration some of the changes in 11.2, specifically the location of where CRS and ASM binaries are located.

For the most part, upgrading the database and database binaries is much the same as upgrading previous releases – but CRS is different.

CRS isn’t really CRS anymore, either. It is now the Oracle Grid Infrastructure which is comprised of CRS and ASM, rolled into a single Oracle home. An existing CRS installation is upgraded by creating and installing to a new Grid Infrastructure home. From a migration/upgrade perspective this implies the requirement of approximately 4GB of storage for the Grid Infrastructure home. The old CRS home can eventually be archived or deleted.

The CRS to Grid upgrade procedure is streamlined and relatively worry-free – I have done this dozens of times this year and have not experienced upgrade problems except for problems that were pre-existing misconfigurations by the client. Network issues such as incorrect subnet masks, static routes, MTU size mismatch, etc. are usually caused by improper setup and not an Oracle software problem.

Ideally, the best upgrade method from 11.1 to 11.2 is in the form of a migration rather than an in-place upgrade. This is the quickest path to upgrading not only the database but the hardware, storage and OS, and a means to clean out Oracle homes with several patch levels applied.

Please check back soon for Jason’s next entry in this blog series: “Top 5 Tips for Reducing TCO with Oracle 11gR2″.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments here, or on our Facebook discussion board!

Thanks!

Eric Heine
Vice President
Integra Technology Consulting

781-890-0070
eheine at integratc dot com

www.integratc.com

Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/IntegraTC

Floch et Rougerie devraient retrouver leur place respective

Un mois que les joueurs de l’ASM n’ont plus goûté à la victoire. C’est vrai que dit comme cela, la victoire dans le match de samedi (20 h 30 au Stade Marcel-Michelin et sur Canal+ Sport) contre Biarritz devient impérative. Malgré l’absence de nombreux internationaux (voir ci-dessous), le coach Vern Cotter pourra compter sur une équipe très compétitive.

Même si la première ligne est décimée (Ledesma, Domingo et Sclezo absents), l’entraîneur Néo-zélandais débutera avec Faure, Wepner et Zirakashvili. Du lourd… Derrière eux, Privat, Pierre, Audebert, Vermeulen et Cudmore compléteront le pack des Jaune et Bleu. À l’arrière, par contre, il y a plus d’incertitudes. Senio et Lavéa, longtemps incertains, devraient composer la charnière.

Chez les trois quart, c’est un peu le jeu des chaises musicales. Malzieu occupera son poste à l’aile, alors que de l’autre côté, Aurélien Rougerie retrouvera sa place de prédilection. Au centre, la charnière devrait être composée de Baby et Fofana (à moins que Russell se remette de sa blessure), alors que Floch devrait prendre place en 15.

À noter que Gavin Williams, exempté de match contre la France avec les Samoa devrait prendre place sur le banc samedi. À ses côté on verra peut-être Naps Nalaga, lui aussi de retour de sélection pour une blessure au sternum.

Composition probable : Faure, Wepner, Zirakashvili – Privat, Pierre – Audebert, Vermeulen, Cudmore – Senio, Lavéa – Malzieu, Baby, Fofana (ou Russell), Rougerie – Floch.

J-B

Benoit Baby et Aurelien Rougerie seront les fers de lance de l'ASM

Alors que le  XV de France affrontera les Samoa samedi, le Top 14 ne sera pas en congés. Cette 13e journée réserve même quelques chocs très alléchants comme un Castres (3e) Toulouse (2e), un Racing-Metro (8e) Stade Français (5e) ou même un Clermont (4e) Biarritz (7e). De vrais chocs… sans les internationaux…

Cinq victoires d’affilés et Biarritz était redevenu un prétendant au bouclier de Brennus. Seulement voilà, Toulouse et Montauban sont passés par là et ces deux défaites de rang ont filé un coup au moral des Basques. Des Basques d’ailleurs pas très bondissants à l’extérieur avec quatre défaites en cinq déplacements, mais qui peuvent compter sur la plupart de leurs hommes forts puisque le sélectionneur Marc Lievremont a laissé à la maison le demi de mêlée Dimitri Yachvili ainsi que  le deuxième Jérôme Thion. Toutefois, sept joueurs du Bo, dont les Français Barcella, Harinordoquy et Traille et l’américain Takudzwa Ngwenya joueront avec leur selection.

Côté clermontois, malgré les 10 absences liées aux sélections, on pourra compter sur Rougerie, Malzieu et Floch, non retenus par Marc Lièvremont. Les Jaune et Bleu abordent ce match le couteau entre les dents, puisque les hommes de Vern Cotter n’ont plus gagné en championnat depuis le 3 octobre dernier. A noter qu’initialement forfait, Brock James, Kevin Senio et Brent Russel ont été déclaré bon pour le service par le staff médical. Match samedi au Marcel-Michelin à 20 h 30.

Le groupe clermontois :

Avants : Debaty, Faure, Ric, Zirakashvili, Cabello, Wepener, Cudmore, Jacquet, Pierre, Privat, Samson, Audebert, Vermeulen.

Arrières : Radosavljevic, K. Senio, James, Lavea, Baby, Fofana, Malzieu, Rougerie, Russell, Floch.

J-B

10.101.0.4 : orchid.active-system.com

• ssl.conf : httpsserverproxy: /local/areas => /media/local/areas
• httpd.conf: /reporting1 => https://reporting1.yllio.com

10.101.0.5:reporting1.yahoo.com

• httpd.conf : serverroot = /home/media/client

Aseară a avut loc a nuştiucâta ediţie de Maratonul Publicităţii la ISE, unde nimeni nu a luat-o la fugă, s-a stat şi s-a privit la reclame, multe reclame, organizat de studentii de la secţia de marketing, ASM la o adica.

În deschidere Călin Crainic, Creative Director la Vitrina,  ne vorbeşte despre relaţia dintre nenea Brand şi nenea Consumator, sau mai bine zis tanti Consumator, deoarece nenea Brand şi-o trage cu tanti Consumator ca s-o facă clienta lui. Călin a folosit ca întotdeauna un limbaj care l-ar fi făcut şi pe ultimul prost să înţeleagă ce vrea să zică, cu toate că unii şi-au exprimat indignarea faţă de vocabularul lui şi despre metodele sale de exemplificare… nimeni nu i-a zis asta în faţă.

Au urmat apoi serii de reclame din anii ‘50, ‘60, ‘70,’80,’90 şi anii 2000. Diferenţa dintre decenii se vede clar, şi nu mă refer aici la stilul sau calitatea materialelor, fie ele color sau alb-negru, ci la mesajul transmis de ele.

În anii ‘50-’60 erau la modă mesajele transmise pe ritm de melodie, Cosmote cu Mirela lor cred că asta face, şi mă scoate din sărite!

Organizarea a fost bună, s-a lăsat şi cu un concurs, nu de cultură generală, ci mai mult de noroc, doar îţi scriai numele pe o foaie, îl aruncai într-o cutie şi spunea de 3 ori Tatăl Nostru, cu speranţa că numele tău va fi cel extras, şi câştigai o carte de la nu ştiu ce editură, în engleză.

Mai nou sunt în PRime Cluj, vedem ce o să fie, sper să fie o experienţă bună pentru mine şi să am prilejiul de a îi ajuta şi pe ceilalţi.  Imediat merg la sedinţă să punem ţara la cale.

Ne mai vorbim

That’s right, they are addressing a relevant student issue in what appears to be a competent way.

The Associated Students of Madison’s Affordable Textbook Campaign presented a resolution addressing campus textbook policies to the Faculty Senate’s University Committee Monday.

ATC made several recommendations to the committee. They suggested professors provide book lists at least one month before classes start, use new editions of textbooks only when necessary and become educated about alternative textbook options, such as open source and electronic options.

All of these are very good ideas, and well overdue. A couple of thoughts:

1. UW-Lacrosse has a rental system in place in which students pay, I believe, something like $75 at the beginning of the semester to rent all the books they need for that semester. I realize this isn’t a viable option for our entire campus, but why not try to get some funding to do this for huge gateway courses like Chem 103, etc. ? This would also help deal with the problem of publishers no longer publishing older editions. We would already have  as many books as needed, so we wouldn’t have to go back to buy more in large numbers.

2. Bring the fight to freshman. If this business about getting book lists earlier is going to have any effect, people have to know how this helps them. Freshman come in and the bookstore is easy and obvious. After a few years some students break out of this habit, but most do not. An aspect aimed at teaching incoming freshman, or more importantly their parents, how to find cheap textbooks online, and how much less expensive they are, would be huge.

Any thoughts?

I have been working a lot with EUS lately at a big customer. My personal account is able to login to databases (EUS) and also on to OEL (OAS4OS). This combined with some chown/chmod commands on OEL enables me to do my job with my personal account.

Since this customers also uses ASM, I figured I would like to use my personal account for asmcmd too. First I tested the process with a local account, baby steps usually works best for me. I created an account jhl

# useradd -g asmadmin -G dba jhl

Next i su’d to jhl and tested the procedure:

$ id
uid=10238(jhl) gid=4007(asmadmin) groups=4006(dba),4007(asmadmin)

$ . oraenv
ORACLE_SID = [+ASM1] ? +ASM1
The Oracle base for ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/asm_200 is /u01/app/oracle

$ asmcmd
ASMCMD> ls

This looks promising, all needed to be done next was repeating the steps only now with an account from the OID. First I had to add the group to the OID, here’s the ldif I used:

cn=asmadmin,cn=groups,dc=some_company,dc=nl
uniquemember=cn=landlustjh,cn=users,dc=some_company,dc=nl
owner=cn=orcladmin,cn=users, dc=some_company,dc=nl
objectclass=top
objectclass=groupOfUniqueNames
objectclass=orclGroup
objectclass=posixgroup
cn=asmdba
orclisvisible=true
displayname=asmadmin
description=asmadmin
gidnumber=1007

As you can see in the ldif, I added my personal account to the asmadmin group. After adding the group to the OID I performed a quick check to see if all went according to plan:

$ id
uid=10217(LandlustJH) gid=1006(dba) groups=1006(dba),1007(asmadmin),1010(remotelogin),1011(oraclemembers),1012(rootmembers)

Now te login:

$ asmcmd
ORA-01031: insufficient privileges (DBD ERROR: OCISessionBegin)
ASMCMD-08103: failed to connect to ASM; ASMCMD running in non-connected mode
ASMCMD>

Aiks? Since I’m not that stupid, I started tracing asmcmd:

$ export DBI_TRACE=1

$ asmcmd
    -> DBI->connect(dbi:Oracle:, , ****, HASH(0xd547e0))
    -> DBI->install_driver(Oracle) for linux perl=5.008003 pid=6683 ruid=10217 euid=10217
       install_driver: DBD::Oracle version 1.15 loaded from /u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/asm_202//perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.3/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/DBD/Oracle.pm
    <- install_driver= DBI::dr=HASH(0×7c28c0)
       ERROR: 1034 ‘ORA-01034: ORACLE not available
ORA-27101: shared memory realm does not exist
Linux-x86_64 Error: 2: No such file or directory (DBD ERROR: OCISessionBegin)’
    <- DESTROY= undef at DBI.pm line 591
       DBI connect(”,”,…) failed: ORA-01034: ORACLE not available
ORA-27101: shared memory realm does not exist
Linux-x86_64 Error: 2: No such file or directory (DBD ERROR: OCISessionBegin)
ORA-01034: ORACLE not available
ORA-27101: shared memory realm does not exist
Linux-x86_64 Error: 2: No such file or directory (DBD ERROR: OCISessionBegin)
ASMCMD-08103: failed to connect to ASM; ASMCMD running in non-connected mode

The tracing and some MOS-ing (MOS actually works for me!) learned me that I forgot to set my environment. No rocket science to far. Let’s retry:

$ . oraenv
ORACLE_SID = [+ASM1] ? +ASM1
The Oracle base for ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/asm_200 is /u01/app/oracle

$ asmcmd
    -> DBI->connect(dbi:Oracle:, , ****, HASH(0xd53960))
    -> DBI->install_driver(Oracle) for linux perl=5.008003 pid=3186 ruid=10217 euid=10217
       install_driver: DBD::Oracle version 1.15 loaded from /u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/asm_200/perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.3/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/DBD/Oracle.pm
    <- install_driver= DBI::dr=HASH(0×7c1e70)
       ERROR: 12547 ‘ORA-12547: TNS:lost contact (DBD ERROR: OCIServerAttach)’
    <- DESTROY= undef at DBI.pm line 591
       DBI connect(”,”,…) failed: ORA-12547: TNS:lost contact (DBD ERROR: OCIServerAttach)
ORA-12547: TNS:lost contact (DBD ERROR: OCIServerAttach)
ASMCMD-08103: failed to connect to ASM; ASMCMD running in non-connected mode

ORA-12547 was NOT wat I was expecting at all. Even more MOS-ing later I discovered the privileges on the oracle binary were not set correctly. This could be fixed easily

oracle$ chmod 6751 $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oracle

and then yet another try (now with the proper environment):

$ asmcmd
    -> DBI->connect(dbi:Oracle:, , ****, HASH(0xd53990))
    -> DBI->install_driver(Oracle) for linux perl=5.008003 pid=31109 ruid=10217 euid=10217
       install_driver: DBD::Oracle version 1.15 loaded from /u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/asm_200/perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.3/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/DBD/Oracle.pm
    <- install_driver= DBI::dr=HASH(0×7c1ec0)
       ERROR: 1031 ‘ORA-01031: insufficient privileges (DBD ERROR: OCISessionBegin)’
    <- DESTROY= undef at DBI.pm line 591
       DBI connect(”,”,…) failed: ORA-01031: insufficient privileges (DBD ERROR: OCISessionBegin)
ORA-01031: insufficient privileges (DBD ERROR: OCISessionBegin)
ASMCMD-08103: failed to connect to ASM; ASMCMD running in non-connected mode

ORA-01031? Now how about that? Usually that’s caused by password file trouble:

SQL> select * from v$pwfile_users;

USERNAME         SYSDBA          SYSOPER         SYSASM
—————- ————— ————— —————
SYS              TRUE            TRUE            FALSE
SQL> grant sysasm to sys;

Grant succeeded.
SQL> select * from v$pwfile_users;

USERNAME        SYSDBA          SYSOPER         SYSASM
————— ————— ————— —————
SYS             TRUE            TRUE            TRUE

Now lets’ try again:

$ asmcmd
    -> DBI->connect(dbi:Oracle:, , ****, HASH(0xd539b0))
    -> DBI->install_driver(Oracle) for linux perl=5.008003 pid=4315 ruid=10217 euid=10217
       install_driver: DBD::Oracle version 1.15 loaded from /u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/asm_200/perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.3/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/DBD/Oracle.pm
    <- install_driver= DBI::dr=HASH(0×7c23c0)
       ERROR: 1031 ‘ORA-01031: insufficient privileges (DBD ERROR: OCISessionBegin)’
    <- DESTROY= undef at DBI.pm line 591
       DBI connect(”,”,…) failed: ORA-01031: insufficient privileges (DBD ERROR: OCISessionBegin)
ORA-01031: insufficient privileges (DBD ERROR: OCISessionBegin)
ASMCMD-08103: failed to connect to ASM; ASMCMD running in non-connected mode

 Still no jackpot, but guess what:

$ asmcmd -a sysdba
    -> DBI->connect(dbi:Oracle:, , ****, HASH(0xd539b0))
    -> DBI->install_driver(Oracle) for linux perl=5.008003 pid=4351 ruid=10217 euid=10217
       install_driver: DBD::Oracle version 1.15 loaded from /u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/asm_200/perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.3/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/DBD/Oracle.pm
    <- install_driver= DBI::dr=HASH(0×7c23c0)
1   <- prepare(‘
                SELECT SYS_CONTEXT(‘userenv’,’session_user’) FROM DUAL
            ‘ undef)= DBI::st=HASH(0×100a6e0) at Oracle.pm line 295
    <- selectrow_array(‘
                SELECT SYS_CONTEXT(‘userenv’,’session_user’) FROM DUAL
            ‘)= ‘SYS’ at Oracle.pm line 295
$h->{‘ora_session_mode’}=2 ignored for invalid driver-specific attribute
    <- connect= DBI::db=HASH(0xfa15d0)
1   <- FETCH(‘NAME’)= [ 'VALUE' ] at asmcmdshare.pm line 2324
1   <- fetch= [ 'asm' ] row1 at asmcmdshare.pm line 2324
1   <- FETCH(‘NAME’)= [ 'VERSION' ] at asmcmdshare.pm line 2324
1   <- fetch= [ '11.1.0.7.0' ] row1 at asmcmdshare.pm line 2324
ASMCMD>

hey joe, what do you know? I only found this behaviour once, when the osdba group was not called dba. I remember that I had to check some spec file and recompile ioracle:

cat $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib/config.c
#define SS_DBA_GRP “dba”
#define SS_OPER_GRP “dba”
#define SS_ASM_GRP “asmadmin”

char *ss_dba_grp[] = {SS_DBA_GRP, SS_OPER_GRP, SS_ASM_GRP};

Sadly enough in this case the default group name is asmadmin, so a recompile will not help me out. The only thing left is to trace the sqlnet session from asmcmd to the database back to OID, but somehow I have a feeling this will not help me out. Anyway, I’m done for the day. Maybe I can find a solution tomorrow. Any help is appreciated.

Last Friday we started a task to move our local standby database from FC to FATA disks. The goal is to reduce costs as this standby database is only used to refresh QA/DEV environments and not as a proper DR.

We have three databases on this server:

1.- prod1 – local standby database

2.- whqaint – QA Integration database

3.- whtest – test database (50GB size)

The first two (prod1 and whqaint) are a copy of our production database (1.6TB) running on EVA. Whtest was created as a proof of concept (POC) for some testing.

All of them run on 10.2.0.4 and ASM, and all of them have different diskgroups on ASM (data, datb, dat_c).

We started by shutting down all three database, the asm and asmlib.

After the snap was done and the server restarted (to refresh the SCSi bus) I started asmlib.

All looked ok as all disk where listed but, when I queried one of the disk, is when all started to go wrong:

[root@xxxxxxxx init.d]# ./oracleasm querydisk DATA1
Disk “DATA1″ is labeled for disk “DATA4″

Well,  something was wrong, but did not know what. The first call was to stop asmlib, disable asmlib, enable asmlib, start asmlib and perform a scandisk.

After these steps were done, the label matched with the Disk. Also a quick check on /dev/oracleasm/disks showed all disks, so far so good.

Once I started the asm, is when I knew it will be a long day:

ORA-15032: not all alterations performed
ORA-15063: ASM discovered an insufficient number of disks for diskgroup “FRB”
ORA-15063: ASM discovered an insufficient number of disks for diskgroup “FRA”
ORA-15063: ASM discovered an insufficient number of disks for diskgroup “FRA_C”
ORA-15063: ASM discovered an insufficient number of disks for diskgroup “DATB”
ORA-15063: ASM discovered an insufficient number of disks for diskgroup “DATA”
ORA-15063: ASM discovered an insufficient number of disks for diskgroup “DATA_C”
ORA-15063: ASM discovered an insufficient number of disks for diskgroup “CTRLLOG”
ORA-15063: ASM discovered an insufficient number of disks for diskgroup “CTRLLGG”
ORA-15063: ASM discovered an insufficient number of disks for diskgroup “CNTRL_C”

After speaking with the Storage Managed and the SA, all of them confirmed the LUNs were presented and all should be good.

I had a list of the devices before and after the snap, so I could see that it was not the same, the WWIDs were also different, meaning oracleasm should have scanned and recognized the new devices, but it was not the case.

Once thing we have to remember is that, for some reason, oracleasm LVM volumnes.

Oracleasm scans /proc/partitions table to detect block devices with ASM headers.

LVM managed devices are presented to the kernel as /dev/mapper/*, while /proc/partitions are /dev/dm-*

This was the first problem. The good thing is that by scanning those disk again, we managed to fix one of the problems:

[root@xxxxxxxx init.d]# ./oracleasm querydisk data1
Disk “DATA1″ is a valid ASM disk

At this point the only way forward I could think of was reinstalling asmlib, something I did not feel comfortable.

I had a look to our ASM spfile:

*.asm_diskgroups=’DATA’,'FRA’,'CTRLLOG’,'CTRLLGG’,'DATB’,'FRB’,'DATA_C’,'CNTRL_C’,'FRA_C’
*.asm_diskstring=’/dev/oracleasm/disks/’

As we were having problems identifying disks on asm_diskgroups, I decided to comment all three entries and start asm. ASM started without problems (as expected).

I then followed a try-and-error approach. Basically, leave asm_diskstring and +ASM.asm_diskgroups commented, create a copy of asm_diskgroups with only one diskgroup (DATA):

#*.asm_diskgroups=’DATA’,'FRA’,'CTRLLOG’,'CTRLLGG’,'DATB’,'FRB’,'DATA_C’,'CNTRL_C’,'FRA_C’

*.asm_diskgroups=’DATA’

#*.asm_diskstring=’/dev/oracleasm/disks/’
And try to start ASM again. And it worked!

To cut a long story short… I kept adding diskgroups until I found the ones failing (DATA_C, CNTRL_C and FRA_C)

Those diskgroups are the ones we created with local disks and, by default, they are mapped as /dev/dm-* (remember when I mentioned oracleasm only scans /proc/partitions and does not scan /dev/dm-*…).

Removing those diskgroups from the init+ASM.ora file allowed us to start both databases (local scandby and qaint).

Devices can be mounted in different ways, Linux (not sure about other platforms) adds those entries to /dev/dm-* by default…

Something to remember ….

“Bingo for Breast Cancer” will take place at the University of New Mexico Student Union Building in Ballroom B. Doors will open at 6:00 p.m. and the first numbers will be called at 6:30 p.m. on November 19th, 2009. The event will last  aproximately 3 hours when the biggest prize will be given away.

For more info visit: bingoforbreastcancer.info

• Starbucks giftbaskets
• Applebees giftcard
• Coaches giftcard
• Cheese and Coffee giftcard
• Mark Pardo giftcards
• Beeps vintage teapot
• Best Buy iPod nano
• The Herb Store giftcard
• El Patio giftcard
• Quarters giftcard
• Sunflower market giftbaskets
• Albuquerque Isotopes tickets
• Trombinos giftcard
• Autographed Lobo mens and womens basketballs
• Autographed Lobo baseball
• Bike Coop waterbottles and t-shirts
• Il Viccino giftcard
• Sipapu lift tickets
• Red Wings crocs
• Lady Footlocker giftcard
• Bumblebees Baja Grill giftcard
• Which Wich lunch giftcard
• IHOP giftcards
• Sunglasses
• Landry’s coupons
• Artichioke Cafe giftcard
• Farina Pizzeria giftcard
• Ace Carpet Care carpet cleaning
• Bettys Day Spa massages
• Golf lesson

Continuing our seven-part blog mini-series entitled “7 Things You Need to Know About Oracle 11gR2″, Integra Senior DBA Jason Buchanan, recently one of just twelve people from around the world hand-picked by Oracle to participate in the Oracle 11gR2 final beta, offers his thoughts on how to streamline Oracle 11gR2 installation through proper storage planning and configuration:

My first thoughts about streamlining an 11gR2 install were related to initial preparation work, some basic planning ideas and similar. But reflecting upon the last 12 months of various engagements my thoughts became focused on storage. The storage infrastructure is the lifeblood of any database environment but is usually the most neglected component.

Exadata is an excellent way to thwart storage infrastructure deficiencies but it’s certainly possible to build a robust storage solution on your own. And you should do so — and it should be the best you can afford. A giant SMP system does not deliver if it waits on disk.

Every client I’ve worked with over the past three years has expressed dissatisfaction in the performance of their storage infrastructure – either the volumes were created with too few spindles, undersized overall capacity, or connected to the host with low throughput interfaces. Database upgrades are a golden opportunity to petition upper management for improved storage (secretly, they’re expecting your request anyway). Review the IO statistics for your database environments, look for interfaces, volumes, spindles and network paths that are at or exceeding 50% utilization during peak usage periods.

Oracle Enterprise Manager provides a lot of useful information about disk activity, IOPS and access patterns – this information can help you determine where to augment your storage capacity and how to provision it for optimal performance. Oracle ASM greatly reduces the overhead of managing lots of individual LUNs or volumes while providing a flexible management solution for 10 or 1,000 disks.

I realize this is preaching to the choir for many DBAs, but good storage is key to a productive business and calm work environment.

Please check back soon for Jason’s next entry in this blog series: “Understanding the CRS to Grid Transition in Oracle 11gR2″.

Also, thanks to all who joined Integra CTO Allan Edwards last Tuesday, November 3, 2009 for our webcast entitled “Safe Passage to Oracle 11g: Lessons from Recent Upgrades“. In this important webcast, Allan shared critical lessons learned during a number of recent real-world 11g upgrade projects, which we believe made the difference between success and failure. If you missed the webcast, a full recording and set of accompanying slides will be available for download from our website within a day or two. Please check our blog or Facebook page later this week for the download link.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments here, or on our Facebook discussion board!

Thanks!

Eric Heine
Vice President
Integra Technology Consulting

781-890-0070
eheine at integratc dot com

www.integratc.com

Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/IntegraTC

Los chicos de Evasive ya tienen listo el kit que han desarrollado conjuntamente con Voltex japan para su S2000, hemos puesto algunos post anteriores sobre el desarrollo de este kit, y porfin podemos verlo terminado.

El kit esta compuesto por :
-Paragolpes delantero en 3 piezas con fondo plano de carbono
-Taloneras
-Difusor trasero de carbono

El coche adicionalmente se le ha montado Capot y overfenders traseros de ASM, asi como un aleron de Voltex GT, las aletas delanteras han sido ensanchadas aunque no se si sobre la aleta original o se ha escogido las aletas de Seibon que son 15mm mas anchas.

En caso de estar interesados en este material, poneros en contacto con nosotros.

Os dejo unas fotos 

Wissen Sie immer genau, wo Sie eine bestimmte gesendete oder empfangene E-Mail abgelegt haben? Haben Sie die Möglichkeit, eine Übersicht Ihrer E-Mails nach Schlüsselwörtern zu erstellen? Sichert Ihr E-Mail-Server alle eingehenden und ausgehenden Mails automatisch, sicher und vertraulich?

Mit dem MDaemon Archive Server (ein Plugin für den MDaemon Mailserver) wissen Sie immer genau, wo jede einzelne Ihrer E-Mails zu finden ist. Sie können Nachrichten problemlos wiederherstellen und ein Verlust einzelner Nachrichten unter den Tausenden in Ihrem Archiv ist unmöglich.

Mit der neuen Version 2.9 bietet der MDaemon Archive Server zahlreiche Neuerungen:

• Einfache Sicherung und Wiederherstellung der Konfiguration
• Erweiterte Suchfunktionen für die Suche nach Empfängeradressen
• Automatisiertes, größenabhängiges Löschen von Anhängen
• Aktivierung und Deaktivierung des Lizenzschlüssels über die Web-Oberfläche

Weiterführende Informationen zum Produkt sowie eine kostenlose Testversion finden Sie hier.

In Oracle 11g Release 2 you will find that things have changed even for single instance database installation. I will try to illustrate in this series of posts how to install a single instance Oracle 11g Release 2 database to your Linux machines.

As the first part of our installation series, we will start by installing brand new Grid Infrastructure which you might think to be a fancy name for CRS+ASM but you will find out later that it is a bit more.

VirtualBox Configuration

Here is the sufficient VirtualBox virtual hardware configuration for your 11g Release 2 playground (Keep in mind that this is the bare minimum configuration to have a painless installation. More resource is obviously better):

Hardware	Amount	Description
Memory	512MB	Although minimum memory requirement for Oracle 11g Release 2 in a real production environment is documented to be 1024M, for all practical requirements of your playground 512MB will be sufficient.
Root Disk	16GB	16 GB root disk for OS+SWAP+Oracle Binary space will be sufficient
ASM Disks	6×2GB SCSI Disks	We will be doing an ASM based installation so 6 disks over SCSI interface will be enough to simulate a real life experience with ASM.

You are now ready to start your VirtualBox for Oracle 11g Release 2 installation.

Install Grid Infrastructure

Pre-work

There are a few important tasks in OS level we should complete before starting grid infrastructure installation.

Physical Partition Creation

The first thing is to create physical partitions over your virtual SCSI devices. Actually this is not crucial for ASM installation because ASM can use physical disk as a whole without any partition. However if you wish to create ASMLIB you will need those partitions.

Changing ASM devices ownership to oracle

Physical partitions we have created are owned by root. They should be changed to be owned by ASM user (oracle in our case) in order to make them visible for ASM discovery.

In order to make those changes permanent (if you reboot the system Linux will set all device owners back to root otherwise) you should create a udev permission file

Ensure /dev/shm is sufficiently sized

You should ensure that /dev/shm is minimum 256MB for a successful ASM installation (and 512-750M for RDBMS installation) with MEMORY_TARGET parameter.

You can resize tempfs online by using

In order to make this mount operation persistent you should modify the tempfs line in /etc/fstab file as follows:

Notice that although we have VirtualBox instance with 512M memory, Linux allows us to mount tempfs with a size of 750M. This most probably due to lazy allocation of memory over tempfs.

Create installation directory and set its ownership

Final step is to create our software directory and set the required ownership to it.

Installation

	[oracle@localhost ~]$ unzip linux_11gR2_grid.zip [oracle@localhost ~]$ cd grid [oracle@localhost grid]$ ./runInstaller
	Choose Install and Configure Grid Infrastructure for a Standalone Server option and click on Next > button.
	Set Selected Language language to English and click on Next > button.
	Next step is to perform ASM configuration for your grid. Choose External as the redundancy of DATA diskgroup. Now click on Change Discovery Path… button to define asm_diskstring parameter.
	Set Disk Discovery Path to /dev/sd?1 and click on OK
	Since /dev/sd?1 matches all six SCSI partitions and they are not members of any other diskgroup, installer will list all of them as Candidate disks.Check-out /dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1,/dev/sdc1 devices as members disks of DATA diskgroup then click on Next >Other disks will be used for Flash Recovery Area later on.
	Choose Use same passwords for these account for a simple configuration then set Specify Password and Confirm Password fields to same password strings and click on Next >.I will be using sysadm throughout the post for any Oracle password required.
	One of the security enhancements introduced in Release 2 is the separation of different levels of ASM access. This defines different roles for “Who can start/stop ASM instance ?”, “Who can add/drop disks to/from diskgroups?” or “Who can use those diskgroups at RDBMS level ?”For the simplicity of installation we will be setting all roles to dba group.Now set all three select lists to dba and click on Next >.
	Set Oracle Base to /u01/app/oracle and Software Location to /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/grid. Then click on Next >.
	Next step is unique to first Oracle software installation as you all may know. You should set Inventory Directory (if it is not already set by installer) to /u01/app/oraInventory. Keep oraInventory Group Name as oinstall and click on Next >
	In this step installer will check the installation prerequisites as it does in previous releases.
	By 11g Release 2, if any of the prerequisites fail it will be reported in a tree structure with different categories. In my case majority of the kernel settings are automatically managed since I have installed oracle-validated-configuration rpm during OEL installation.Only problem seems to be insufficiently sized core.net.wmem_max which is defined to be the maximum socket send buffer size.When you click on Fix & Check Again button, installer will generate a single shell script for you to correct all fixable errors and after its execution it will recheck for any possible problems left.
	Run the generated script as root user [root@localhost ~]# /tmp/CVU_11.2.0.0.2_oracle/runfixup.sh Response file being used is :/tmp/CVU_11.2.0.0.2_oracle/fixup.response Enable file being used is :/tmp/CVU_11.2.0.0.2_oracle/fixup.enable Log file location: /tmp/CVU_11.2.0.0.2_oracle/orarun.log Setting Kernel Parameters… net.core.wmem_max = 262144 net.core.wmem_max = 1048576 When the script is executed click OK to restart the prerequisite check process.
	As you see kernel parameter problem has gone. Other three errors can not be corrected by installer automatically, but we know that those are not critical ones. First one is PhysicalMemory error due to our VirtualBox 512 MB memory size. The second one is insufficient SwapSize that can be by-passed also for a play ground. And the final problem is RunLevel of Linux which is also not a great deal for us.Now check Ignore All and click on Next > (button will be enabled after checking out Ignore All) to continue.
	On the summary screen confirm that everything is ok and click on Finish to start installation.
	After installer successfully completes copy,install,link,etc steps it will pop-up a root.sh execution dialog. Run the required scripts as root. [root@localhost ~]# /u01/app/oraInventory/orainstRoot.sh [root@localhost ~]# /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/grid/root.sh Then switch back to installation dialog and click OK in Execute Configuration scripts dialog to proceed.
	Final tasks for installer will be to configure new HA service for ASM, diskgroup (DATA) and the default listener (on port 1521) which will be automatically configured also .
	Finally we are done Your ASM, default listener, and HA service is ready to be used.

Post Installation Checks

Login ASM

Check Default Listener Status

Check HA Targets

Dopo un periodo di abbandono, ieri ho ripreso in mano l’installazione di test di Oracle 11gR2 RAC su macchine virtuali di cui ho gia parlato in una serie di post precedenti.  Il primo problema che ho avuto è che l’istanza sul primo nodo (mentre il secondo nodo l’ho tenuto spento) non andava su; e solo un banale problema di disco pieno che bloccava il funzionamento della “grid infrastructure” o del clusterware.

Oggi però ho impiegato più tempo per risolvere un’altro problema che a posteriori può sembrare banale. Bisogna sapere che con l’espansione delle funzionalità incluse nella grid infrastructure di Oracle 11gR2, è stata introdotta la possibilità di una suddivisione dei ruoli di amministrazione più netta. Quindi per la sola gestione della parte “storage”, ovvero ASM vi sono tre gruppi definibili a livello di sistema operativo. Nel manuale di installazione della grid infrastructure è spiegato bene quali sono i ruoli definibili e i relativi privilegi.

Non avendo necessità, ne in fase di test ne in una prospettiva futura, di gestire tanti ruoli, nella mia installazione di test ho scelto di utilizzare per tutto un unico gruppo, il gruppo dba. C’è però un’altra novità importante: ASM ora fa parte della grid infrastructure. E’ vero che gia sulla 10g veniva consigliato di creare per ASM una ORACLE_HOME separata, cosa anche questa che io non ho mai fatto, senza mai dovermente pentire.

Infine, con 11g è stato introdotto il privilegio SYSASM (se non vado errato) e con 11gR2 è diventato l’unico privilegio per amministrare ASM (probabilmente era gia così con la R1 ma non avendola usata molto non ne ho certezza).

Stamattina volendo verificare da linea di comando lo spazio disponibile su ASM ho avuto il seguente messaggio:

[oracle@oel53test11gR201 ~]$ export ORACLE_SID=+ASM1
[oracle@oel53test11gR201 ~]$ sqlplus / as sysdba

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.1.0 Production on Thu Oct 29 15:19:26 2009

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to an idle instance.

Ma in quel momento stavo facendo un import, quindi ero sicuro che ASM fosse su e che il sid (+ASM1) fosse corretto, allora sono andato a ripassare la documentazione, quindi mi sono ricordato di SYSASM, però:

[oracle@oel53test11gR201 ~]$ sqlplus / as sysasm

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.1.0 Production on Thu Oct 29 15:19:35 2009

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

ERROR:
ORA-01031: insufficient privileges

Enter user-name:

Anche questo mi ha lasciato molto perplesso, perché ieri ho creato un diskgroup con l’utility grafica asmca da utente oracle senza problemi. A questo punto sono andato un po’ a caso aggiungendo i gruppi (su Linux) asmadmin e asmdba e mettendoci dentro l’utente oracle, ma senza successo; a questo punto ho fatto una ricerca sul vecchio metalink (che è ancora on-line) e incidentalmente ho capito quale era il mio problema: la ORACLE_HOME, infatti:

[oracle@oel53test11gR201 ~]$ export ORACLE_HOME=/opt/oracle/oragrid
[oracle@oel53test11gR201 ~]$ sqlplus / as sysasm

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.1.0 Production on Thu Oct 29 15:20:24 2009

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.1.0 – 64bit Production
With the Real Application Clusters and Automatic Storage Management options

Inizialmente  avevo cambiato anche il path, ma quello in realtà è superfluo.

Continuing our seven-part blog mini-series entitled “7 Things You Need to Know About Oracle 11gR2″, Integra Senior DBA Jason Buchanan, recently one of just twelve people from around the world hand-picked by Oracle to participate in the Oracle 11gR2 final beta, discusses Oracle 11gR2 ASM (Automatic Storage Management):

One of the biggest enhancements in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 is Oracle Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System (Oracle ACFS). You can now leverage the strength of your database storage infrastructure to house not only your database files but also your Oracle homes and other non-Oracle file types. ACFS greatly reduces the complexity of retrieving backups and Data Pump exports if they are stored in ACFS filesystems. Another new ASM feature is ADVM (ASM Dynamic Volume Manager) – ADVM provides the means to dynamically resize ACFS volumes on the fly without downtime.

Best of all, the high availability features of your storage infrastructure can be put to use as a destination for your Oracle binaries and other critical files. The conundrum of what to do with the interior one-third of your disk spindles can be mitigated by using this space to create an important, but lesser-used ASM diskgroup: a new diskgroup for your Oracle homes. You’ll still need to install the Grid Infrastructure binaries on local disk, but a single shared Oracle home is very easy to implement with ACFS.

The optimal way to manage ACFS is via a new Grid Infrastructure utility named “asmca” which is located in the Grid Infrastructure home directory. You must change your ORACLE_HOME (and preferably your path) to point to the Grid Infrastructure directory to use the utility.  The asmca utility represents a new approach to Oracle’s Java GUIs with an updated appearance and simpler design. The tool allows you to administer all of your ASM objects and manage ADVM objects.

As a side note, non-RAC environments will not auto-start ACFS objects. You will need to write a script to start ACFS after booting, after which you can mount your ACFS volume. The command to start the ACFS driver is “acfsload start -s” – Oracle will take it from there after starting ACFS. It’s interesting that Oracle Grid Infrastructure will create init scripts for OHASD (Oracle High Availability Services Daemon) but not ACFS; however, it’s simple enough to run acfsload from a new startup script.

Oracle 11gR2 documentation is more robust than ever, and Oracle ACFS is very well documented:

http://bit.ly/11gR2ASMDocs

Please check back soon for Jason’s next entry in this blog series: “How to Streamline Your Oracle 11gR2 Installation Process”.

Also, please join Integra CTO Allan Edwards and Jason Buchananon Tuesday November 3, 2009 at 12:00 pm Eastern / 9:00 am Pacific for a live webcast entitled “Safe Passage to Oracle 11g: Lessons from Recent Upgrades“. In this important 30-minute webcast, Allan, Jason, and other Integra consultants will share critical lessons learned during a number of recent real-world 11g upgrade projects. What you learn in this webcast can make the difference between success and disaster, so please register now for the webcast at http://bit.ly/11gWebcast!

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments here, or on our Facebook discussion board!

Thanks!

Eric Heine
Vice President
Integra Technology Consulting

781-890-0070
eheine at integratc dot com

www.integratc.com

Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/IntegraTC

If you are using ASMLIB library to label ASM disks on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.X or SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10/11 systems with EMC PowerPath as your multipathing software you may encounter the following error while running the oracleasm createdisk command:

#/etc/init.d/oracleasm createdisk DATA01 /dev/emcpowera1
Marking disk "/dev/emcpowera1" as an ASM disk:
asmtool: Device "/dev/emcpowera1" is not a partition
[FAILED]

This is due to the EMC PowerPath bug #285242 which makes  it to not properly support the sd_getgeo() i/o calls that oracleasm makes, as mentioned in the Oracle Metalink document 469163.1 and EMC Powerlink document emc203137

The workaround to overcome this problem is to use the asmtool command with “-a force=yes” option.

#/usr/sbin/asmtool -C -l /dev/oracleasm -n DATA01 -s /dev/emcpowera1 -a force=yes
asmtool: Device "/dev/emcpowera1" is not a partition
asmtool: Continuing anyway

asmtool will also complain that the device is not a partition but it will put the asmlib header on the device and create the related device file under /dev/oracleasm/disks/ directory. However it will leave the device file with root:root as the owner and group. Restarting the asmlib service will solve this problem.

service oracleasm restart

The actual solution has arrived with PowerPath for LINUX 5.3.1 for RHEL and PowerPath for LINUX 5.3.2 for SLES 11. After updating to this release oracleasm createdisk command works flawlesly as expected.

#oracleasm createdisk DATA02 /dev/emcpowerb1
Writing disk header: done
Instantiating disk: done

There are some other very important bugs solved in Powerpath releases 5.3 and 5.3 SP1 like “Dynamic addition of large number of LUNs may result in a host hang” and “PowerPath: emcpmgr processes are causing high load during startup” so there is good reason to update to the latest Powerpath release.

Here is the content of my first presentation in Open World 2009:

How to Achieve All in One with Oracle 11g

As part of a Console Dev. assignment, we took apart old consoles in groups and examined their internal architecture. Our group had the privilege of looking inside the “64bit” monster, the Atari Jaguar..

Dissassembly

Disclaimer: Use the following information at your own risk.

There was a surprising shortage of information about how to take the Atari Jaguar apart and eventually we just had to try it for ourselves. It was relatively simple in the end.

* 4 Screws hold the top to the base
* Underneath is a strange metal plate, covering the entire console
* The metal plate is fastened down with metal tabs
* These tabs must be bent back with pliers, to release the plate
The metal plate is very sharp around the edges! Be careful not to cut yourself.

More pictures coming soon

Inside the Belly of the Beast…

The Jaguar is run by 5 processors spread between 3 chips:

The Tom Chip (26.59 MHz):
GPU (32bit)
Object Processor (64bit)
Blitter (64bit)
The GPU, OP and Blitter use a RISC architecture (Reduced Instruction Set), which means it is a design that emphasises the idea of many smaller instructions to meet an end goal, which in theory increases performance through optimisation. A Blitter is a co-processor which rapidly transfers memory. In the Jaguar, the Blitter used its 64bit register for fast access of the DRAM (Also in the Tom Chip).

DRAM, also known as Dynamic RAM has a simple structure compared with other types of memory such as SRAM. It consists of only one capacitor and one transistor per bit. The memory has to be constantly refreshed due to the capacitor leaking charge, hence the name “Dynamic” RAM.

The Jerry Chip (26.59 MHz):
DSP (32bit)
The DSP, or Digital Signal Processor would deal mainly with the sound and control systems onboard the Jerry Chip, as well as some more general processing. The Jaguar boasts CD-quality sound and full stereo.

Motorolla 68000 (13.295 MHz):
General Pupose Processor (16/32bit)
Although the 68000 was designed to just read controller inputs, many developers used it to program logic too. The Motorolla 68000 was also used in a number of other consoles such as the Sega Mega Drive.

Commercial “Success”?

As you can see, only two parts of the Jaguar were actually 64 bit but nonetheless, it was still quite a powerful console for its time. However, time and time again, the games industry has shown that raw power isn’t everything. The Dreamcast which was by far one of the most sophisticated consoles of its time, sold so badly that it put Sega out of the console business permanently.

As early as 1999, the Dreamcast had online capabilities, was a 128bit system (compared with the 32bit PS1) and the standard memory card (£15-20), called a VMU had a screen + buttons! You could manage your saved data using a VMU, without switching on your console and you could even play minigames on them!

Something more recent, however…

The above image shows pretty much a complete reverse and that hardware wise, the weakest consoles currently sell the best.

In terms of sales, the Jaguar sold only 125,000 units (which is very low, even for the time) and had over 100,000 unsold units when Atari closed production. Compare this to the 49.1 million SNES units which sold by 1992 and you can really put this figure in perspective. The Jaguar was retailed for $249.99 which is less than half the $700 “3DO”, that it consequently outsold.

Assembly

It’s nearly impossible to find any Jaguar game dissassemblers. However, it is possible to find them for the highly popular 68000 and I used this to have a look inside Alien vs. Predator (One of the top selling Atari Jaguar games).

Here is a small excerpt from which I’ve commented on points of interest:

	moveq	#-105,d4
	move.b	-(a6),-(a3) <--- Moving values between registers
	moveq	#122,d6 <--- Moving an immediate into a register
	dc.w	$AB4C <--- Memory address
	adda.l	(a0),a5
	blt.s	L0000BC	; dc.w	$6D24 <--- blt = branch instruction (branch less than). Branch to label L0000BC if conditions met
	subq.l	#5,$60(a0,d7.w)
	cmp.b	#$24,d2 <--- Compare
	sub.l	$33A5(a0),d2
	eor.b	d7,(a7) <--- XOR logic instruction
	add.l	(a0),d0 <--- Additition, using registers
	move.w	$340E(a3),$78CB(a4)
	subq.w	#3,(a7)
	subx.b	d6,d0
	dc.w	$FFFF813A
	suba.l	$6E(a4,d3.w),a4
	dc.w	$0E5F,$6105
L0000BC <--- Label

Conclusion

It was fun to look at something completely different, to dive back into the past and examine it in detail. Considering the total absence of Jaguar information out there, it’s nice to feel that I’m somehow filling that void, even if just a tiny bit.

There was a lot of controversy about the number of “bits” that the Jaguar had, even though bus size isn’t nearly as important as good processing power or fast memory. The console bit wars are kind of stupid when you consider Windows has been and still is a mostly 32-bit OS.

My guess is that consumers are unwittingly drawn to large numbers. Just look at the model numbers for graphics cards (that go unnecessarily into the 1000s), or the super-awesome-spectacular-arbitrary-branding 3000!, or the common user who buys enormously powerful machines, just to check their emails and use a word processor.

I find it hilarious how the Digital Camera market is being pushed in this way, consumers buying more and more “megapixels” that they don’t particularly need (Unless they’re a professional photographer). Infact, one of the most common issues the average user, one who doesn’t usually know how to do simple things like resize an image, struggles with is trying to send their photos by email because they’re so bloody huge!

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