AWS EBS-based instances are a really neat idea, but they don’t have any additional storage. You need to create, attach and initialize an EBS with the same letter as a normal AMI-based instance.

For example you use a number of non-EBS and EBS instances in a cluster and they perform the same function. You probably want to keep them configured the same way. So you need an additional EBS for drive D: for an instance loaded from an EBS.

Assume you created and attached a new EBS. Now you need to initialize the disk, create a volume, format it, assign a letter, etc.

One way of doing it is through a storage MMC. The other is to script it using diskpart command line utility.

Create a script file with the following commands (remove the comments):

• rescan – rescans all disks
• select disk 1 - selects disk 1 for manipulations (use the number you need)
• create partition primary – assume you are creating a primary partition
• assign letter=d - we have disk C with the instance, so the next one is D
• convert dynamic - you can omit this to leave the disk as basic, but I prefer dynamic

Save the file and call from a command like like this: diskpart /S c:\my-disk-script.txt > c:\my-disk-log.txt

Diskpart will read the script and initialize the disk. Wrap it all in a batch file to add disk formatting commands.

Or: FND_USER table and blocking locks.. I don’t mean recover as in backup, by the way.

Some disclaimers: This scenario happened in an 11.5.10 system, and seems to have been a general problem not specific to our site, but as I haven’t been able to research it further, I don’t know if it could happen elsewhere as well. And even if I couldn’t think of a way around it, some of you might Furthermore, the following shouldn’t be a problem for those using the new User Management (UMX) HTML interface to manage EBS users, instead of the older, Forms based “Administer Users” interface. (UMX became available as a patch to 11.5.10, if I remember correctly).

Since the only resolution to this I (and Oracle support) know of, is to shutdown abort the running production EBS database, which is rather grave, I’m hereby noting down our preventive work-around, which banished this issue from our site.

The issue (which happened twice in a couple of weeks):

During normal operation in a non-peak period, typically in the late morning, the Oracle E-Business Suite system would suddenly not accept any more logins. Over the course of perhaps 15 minutes after this, existing users started having trouble accessing different HTML/JSP pages, and after that, the whole system effectively froze up.

The first time this happened, there was no time for troubleshooting, except to discover that there were lots of sessions waiting to get a lock for the FND_USER table, so we had to shut down the services and abort the database. After a call to Oracle support revealed that they did not know of any other way around our situation.

The second time, I was a little more prepared, and though I couldn’t react in time to kill the blocking sessions fast enough the resolve the situation, I did have time to detect a pattern (I’ll get to this in a second).

So the issue in a little more detail, was that – as is normal – each new user session wanted to get hold of their entry in the FND_USER table, to update the TIMESTAMP field. And the already existing sessions also expect to be able to do this once in a while. This was not possible, since one session sat with a blocking lock for it’s own entry. I found this strange, and at least expected to be able to resolve everything by contacting the user to confirm I could kill the session, and by this letting the waiting sessions go on with their business.

But every time the blocker was killed, the next session waiting in line, took over and did not release the lock. And since every user who experienced some kind of hang situation in their session, restarted their browsers and tried to log back in, the waiting line grew much more quickly than it was possible to kill off sessions.

Since there was just a limited amount of time available to experiment with this, I still have no clear understanding of this behaviour. (I had to resort to bouncing/aborting the system at this occasion as well, since that can be done fairly quickly, albeit with the possible necessity of some cleanup work afterwards.)

But the pattern was simply that someone with System Administrator rights had opened the FND_USER entry (in a Form, the correct way) for the SYSADMIN user, for changing its list of Responsibilities. And they had left the Form window open long enough for another user to try the same thing, which was all that’s needed. So if you have a test EBS system you’re not afraid to crash; this could be a useful exercise: Open the SYSADMIN user, change for example an end-date of one of the Responsibilities (back and forth), leave it open, and have another user with Rights attempt to change some other aspect of the SYSADMIN user. If the second session hangs, waiting for the first, have some other users try to log in and out normally, possibly starting up Forms. If you see the above described behaviour, well, then you know it needs to be prevented.

It’s simple enough to avoid, of course. The only policy necessary at our site, instated after the second instance of this issue, was: “Every change to EBS user properties must immediately be followed by closing the form in question”.

As I said, simple enough, and probably very obvious to most EBS sites. But users don’t necessarily think that way, figuring instead that the System is all-powerful and can protect itself against stuff like this. By the way, for those who are wondering, we did also take this opportunity to put in place similar policies for other forms than just the user management. Anyway, the issue never arose again.

Often, in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (R12) during an implementation or after patching, the pre-compiled jsp’s need to be recompiled because you aren’t seeing the change you expect. You can selectively recompile jsp’s using this program, but I like to just blow away everything and start fresh. Support documentation states “AD utilities to perform this action, for example after patches are applied which replaced 1 or more JSP pages” but I frequently have to use this tool manually after patching to see the expected results.

This is my go-to first step after patching or configuration changes that aren’t giving me what I expect.

My process is as follows:

1. Bring down Apache with adapcctl.sh in $INST_TOP/admin/scripts

[appldemo@demoR12 ~]$ $INST_TOP/admin/scripts/adapcctl.sh stop

2. Clear the cache directory by renaming it and recreating it.

[appldemo@demoR12 ~]$ mv $COMMON_TOP/_pages $COMMON_TOP/_pages_07DEC09 [appldemo@demoR12 ~]$ mkdir $COMMON_TOP/_pages

3. Start ojspCompile with the parameters --flush --compile -p [number of parallel processes]

[appldemo@demoR12 ~]$ $FND_TOP/patch/115/bin/ojspCompile.pl --flush --compile -p 8

4. Confirm the process completes successfully

starting...(compiling all) using 10i internal ojsp ver: 10 synchronizing dependency file: loading deplist...7983 enumerating jsps...7983 updating dependency...0 initializing compilation: eliminating children...5894 (-2089) translating and compiling: translating jsps...5894/5894 in 10m29s compiling jsps...5894/5894 in 44m27s Finished!

5. Almost Done! – Just Restart Apache!

[appldemo@demoR12 ~]$ $INST_TOP/admin/scripts/adapcctl.sh start

Checkout My Oracle Support Article ID: 435550.1 for more information.

For the next two weeks in Copenhagen, Denmark, leaders, and their representatives, from around the world will gather to negotiate an agreement which will hopefully stop, or at least slow, the advance of global warming/climate change. Attendees of the UN Climate Change Copenhagen conference will be considering economics, science and politics when making their decisions about a compromise, but they also might be thinking about a photo book that will be provided to them by Prince Charles.

The book, Rainforests: Lifebelt for an Endangered Planet is one of the final stages of Daniel’s involvement with the Prince’s Rainforest Project (PRP) Award. The PRP is a non-governmental-organization whose goal is to reduce global warming/climate change by slowing the spread of tropical deforestation, the world’s largest source of carbon emissions. To help gain traction and attention for this goal, Sony funded a contest award in the World Photography Awards which provided the winner (Daniel) with a commission to photographically document deforestation for a month each in the Brazilian Amazon, the Congo, and Indonesia. The photos shot for the PRP would be used in exhibitions in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, one million booklets for distribution (online here), and, finally and most importantly, a limited edition book to be given by Prince Charles to attendees of the Copenhagen Climate Change conference. Rainforests: is that book.

The process to put together a photo book from scratch in less than eight months was a huge challenge to undertake. First, Daniel shot over 40,000 photos in the course of three month-long trips to the aforementioned tropical rainforest regions. Daniel dipped into his ample archive of photos he shot for Greenpeace in the Amazon and Indonesia to add in images of subjects that weather or time constraints prevented him from photographing this year for the PRP, giving the project a fuller scope to display the challenges the rainforests face (the vast majority are from the commissions this year, 2009, however).

Then, these were edited down by Daniel and myself to around 1,000 photos here in Seattle. Stuart Smith, a photo book editor and designer in London, winnowed these 1,000 down to 500, and then prepared small proof prints of the 500 to physically edit the book down on the floor and walls of his office.

(before/after)

Of the 500, 100 were chosen to go into the book.

After all this was done, the hardbound book just had to be printed. And for the amount of effort it took to get the photo book done in time for the conference, it makes sense to get it printed as accurately as possible, since many of Daniel’s photos have a high level of contrast and can be a bit challenging to reproduce nicely. Not to mention that the book covers an important subject and might/hopefully leave an impression on some very influential people.

To do this, Daniel took a brief trip over to Verona, Italy, to visit Editoriale Bortolazzi Stei (EBS), a great company where some of the best photo and art books in the world are printed. Though a visit to Italy might typically imply a relaxing tour of fine food and wine, visiting a Roman Coliseum:

(Above, the Verona Arena.)

Daniel instead spent the better part of four days here, at the EBS facility:

So I bet you’re wondering how are the best photo books in the world are put together?

Here’s how:

First the pages are adjusted on EBS’s calibrated monitors by a pre-press technician from proof prints that Daniel brought:

Then, manual adjustments are applied to the individual pages to produce a plate that prints another proof, which gets further adjusted to a finer tolerance.

Above, Stuart Smith looks at proof pages, while waiting for more pages to be printed.

Then, once it gets really close for all four pages in a sheet of paper, Daniel and Stuart would go down to the pressroom floor and make final adjustments:

Above, Alessandra Agostini reviews book sheets with a printer technician.

To make the final sheet of pages adjustments are made in the press, as opposed to on the source plate, of the individual levels of cyan, yellow, magenta and black inks. Each button above controls the ink intensity for a portion of the sheet.

Once the printer has made a final proof print that is to Daniel’s standards, he o.k.’s it with a signature, after which point there is no going back.

The press then starts humming along and produces 500 sheets, which have 4 pages to a side:

Then, finally after all this is done, the sheets are turned upside down and printed on the back, which is an even more stressful time, since any mistakes would ruin 500 sheets of paper in one fail swoop.

Once all the pages were finished, they were stacked tidily in the warehouse to await cutting and binding:

All in all, producing Rainforests: was a fascinating experience to be a part of and a greatly satisfying challenge to complete, though we might have gained a few gray hairs and wrinkles in the process. Rainforests: has many fantastically beautiful and haunting images in it, printed perfectly. The book sequence and layout of the photos which Stuart put together tells a very linear story about tropical deforestation that is very accessible and easy to understand.

Everyone involved in its production, from Daniel on down, should be very proud of and pleased with the book. We learned a lot about the process and will be better prepared when Daniel makes his next book, which will hopefully be very soon.

-JN

(The book itself is 96 11″x16″ pages, in which 100 photos are used, 65 of which are full pages, weighing in around two pounds.)

Update: More blog links to info about the PRP here and here, fyi.

It’s a good idea to verify files after data import from an HDD -> S3 -> EBS.

I ran a simple .net app to read the import log and check an MD5 hash of the copied file against the hash recorded in the log.

A single drive EBS is slower than the average SATA drive when it comes to reads: 23MB/s on a streaming read with  Qlen=1 and file size between 50k and 20MB.

Smaller files give even slower performance, which is kind of expected, but it was performing much better on a RAID0 with 2 SATAII drives.

It took hh:mm to read and hash … files total of ….GB

Conclusion

Learn to get more with less.

I shipped just under 1TB of data to AWS for importing into S3.

They were surprisingly responsive when I inquired about letting an overseas customers import some data. It’s probably still a limited beta. Not all are that lucky. Be patient. They’ll open it up for everyone.

S3 -> EBS app

The first hurdle is moving the data from S3 to EBS. They cannot import it to EBS directly.

AWS generated an import log that has date-time, source name, target name, MD5 and copying result, which was 200,OK for all. I wrote a simple app to read the log and copy the files from a bucket to a folder on an EBS.

The app is configurable which folders it copies. I launched 4 instances of the app for 4 copying threads. Not the best piece of engineering, but it works and took me only a few hrs to write and test.

Performance

Very, very disappointing. Extremely disappointing on the networking side. Look at the screenshot:

The disk didn’t look that bad.

Average Queue: about 2

Peak writes: almost 10MB/s

The network was a complete disappointment: 50Mbit/s at peaks

I do not know if this is S3 or Ec2 or just this instance (small). At this stage I blame S3. Copying large chunks of data between 2 EC2 instances went through with a blazing trail.

Copying is still in progress. Down to 3 threads now, but it’s not running any faster, so the machines is not overloaded.

Gamepolitics.com reported late yesterday that the AbingtonIP patent law firm may be planning a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft for the recent bans on over 1 million XBox Live accounts. Their argument is not everyone who was banned was involved in any kind of illegal activity, such as piracy or hacking. They also claim Microsoft may have done this so close to the launch of Modern Warfare 2 to boost XBox Live subscription revenues. The full story can be found here.

Personally, I have no problem with people getting banned. Having seen the gold farmers in games like World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, and Aion, I’ve grown a bit…jaded about banning, in that I don’t think its done enough. Besides, its practically common knowledge amongst the gaming community that people hack their consoles. I’ve heard of people hacking PS3’s, XBox 360’s, Wii’s, PS2’s, PSP’s, and even iPhone’s. I had a friend a while back who would hack original XBox’s for a small fee. I will agree that the release of Modern Warfare 2 provided a prime opportunity for Microsoft; an opportunity to combat the hacking and piracy of their consoles.

On a side note, I’m glad I don’t live in New York. Otherwise I’d have to hear “beeeeeeep beeeeeeep” in the middle of playing one of my games.

Semper whatever.

The DevilGeek

091109 EBS TokTok Boni Hani – f(x) cut 1

091109 EBS TokTok Boni Hani – f(x) cut 2

091109 EBS TokTok Boni Hani – f(x) cut 3

091109 EBS TokTok Boni Hani – f(x) cut 4

Da click en cada link para qeu puedas ver el video (: Son cuts muuy pequeñísimos, cada uno dura de 2 a 5 segundos.

No sé si alguien logrará entender, ni si yo sabré transmitir la emoción que me puede embargar ahora mismo, en este momento en el que, por fruto del mas puro azar, he conocido el regreso de ELLA BAILA SOLA.

Han sido NUEVE largos años de espera desde que en el año 2000 un sábado por la tarde bajaba desde la residencia de estudiantes al centro de la ciudad de Cuenca (ciudad natal de Marilia), para intentar que la dependienta de la tienda me vendiese el último disco que sacaría el grupo dos días antes de ponerse a la venta. No lo conseguí, pero sí logré que lo sacase y ver esa portada que me mantendría en vela dos días más hasta que un lunes por la mañana aprovechando el descanso entre clases me hice con él y pude escuchar las que, intuía por sus letras, serían las últimas canciones de Marta y Marilia juntas.

“Sentir” (ve a su sitio web para descargar la canción)

Link al vídeo

Pocos meses después llegó la nefasta noticia que me dejó tocado musicalmente, su separación. No obstante ellas habían hecho que yo descubriese la música, su sentido, habían conseguido que, lo que hasta el momento eran simples notas, me acompañasen en una etapa de mi vida llena de cambios, que junto con sus ritmos, me harían rellenar ese espacio de sentimientos que me faltaba para completar huecos de un incierto futuro que me esperaba a la vuelta de la esquina.

▬ Sitio web de Rocío y Marta, EBS

Sí, en estos momentos estoy feliz cuando escribo estas líneas. Es una felicidad extraña, cercana y similar a la que sentía cuando de repente, en la radio, escuchaba al locutor decir “y aquí está lo nuevo de Ella Baila Sola…” (y es que por aquel entonces no disponía de internet para enterarme. Una felicidad cercana pero no igual. Más que nunca hoy Ella Baila Sola. Marta Botía sigue dentro del grupo al que han dado el nombre del segundo álbum de Marta y Marilia, EBS, siglas conocidas para los que íbamos a sus conciertos y seguíamos su carrera musical. Pero Marilia se ha ido, ni siquiera se sabe nada acerca del disco que debió haber sacado hace ya años. En EBS es sustituída por Rocío Pavón, una preciosa voz melódica que no desentona con las armonías del grupo que me conquistó, pero cuya presencia ahora, por deferencia a la voz de Marilia y su recuerdo, se me antoja como una sana y necesaria “traición” entre comillas, que espero que remita con el paso del tiempo.

Al fin y al cabo gracias a Marta Botía y esta nueva voz, es por lo que, por muy increíble que me parezca sin ser totalmente consciente de lo grande que es esta noticia para mí, vuelven a bailar solas de nuevo. Cuando a finales de octubre vaya a la tienda y diga “quiero el nuevo disco de Ella Baila Sola”… cuántos momentos de conciertos, risas, karaokes y vivencias con su música de fondo se me vendrán a la cabeza…

Take your pick.   MOS Short on a breakdown with increased volume or long with a stop below yesterdays low of day

AGU play it long or short.  Need to see volume on a breakdown to confirm.

Like EBS here for a low capital risk entry as its at the bottom of a long- forming a triangle [200d EMA support] AND it was announced today that the biotech antrax vaccine manufacturer is being added to the S&P 500.

Nuevamente con Grandes Novedades!!!
Ahora en México, Odyssey Nail Systems una marca reconocida mundialmente.
“Made by the Best, for the Best”

Hola a todos!!!
El Campeón Mundial “Trang Nugyen” creador de la marca; presente en México para el “Gran Lanzamiento” de su línea de productos, y demostrarnos el dominio que tiene del acrílico y su gran talento.
Acompañado por grandes talentos como Catherine Wong y Carla Colier, todos visitando nuestro país por primera vez.
Quiero contarles, que para mí es un logro más, el formar parte del equipo de ONS, Odyssey Nail Systems México y platicarles que fué una experiencia única, conocer a personas tan importantes en este maravilloso mundo de las uñas y poder compartir momentos increibles con todos ellos..!!