Oracle: Unbreak my Linux Heart

Been looking for a way to automatically update my subversion Working Copies (WCs) in Windows using TortoiseSVN. Since it was a GUI, I didn't bother to look for a CLI. :( Duuh! I can happily report that there is a command-line interface (CLI) to TortoiseSVN that let's you create a shortcut to update a given WC for you. If you'd place that in your startup folder, it would update your WC(s) upon login. Check Appendix D.Automating TortoiseSVN . I created a shortcut svn_update in Windows to run TortoiseProc.exe from Program Files, using the WC as the start-up directory. And the entire command-line reads: TortoiseProc.exe /command:update /path:"c:\subversion\io_se"

Using Subversion with Notepad describes the use of a simple plugin for Notepad++ that will let you commit and revert code files from within Notepad. You do need TortoiseSVN installed, of course, but for quick fixes this can be great.

CollabNet has released binaries of Subversion 1.6.1 for all major platforms: Windows, Linux, Solaris and OS X. The Windows client is also already updated, other should follow soon. SVN 1.6 is a big step forward in the area of collaborative development as merging has been improved over 1.5 and very much so from 1.4. More tools building upon SVN are also appearing, expanding the functionality of the plain SVN server with things like ALM , Agile support and more.

An age-old problem in mixed IT environments is that Windows servers can register themselves dynamically in a (Windows) DNS server and Unix/Linux servers can't (easily). Solaris has a way to fix this and I just discovered that Red Hat has one too. The RHEL 4 Reference Guide mentions adding the parameter DHCP_HOSTNAME in the ifcfg-eth# files. That will tell the DHCP client to specify a hostname when acquiring an IP address. Another search led to the use of nsupdate which seems to register a Linux host using Kerberos in the AD so that it can update its hostname on future reboots. I haven't tested both methods yet, but I will soon and let you know.

Xming has been updated recently. It is an X server for Windows, so you can easily use your (corporate) Windows desktop to maintain your Linux/Unix servers. It is free and uses Putty to make an SSH connection to your *nix server. With a few simple commands the X11 client on Linux can transmit its output (i.e. screen/window) to the X11 server running on Windows. By using a secure SSH session, the process is pretty secure too and can be used from home, with or without a VPN connection.

Solved an obscure error for some Windows 2003 R2 servers that were unable to map a drive to a SAMBA share. SAMBA is running on Oracle Enterprise Linux 4U6 with configs as defined by a wiki over at SAMBA . Error logs showed repeated " Failed to verify incoming ticket " errors. Problem turned out to be related to Kerberos. Not so much the version or the encryption (MIT vs. Heimdal), as many sources mention, but to plain and simple time keeping! The Windows servers giving the errors were VMs running on ESX hosts. VMware Tools is supposed to do the time keeping and time sync the VMs to ESX, however that had slipped a bit too much. Kerberos accepts a maximum of 5 minutes. Ours was 9 minutes off...

While setting up a schema to handle Linux user authentication and authorization using our big corporate Windows Active Directory (AD) server, I ran across a TechEd session that mentioned Scott Lowe's blog. On his very nice looking tech blog, I found a great article describing clearly how to integrate Linux into an AD running on Windows Server 2003 R2. Mind you, Server 2008 - the next release - will be somewhat different and older version of Windows Server as well. It mainly has to do with the RFC2307 or the Server for Unix (SfU) from Microsoft.

Where strict corporate access, authorization and authentication mechanisms are in place, user access rights must be managed carefully. Linux is no exception. In full Unix/Linux houses, this is not really an issue. But in mixed Microsoft/Linux environments, I still find it daunting to get Linux servers properly added to Active Directory realms, domains and so on. SAMBA and winbind do a wonderful job, but sadly only Novell's SUSE Enterprise 10 server and desktop do it out-of-the-box. (Something to be said for collaborations!) The main problem I find is that while winbind can be used fine, it's never the version that comes with the platform. The reliable, stable Enterprise release alway uses some old version and you find yourself looking for sources, newer versions, packages and so on. Then there is the ignorance of Microsoft techies, who stubbornly won't help because "it just works in Windows" and often don't know how either. Well, with Linux you have to know th...

Kevin Closson points to a test Dell did using their hardware and an Oracle et-up usign RAC and one without RAC. The results are interesting! The tests are run using Dell's DVD Store Test Application using a PowerEdge 2950 cluster and one PowerEdge 6850 .