July 29th, Wish your System Administrator a happy SysAdmin day!

A sysadmin unpacked the server for this website from its box, installed an operating system, patched it for security, made sure the power and air conditioning was working in the server room, monitored it for stability, set up the software, and kept backups in case anything went wrong. All to serve this webpage.

A sysadmin installed the routers, laid the cables, configured the networks, set up the firewalls, and watched and guided the traffic for each hop of the network that runs over copper, fiber optic glass, and even the air itself to bring the Internet to your computer. All to make sure the webpage found its way from the server to your computer.

A sysadmin makes sure your network connection is safe, secure, open, and working. A sysadmin makes sure your computer is working in a healthy way on a healthy network. A sysadmin takes backups to guard against disaster both human and otherwise, holds the gates against security threats and crackers, and keeps the printers going no matter how many copies of the tax code someone from Accounting prints out.

A sysadmin worries about spam, viruses, spyware, but also power outages, fires and floods.

When the email server goes down at 2 AM on a Sunday, your sysadmin is paged, wakes up, and goes to work.

A sysadmin is a professional, who plans, worries, hacks, fixes, pushes, advocates, protects and creates good computer networks, to get you your data, to help you do work — to bring the potential of computing ever closer to reality.

So if you can read this, thank your sysadmin — and know he or she is only one of dozens or possibly hundreds whose work brings you the email from your aunt on the West Coast, the instant message from your son at college, the free phone call from the friend in Australia, and this blog.

Installing Oracle 9i on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 64-bit

These are my notes on installing Oracle 9i on RHEL4 64-bit

After install, get a list of installed RPMS:
rpm -qa | sort > rpmList.txt
rpm -qa --queryformat %-{name}-%{version}-%{release}-%{arch}"\n" | sort > rpmListWithArch.txt

After copying the Oracle install files to /u02 extract them using the following:
zcat amd64_db_9204_Disk1.cpio.gz | cpio -idmv
zcat amd64_db_9204_Disk2.cpio.gz | cpio -idmv
zcat amd64_db_9204_Disk3.cpio.gz | cpio -idmv

Verify that the hosts file looks correct:
nano /etc/hosts

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
216.125.228.45 db.svcc.edu db

Adjust the kernel parameters:
nano /etc/sysctl.conf

kernel.shmmax = 4294967295
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.sem = 256 32000 100 128
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000
net.core.rmem_default = 262144
net.core.rmem_max = 262144
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_max = 262144

Put the changes into effect:
sysctl -p

Add this to the end of the limits.conf file:
nano /etc/security/limits.conf

oracle soft nofile 65536
oracle hard nofile 65536
oracle soft nproc 16384
oracle hard nproc 16384

Add the Oracle Groups and User:
groupadd dba
groupadd oinstall
useradd -c "Oracle software owner" -g oinstall -G dba oracle
passwd oracle

Create the directories needed for Oracle, and give Oracle ownership:
mkdir -p /u01/app/oracle/product/9.2.0
chown -R oracle.oinstall /u01

Add the exclusions needed for VNC and Oracle Access:
nano /etc/sysconfig/iptables

-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 5901 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 5902 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 7777 -j ACCEPT

Put the changes into effect:
service iptables restart

Setup two users accounts to be accessed through VNC:
nano /etc/sysconfig/vncservers

VNCSERVERS="1:root 2:oracle"

Setup passwords for both users:
vncpasswd
su - oracle
vncpasswd
exit

Set VNC to run on startup, and start the service
chkconfig vncserver on
service vncserver start

Setup the Oracle user with the environment settings it needs:
nano /home/oracle/.bash_profile

# Set the LD_ASSUME_KERNEL environment variable only for Red Hat 9,
# RHEL AS 3, and RHEL AS 4 !!
# Use the "Linuxthreads with floating stacks" implementation instead of NPTL:
#export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1 # for RH 9 and RHEL AS 3
export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.19 # for RHEL AS 4

# Oracle Environment
export ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle
export ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/product/9.2.0
export ORACLE_SID=TESTSID
export ORACLE_TERM=xterm
# export TNS_ADMIN= Set if sqlnet.ora, tnsnames.ora, etc. are not in $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin
export NLS_LANG=AMERICAN;
export ORA_NLS33=$ORACLE_HOME/ocommon/nls/admin/data
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:/lib:/usr/lib
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

# Set shell search paths
export PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin

Oracle 9i requires older compilers, make backups first, then replace it with the older versions:
mv /usr/bin/gcc /usr/bin/gcc344
mv /usr/bin/g++ /usr/bin/g++344
ln -s /usr/bin/gcc32 /usr/bin/gcc
ln -s /usr/bin/g++32 /usr/bin/g++

Start the install through VNC:
cd /u02/Disk1
./runInstaller

More G5 Upgrades

Well I had a successful upgrade for the second time for my PowerMac G5. The first was just a simple optical drive upgrade.

I had been looking at getting a replacement primary drive for awhile. The original drive was a 250GB Maxtor that was starting to slow down, and have errors copying files around. Wiping the drive clean did no good, and Spinrite reported that the drive was slowly failing.

I had always held back due to stories on the net about some model Western Digital drives not being compatible with my Dual G5 2.7 GHz. I ended up ordering a WD3200KS from NewEgg, 320GB, 16 MB Cache, 7200 RPM all the good stuff.

Installation was easy, and the G5 saw the drive without a problem. The drive was very quiet, and was quite speedy compared to the failing Maxtor.

Hardware specs of the system:
Machine Name: Power Mac G5
Machine Model: PowerMac7,3
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.1)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 2.7 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 1.35 GHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.2.4f1

Hardware specs of the drive that was installed:
WDC WD3200KS-00PFB0:
Capacity: 298.09 GB
Model: WDC WD3200KS-00PFB0
Revision: 21.00M21
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Protocol: ata
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Serial-ATA
Bay Name: "A (upper)"
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

Here are a few things you should look at at least once

1. Firefox 2.0, the web can be a dangerous place. Using Firefox as your web browser can help to keep you safe from the most common attack vectors.

2. Google's Gmail, most people have a use for a web based e-mail account. I've got one from most of them and Gmail is by far my favorite.

3. Picassa, I have numerous digital photo's, and a need to keep them organized. Picassa is what I turn to to make this task easy.

4. Google Talk, if you have a need to instant message friends and acquaintances you should try to get them hooked up with Google Talk. This may be a tough sell, people tend to be pretty firmly entrenched in whatever their current IM client is.

more to come...