Grid DBA

Having worked on Oracle RAC since 9i, there hasn't been a time when I haven't faced something new or realized something was not what I thought it was. I think this is one of the reasons why I enjoy working on these systems - always a challenge. I stopped my RAC database to put it into noarchivelog mode using the srvctl command [oracle@oradba10t oracle]$ srvctl stop database -d labrac Next I proceeded to connect to the first instance to startup in mount mode [oracle@oradba10t oracle]$ sqlplus /nolog SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production on Thu May 5 09:47:15 2011 Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle.  All Rights Reserved. SQL> conn / as sysdba Connected to an idle instance. SQL> startup mount ORA-29760: instance_number parameter not specified Wait, what's this? I've never encountered this error message before. Googled a bit and realized that most of the responses were a bit far fetched since the database had been in perfect working order before I stopped...

While installing Oracle RAC it is important to setup SSH user equivalence for installation of of the binaries.  Oracle 11gR2 RAC now includes automatic ssh setup. While reading one of my favorite blogs by Martin Bach  he describes using a utility called sshUserSetup.sh for setting up user equivalence for RAC . This takes out some of the repetitive steps needed to setup ssh user equivalence when installing a RAC cluster.  As Martin pointed out you can also use OUI to setup user equivalence but it helps if you can run the cluster verification utility (CVU) to check on many pre-requisites before starting the installation.  During installation using OUI on the AIX platform however, OUI is unable to perform automatic SSH setup. This means that SSH user equivalence will need to be setup manually prior to installation. To ease the setup all you need to do is to run the sshUserSetup.sh script and follow the prompts directions. It takes as parameters the user (oracle or gr...

Remote Diagnostic Agent (RDA) is a Oracle utility used to collect information on RAC configurations. It collects a wealth of information that would otherwise be tedious to collect manually. This includes operating system, network, hardware, database, cluster  configuration and logs . This is useful for troubleshooting RAC issues such as node evictions. Once collected this information can then be uploaded to My Oracle Support (MOS) as part of a SR. It also complements Oracle Configuration Manager (OCM) which is used to proactively do health checks and help with the speedy resolution of SRs. RDA can be downloaded from MOS. Unzip the RDA archive oracle@gridora31[gridprd2]-/u02 >cd /mnt/orasource/AIX/utils oracle@gridora31[gridprd2]-/mnt/orasource/AIX/utils >ls RDA422.zip ocm-Production-AIX-ppc.zip swingbench230422.zip cpumonitor02.91.zip orion_aix_ppc64.gz swingbench240688.zip datagenerator040198.zip osw3b.tar traceanalyzer010100.zip oracle@gridora31[gridprd2]-/mnt/orasou...

ASM trace files begin with the "+" prefix.  On Unix/Linux I normally view database trace files using the more/less or vi/vim/view commands.  These commands and their variants however accept the "+" command as an option. Run 'man' on any of the commands to see what the "+" option does. Trying to use either of these commands may leave you a bit bewildered at first. [grid@oelgrid01 trace]$ more +ASM1_ora_15496.trc usage: more [-dflpcsu] [+linenum | +/pattern] name1 name2 ...   [grid@oelgrid01 trace]$ less +ASM1_ora_15496.trc   Missing filename ("less --help" for help) You have several other options to viewing these trace files.  Of course, you could do a tail/head against the file e.g  tail -50 +ASM_filename.trc .  But if the file was pretty big you would probably want to traverse back and forth.  For a small tracefile whose standard output fits on the screen you could just issue either of the following commands: cat +ASM_filename.trc c...

The wonderful Linux team at Oracle has made Enterprise Linux/Oracle Linux 5.6 available via DVD and public yum . For Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) subscribers you can also download the updates via yum. Click here for the steps on Sergio's Linux blog. Here is how I updated from Oracle Linux 5.5 to Oracle Linux 5.6 using via public-yum.oracle.com Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

After a rapid slew of public betas, VirtualBox 4.0 was released on December 22 last year - just in time for the holidays.  It was introduced with a revamped GUI as well as additional functionality.  You can view the changelog here  for details.  I won't go into the details of the new version but I'd like to point out a few things that I experiened with this new version. One of the features I love about VirtualBox is the ability to move a virtual machines between different hosts using the export/import appliance wizard.  The export creates a set of virtual disks along with an Open Virtualization Format (OVF) file that describes the appliance's configuration.  You can then copy these files to an external device such as USB disks or make them available via a web/ftp server.  To import appliance you simply specify the location of the OVF file and follow the steps in the wizard. You can also use the VBoxManage commands to export/import. Oracle Technology ...

Following the release of Oracle Solaris 11 Express last week, I took a cue from the The Fat Bloke's blog and decided to try out the new Automated Installer feature.  Being a n00b to Solaris installation I wanted to find a relatively painless path to installing Solaris.  Having imported the previous Solaris 10 update 8 VirtualBox image however,  I thought this would be a good challenge. The Automated installer allows network-based installation of multiple systems in a fully automated manner. It relies on an Image Packing System (IPS) package management system to find the version and type of architecture (SPARC vs x86) required for installation.  You can customize the manifest files used to determine which packages you want installed.  The AI is also bootable, which allows for an automated local install without any interaction.  Just select the default install at the boot menu and it will initialize the installation and select the default IPS loc...