DBCA “Recovery manager failed to restore datafiles”

Hi all,

If that’s the 5th Blog Post with the same title one open, don’t close, READ THIS ONE!

This one is different.

It’s actually another case about Oracle throwing generic errors for DBCA where 99% of times it’s the same error, so all blogs are different but the same in essence, and none resolve your problem. So, let’s go by parts:

The Error from Client:

DBCA_Error

 

Generic Case (if this is the first blog you open about the subject):

  • Make sure the file $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oracle has privilege set to chmod 6751 in both (ASM and DB) homes. it should look like this:
[oracle@PROD01 bin]$ cd /u01/app/oracle/product/19c/db/bin
[oracle@PROD01 bin]$
[oracle@PROD01 bin]$ ls -ltr oracle*
-rwsr-s--x. 1 oracle asmadmin 441253104 Aug 27 22:29 oracle
  • If you are not sure, set it accordingly:
cd $ORACLE_HOME/bin && chmod 6751 oracle
  • Not yet? Check the disks assigned to ASM privileges and groups:
kfod status=TRUE asm_diskstring='/dev/asm*' disk=ALL
  • Ater all this, still not working? Go for the atypical case below:

 

Atypical Case (Exception)

After some struggle and no success, I started validating everything I could. Some piece of words before the silver bullet here:

Noticed I knew you do have ASM? How come that? Well, most likely the error below the ASM happens at the point the DBCA runs a RMAN restore to create the database base files and metadata. This most likely happens at the time the write is happening on the ASM, once this is the most unstable process involved.

By looking deeper on the installation logs I could see:

[Thread-527] [ 2020-08-27 23:50:04.942 PDT ] [RMANUtil$RMANUtilErrorListener.handleError:1386] ERROR=channel ORA_DISK_1: restoring datafile 00001 to +DATA
[Thread-527] [ 2020-08-27 23:50:04.942 PDT ] [RMANUtil$RMANUtilErrorListener.handleError:1386] ERROR=channel ORA_DISK_1: reading from backup piece /ora01/app/oracle/product/19c/db/assistants/dbca/templates/Seed_Database.dfb
[Thread-527] [ 2020-08-27 23:50:04.942 PDT ] [RMANUtil$RMANUtilErrorListener.handleError:1386] ERROR=channel ORA_DISK_1: ORA-19870: error while restoring backup piece /ora01/app/oracle/product/19c/db/assistants/dbca/templates/Seed_Database.dfb
[Thread-527] [ 2020-08-27 23:50:04.942 PDT ] [RMANUtil$RMANUtilErrorListener.handleError:1386] ERROR=ORA-19504: failed to create file "+DATA"
[Thread-527] [ 2020-08-27 23:50:04.942 PDT ] [RMANUtil$RMANUtilErrorListener.handleError:1386] ERROR=ORA-17502: ksfdcre:4 Failed to create file +DATA
[Thread-527] [ 2020-08-27 23:50:04.942 PDT ] [RMANUtil$RMANUtilErrorListener.handleError:1386] ERROR=ORA-15001: diskgroup "DATA" does not exist or is not mounted
[Thread-527] [ 2020-08-27 23:50:04.942 PDT ] [RMANUtil$RMANUtilErrorListener.handleError:1386] ERROR=ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied

Bingo, so it’s a password issue?

Well, I’m creating the database and this actually matches with all the chmod 6751 thing…

What then?

Well, after a while going crazy validating passwd files and so one, realized something about the oracle user:

[oracle@PROD01 bin]$ id -a
uid=500(oracle) gid=501(oinstall) groups=501(oinstall),10(wheel),203(dba),503(asmadmin),504(asmoper),525(madhoc) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023
[oracle@PROD01 bin]$ grep oracle /etc/group
wheel:x:10:oracle
asmadmin:x:503:oracle
asmoper:x:504:oracle
madhoc:x:525:oracle

Can you see the oracle user is part of the oinstall group but not really appearing on /etc/group? Also not in osusergroup dba.

Well, let’s force it?

[oracle@PROD01 bin]$ sudo su -
Last login: Fri Aug 28 14:13:21 PDT 2020 on pts/3
[root@DMSDB1PA ~]# usermod -g oinstall -G oinstall,dba,asmadmin,asmoper,madhoc oracle
[root@PROD01 ~]# id oracle
uid=500(oracle) gid=501(oinstall) groups=501(oinstall),10(wheel),203(dba),503(asmadmin),504(asmoper),525(madhoc)
[root@PROD01 ~]# grep oracle /etc/group
wheel:x:10:oracle
dba:x:203:oracle
asmadmin:x:503:oracle
asmoper:x:504:oracle
oinstall:x:501:oracle
madhoc:x:525:oracle
[root@PROD01 ~]#

Well done!

Now try running DBCA again. That was a very tricky issue to find.

Know something else? At the point I was writing this I decided to have another look and ended up finding this MOS note: “ORA-17502 /ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied ” While Creating 19c Database (Doc ID 2545858.1). We have a bug for it: BUG:29821687 – ORA-17502 /ORA-01017: INVALID USERNAME/PASSWORD; LOGON DENIED ” WHILE CREATING 19C DATABASE

You have the workaround already though. Go champs!

Hope it helps you, cheers!

Oracle memory usage on Linux / Unix

Hi all,

So one of the most important things that we need to do when setting up a new server or checking the capacity of the server is to see how much memory Oracle is using.

When checking the capacity there are some practical things that always help me to get a fast glimpse of the system:

  • When opening topas and hitting M you will see this below
Topas Monitor for host: SERVER1 Interval: 2 Sat Dec 8 03:39:59 2019
================================================================================
REF1 SRAD TOTALMEM INUSE FREE FILECACHE HOMETHRDS CPUS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0 0 59.8G 59.6G 212.3 16.3G 528 0-15
1 1 61.4G 61.2G 188.8 15.7G 536 16-31

On the memory session you will see 3 categories, INUSE, FREE and FILECACHE. There you may see what is being using for what but there is not much granularity there.

  • When using top you have this summary below
top - 11:48:08 up 119 days, 10:18, 1 user, load average: 26.76, 26.16, 25.95
Tasks: 1936 total, 38 running, 1898 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 79.3%us, 1.1%sy, 0.0%ni, 15.1%id, 4.3%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.1%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 263750172k total, 219075656k used, 44674516k free, 797476k buffers
Swap: 16773116k total, 505760k used, 16267356k free, 88055108k cached

Same you have a high level usage. So here comes the question:

How are you to prove that you have a memory shortage?

I often use vmstat on Linux looking on the columns si and so equals to 0 (swap in and swap out) and when the free command, the free column you will also have no or very low swap being used

/home/oracle> vmstat 1
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- -----cpu-----
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st
15 3 505760 44896608 797480 88062288 0 0 7037 1304 0 0 29 2 61 8 0
16 1 505760 44922964 797480 88062320 0 0 432272 144314 38784 31348 41 2 52 5 0
14 2 505760 44943072 797480 88062320 0 0 468904 155424 32676 27522 34 1 60 5 0
15 2 505760 44943032 797480 88062328 0 0 431032 144275 32596 27469 34 1 60 5 0
15 2 505760 44920136 797480 88062352 0 0 396232 145052 30772 26657 32 1 62 6 0
19 1 505760 44928576 797480 88062360 0 0 429360 160158 33640 28012 36 1 58 5 0
15 3 505760 44935340 797480 88062368 0 0 477232 161849 28393 21423 41 1 53 5 0
17 1 505760 44924744 797480 88062368 0 0 515265 160212 27478 20578 40 1 54 5 0
16 1 505760 44921596 797480 88062368 0 0 495408 159304 25458 19548 37 1 58 5 0
18 1 505760 44918144 797480 88062384 0 0 552880 168895 28203 22774 38 1 56 5 0
15 2 505760 44922344 797480 88062392 0 0 546920 160463 25321 19151 37 1 58 5 0
16 4 505760 44921544 797480 88062400 0 0 571544 153810 25429 20011 36 1 58 5 0
16 1 505760 44919620 797480 88062400 0 0 577552 160004 27132 20111 40 1 54 5 0
19 2 505760 44360240 797480 88062400 0 0 584969 155553 29467 22145 41 2 52 5 0
/home/oracle> free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 263750172 219060896 44689276 91608 797480 88062464
-/+ buffers/cache: 130200952 133549220
Swap: 16773116 505760 16267356

To check a process specific memory usage (RSS) I often use ps along with other commands to calculate the process memory for a specific process id as below:

/home/oracle> ps -eo rss,pid,euser,lstart,args:100 --sort %mem | grep -v grep | grep 35796 | awk '{printf $1/1024 "MB"; $1=""; print }'| sort
19.6016MB 35796 oracle Sat Sep 8 02:43:54 2018 ora_lg00_ORC1
34.957MB 32340 oracle Sat Jan 5 11:50:09 2019 oracleORC1 (LOCAL=NO)

RSS is resident memory, but when comes to shared memory like the Oracle SGA the methods above could be miss leading – not to say wrong – but as Oracle memory is shared we may see double counting on the results. I sometimes use pmap to check a process memory as well when available

/home/oracle> pmap 35796
35796: ora_lg00_ORC1
total 0K

But, still when checking a server wide scope, do you want to keep doing manual work and lots of math? I don’t think so. 🙂

That’s why when I came across SMEM made my life a lot easier. It is a python script which gives you a nice breakdown of the memory usage and without the miss leading double counting.

You can see the commands and processes and their memory:

[root@srv01 smem-1.4]# ./smem -trk | head
PID User Command Swap USS PSS RSS
4829 root /opt/stackdriver/collectd/s 444.0K 4.0G 4.0G 4.0G
5647 oracle asm_gen0_+ASM 50.1M 424.4M 425.0M 437.8M
16512 oracle rman software/product/11.2. 0 172.9M 173.7M 177.8M
85107 oracle ora_n001_db01 42.3M 147.8M 147.8M 185.8M
85103 oracle ora_n000_db01 42.4M 146.5M 146.6M 184.6M
85109 oracle ora_n002_db01 42.2M 145.6M 145.6M 183.5M
85111 oracle ora_n003_db01 42.1M 145.1M 145.2M 183.1M
7287 oracle ora_dia0_db01 1.6M 68.6M 68.8M 107.8M

As well the overall server per user:

root@srv01 smem-1.4]# ./smem -turk 
User Count Swap USS PSS RSS oracle 1358 4.8G 7.8G 8.0G 76.6G 
root 43 12.0M 4.1G 4.1G 4.2G user1 10 0 321.0M 328.0M 369.2M 
nobody 2 96.0K 2.1M 2.3M 6.0M user2 2 0 684.0K 1.7M 7.7M 
user4 2 0 632.0K 1.7M 7.9M user4 1 72.0K 536.0K 540.0K 2.1M 
ntp 1 424.0K 332.0K 368.0K 2.4M 
smmsp 1 1.3M 160.0K 298.0K 1.9M 
rpc 1 336.0K 68.0K 73.0K 1.7M 
rpcuser 1 808.0K 4.0K 16.0K 1.9M 
--------------------------------------------------- 
1422 4.8G 12.2G 12.5G 81.3G

Hope it helps, see you next time!

Amazon EC2: X11 Forwarding After Sudo SSH Session

Hello all!

So, now with more use of resources like Cloud servers, more and more silent instalations are being done, right? Myself, I do it in silent always I can.

What if I need to export X. Plus, if I need to export it from user oracle, but I can only login with ec2-user, as usual?

Here is the process for that:

1) Connect to AWS EC2 instance

[user@securehost ~]$ ssh -X ec2-user@ipaddress
Last login: Fri Dec 7 14:41:41 2018 from grepora.srv.com
__| __|_ )
 _| ( / Amazon Linux AMI
 ___|\___|___|
https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/2018.03-release-notes/
13 package(s) needed for security, out of 16 available
Run "sudo yum update" to apply all updates.

2) Test xclock works from ec2-user

[ec2-user@ipaddress ~]$ xclock
Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
^C

3) Show all magic cookie

[ec2-user@ipaddress ~]$ xauth list
ipaddress/unix:12 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 7e53e7600ff4177d7bbc66bde0a1b1ca
ipaddress/unix:11 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 e3d1a8915484c929ef3e809b047e6352
ipaddress/unix:10 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 07b3de3093cef835c19239ea952231b7

4) Show DISPLAY variable

[ec2-user@ipaddress ~]$ env|grep DISPLAY
DISPLAY=localhost:10.0

5) Create /tmp/xauth based on current DISPLAY variable

[ec2-user@ipaddress ~]$ xauth list | grep unix`echo $DISPLAY | cut -c10-12` > /tmp/xauth
[ec2-user@ipaddress ~]$ ll /tmp/xauth ; cat /tmp/xauth 
-rw-rw-r-- 1 ec2-user ec2-user 78 Dec 7 14:47 /tmp/xauth
ipaddress/unix:10 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 07b3de3093cef835c19239ea952231b7

6) Sudo to oracle

[ec2-user@ipaddress ~]$ sudo su - oracle
Last login: Fri Dec 7 14:43:12 UTC 2018 on pts/0

7) Add and Verify xauth

[oracle@ipaddress ~]$ xauth add `cat /tmp/xauth`
[oracle@ipaddress ~]$ xauth list
ipaddress/unix:10 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 07b3de3093cef835c19239ea952231b7

8) Verify and Add DISPLAY variable

[oracle@ipaddress ~]$ env|grep DISPLAY
[oracle@ipaddress ~]$ export DISPLAY=localhost:10.0

9) Test xclock works from oracle

[oracle@ipaddress ~]$ xclock
Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
^C
[oracle@ipaddress ~]$

Now you should be able to see the clock and so other graphical resources, like DBCA and so on.

Hope it helps!

Am I in RHEL or OEL?

OK, first time accessing a client, and you have this question?

# RHEL:

[grepora-rhel-server]$ rpm -qf /etc/redhat-release 
redhat-release-server-6Server-6.9.0.4.el6.x86_64

# OEL:

[grepora-oel-server]$ rpm -qf /etc/redhat-release
enterprise-release-5-0.0.2

You may also have some other options like:

[grepora-fedora-server]$ rpm -qf /etc/redhat-release 
fedora-release-20-3.noarch

Hope you enjoy it!
Cheers!

KSar: Generating Graphs from SAR Reports

We all know the SAR (System Activity Report), however sometimes it’s dificult to visualize a large amount of data or even extract some long term meaningful information.
How wonderful would be to have a graphical visualization from this data? Well, it’s pretty simple using KSAR.

KSAR is a BSD licensed Java based application to create graph of all parameters from the data collected by Unix sar utilities and can be exported to PDF, JPG, PNG, CSV, TXT and others.
The project Codes are here. The latest Version is KSar2-0.0.4.

See below an I/O Graph from month of Dec, generated from a database server, as an example:

GrepOra-srv.jpg

To use it, first thing is to have SAR data. To get it we have basically 3 options:
A. Collect from current server.
B. Extract from other server using direct SSH connection.
C. Use a Generated SAR File
D. Run Java tool from Client Server.

Personally, I prefer to use option C, in order to avoid putting any code in client servers and also work in less intrusive mode as possible.
I also don’t use option B because we don’t usually have direct connection to client server, but sometimes with jumpboxes or similar.
There is a third reason: When Chosing option A or B, it’s automatically connected only daily data, but when using C, you can put all data you need. It need only to be available on server.

For reference regarding Option D, please check this link.

By the way, some other useful information about SAR:
1. SAR Collection Jobs can be checked on /etc/cron.d/sysstat
2. SAR Retention can be checked/adjusted on /etc/sysconfig/sysstat

Ok, now how to generate the SAR Files?
Using command: sar -A

Example:

[root@grepora-srvr ~]# cd /var/log/sa/
[root@grepora-srvr sa]# ls -lrt |tail -10
total 207080
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3337236 Dec 24 23:50 sa24
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3756100 Dec 24 23:53 sar24
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3337236 Dec 25 23:50 sa25
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3756113 Dec 25 23:53 sar25
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3337236 Dec 26 23:50 sa26
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3756104 Dec 26 23:53 sar26
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3337236 Dec 27 23:50 sa27
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3756096 Dec 27 23:53 sar27
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3337236 Dec 28 23:50 sa28
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3756100 Dec 28 23:53 sar28
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2317668 Dec 29 16:30 sa29
[root@grepora-srvr sa]# sar -A -f sa29 > sa29.txt
[root@grepora-srvr sa]# cat sa29.txt |head -10
Linux 3.8.13-118.4.2.el6uek.x86_64 (grepora-srvr) 12/29/2017 _x86_64_ (40 CPU)
12:00:01 AM CPU %usr %nice %sys %iowait %steal %irq %soft %guest %idle
12:10:01 AM all 97.74 0.00 1.71 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.52 0.00 0.02
12:10:01 AM 0 96.46 0.00 2.59 0.02 0.00 0.00 0.92 0.00 0.01
12:10:01 AM 1 98.55 0.00 1.24 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.20 0.00 0.00
12:10:01 AM 2 97.83 0.00 2.04 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.11 0.00 0.02
12:10:01 AM 3 98.44 0.00 1.41 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.14 0.00 0.01
12:10:01 AM 4 98.28 0.00 1.65 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.06 0.00 0.01
12:10:01 AM 5 98.27 0.00 1.70 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.02 0.00 0.00
[root@grepora-srvr sa]#

With this file you can copy it from client server your server and import using KSAR Interface. It’s pretty intuitive and easy to use.

But how to generate all available days or a set of specific days in past?
Here is a script I use for this:

### All Days of SAR
DT=$(ls /var/log/sa/sa[0-9][0-9] | tr '\n' ' ' | sed 's/\/var\/log\/sa\/sa/ /g')
## Explicit Days
#DT="07 08 09"
#DT="12"
# Today
#DT=`date +"%d"`
>/tmp/sar-$(hostname)-multiple.txt
for i in $DT; do
LC_ALL=C sar -A -f /var/log/sa/sa$i >> /tmp/sar-$(hostname)-multiple.txt
done
ls -l /tmp/sar-$(hostname)-multiple.txt

After this you can copy the generated file to you PC and generate the same report.

Hope you enjoy it!

Cheers!
Matheus.

Finding Trace Files Being Written Right Now!

Hey!
I was not sure on the title for this post, but I bet everyone, at least once, needed to know which file is being modified at this exact moment in your filesystem/server.

Some days ago I noticed something was making my filesystem full. I cleared some gigas in logs from Diag Home but the space gone 100% very quickly. What is consuming the space?
Easy:

1. Create a new file.

$ touch a.log

2. Find everything newer than this file.

$ find . -newer a.log

Here you go!

In my situation, after finding this, I noticed there was a session in a bug situation generating thousands of messages on trace file.
Killed the session, got part of the messages, cleared file. Issue solved.

Hope it helps!

RHEL: Figuring out CPUs, Cores and Hyper-Threading

Hi all!
It’s a recurrent subject, right? But no one is 100% sure to how figure this out… So, let me quickly show you my way:

– Physical CPUs (sockets):

[root@mysrvr ~]# grep -i "physical id" /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u | wc -l
2
[root@mysrvr ~]# dmidecode -t processor |grep CPU
        Version: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5570 @ 2.93GHz
        Version: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5570 @ 2.93GHz

So, 2 physical CPUs.

– Physical Cores

[root@mysrvr ~]# egrep -e "core id" -e ^physical /proc/cpuinfo|xargs -l2 echo|sort -u
physical id : 0 core id : 0
physical id : 0 core id : 1
physical id : 0 core id : 2
physical id : 0 core id : 3
physical id : 1 core id : 0
physical id : 1 core id : 1
physical id : 1 core id : 2
physical id : 1 core id : 3

Each one of Physical Processors has 4 cores.
So, there is two quad-cores. This way, we have 8 cores at all.

– Logical CPUs

[root@mysrvr ~]# grep -i "processor" /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u | wc -l
16

Ok, so we have cores in double.
This means we have Hyper-Threading (technology by Intel Processors).

Not so hard, right?

Those links are similar and quite cool to understand the concepts:
https://access.redhat.com/discussions/480953
https://www.redhat.com/archives/redhat-list/2011-August/msg00009.html
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/hyper-threading/hyper-threading-technology.html

Matheus.

“tail -f” vs “tail -F”: Do you know the difference?

Hi all!
Do you know the difference between “tail -f” and “tail -F”?

duvida

Ok, don’t feel bad. It’s very difficult to find someone who knows… And with a reason, I can’t find any link explaining this by Googling.
It’s possible that I don’t know how to search it too. But I searched as I’d search if I didn’t know that… And couldn’t find anything about…

Let’s take a look on –help, so:

More““tail -f” vs “tail -F”: Do you know the difference?”

Installing and Configuring ASMLIb on Oracle Linux 7

Hi all!
For those are familiar with RHEL/OEL 4 and 5, there is some differences to start ASMLib on OEL 6 and 7.

spanner.png
So, a quick guide to install (done on OEL 7), start and configure:

1. Install the ASMLib kernel module package as root using the following command:

yum install kmod-oracleasm

2. Install the ASMLib library package and utilities package

yum install oracleasm-support oracleasmlib oracleasm-`uname -r`

It’s possible some package to not found. For example:

No package oracleasmlib available.

So, you can download rpm libs from here and install via rpm:

[root@dbsrv01 oracle]# rpm -Uvh ~/oracleasmlib-2.0.12-1.el6.x86_64.rpm
Preparing...                          ################################# [100%]
Updating / installing...
1:oracleasmlib-2.0.12-1.el6        ################################# [100%]

Ok, now, lets configure/start services:

[root@dbsrv01 ~]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm configure

Nothing happen? Ok, let’s try to start it:

[root@dbsrv01 ~]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm start
Starting oracleasm (via systemctl):  Job for oracleasm.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status oracleasm.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
[FAILED]

Hmmm… Are these commands correct?

[root@dbsrv01 ~]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm
Usage: /etc/init.d/oracleasm {configure|createdisk|deletedisk|querydisk|listdisks|scandisks|status}

Ok… So, what to do?

Take a look:

[root@dbsrv01 ~]# oracleasm init
Creating /dev/oracleasm mount point: /dev/oracleasm
Loading module "oracleasm": oracleasm
Configuring "oracleasm" to use device physical block size
Mounting ASMlib driver filesystem: /dev/oracleasm

Victory!
Now, let’s configure:

[root@dbsrv01 ~]# oracleasm configure
ORACLEASM_UID=
ORACLEASM_GID=
ORACLEASM_SCANBOOT=true
ORACLEASM_SCANORDER=""
ORACLEASM_SCANEXCLUDE=""
ORACLEASM_USE_LOGICAL_BLOCK_SIZE="false"

It shows, but how configure?

Just put “-i” clause, like:

[root@dbsrv01 ~]# oracleasm configure -i
Configuring the Oracle ASM library driver.
This will configure the on-boot properties of the Oracle ASM library
driver.  The following questions will determine whether the driver is
loaded on boot and what permissions it will have.  The current values
will be shown in brackets ('[]').  Hitting  without typing an
answer will keep that current value.  Ctrl-C will abort.
Default user to own the driver interface []: grid
Default group to own the driver interface []: oinstall
Scan for Oracle ASM disks on boot (y/n) [y]: y
Writing Oracle ASM library driver configuration: done

And you can list again:

[root@dbsrv01 ~]# oracleasm configure
ORACLEASM_UID=grid
ORACLEASM_GID=oinstall
ORACLEASM_SCANBOOT=true
ORACLEASM_SCANORDER=""
ORACLEASM_SCANEXCLUDE=""
ORACLEASM_USE_LOGICAL_BLOCK_SIZE="false"
[root@dbsrv01 ~]# oracleasm status
Checking if ASM is loaded: yes
Checking if /dev/oracleasm is mounted: yes

To add a disk, the same process can be followed on earlier versions:

[root@dbsrv01 ~]# oracleasm createdisk SDD /dev/sdd1
Writing disk header: done
Instantiating disk: done
[root@dbsrv01 ~]# oracleasm listdisks
SDD

For all commands:

[root@dbsrv01 ~]# oracleasm -h
Usage: oracleasm [--exec-path=]  [  ]
oracleasm --exec-path
oracleasm -h
oracleasm -V
The basic oracleasm commands are:
configure        Configure the Oracle Linux ASMLib driver
init             Load and initialize the ASMLib driver
exit             Stop the ASMLib driver
scandisks        Scan the system for Oracle ASMLib disks
status           Display the status of the Oracle ASMLib driver
listdisks        List known Oracle ASMLib disks
querydisk        Determine if a disk belongs to Oracle ASMlib
createdisk       Allocate a device for Oracle ASMLib use
deletedisk       Return a device to the operating system
renamedisk       Change the label of an Oracle ASMlib disk
update-driver    Download the latest ASMLib driver

And to see arguments for each one:

[root@dbsrv01 ~]# oracleasm configure -h
Usage: oracleasm-configure [-l ] [-i|-I] [-e|-d] [-u ] [-g ] [-b|-p] [-s y|n] [[-o ] ...] [[-x ] ...]

Have a nice day!
See ya!
Matheus.

nc -l – Starting up a fake service

Hi everyone!

Recently i have faced a situation that made me find out a very nice and useful command that helped me a lot, and i hope it comes to help you guys as well, and it’s named:

nc

Situation: We have a replicated environment from one datacenter to another (Using Golden Gate), where the ETL happens. So basically is:

Datacenter 1 (root data)

Replicates to datacenter 2 (transforming the data)

that replicates to datacenter 3 (production itself)

In Datacenter level 2, we have a dataguard configured. So then came the question:

  • What if we need to do the switchover to the standby environments?
  • Will we gonna have everything we need properly set up for the replication?
  • How are we going to test the ports if nothing is up in there? Aren’t we gonna get “connection refused”?

Calm down! There is a very nice workaround for this.

All you need to do is install the nc command as root (if it is not installed already):

yum install nc

Then execute it as follows, on the server you wanna test:

nc -l

example:

I wanna make sure that on the standby server the port 7809 (Golden Gate MANAGER port) is open. On the standby server you run:

nc -l 7809

Then, from a remote server, you are going to be able to connect through a simple telnet command:

telnet server.domain port

example:

telnet standby.company.com 7809

 

ON PRACTICE:

  • Try the telnet from the remote server to the standby:

remoteserver {/home/oracle}: telnet standby.server 7809

Trying 192.168.0.10…

telnet: connect to address 192.168.0.10: Connection refused

  • Then we start the fake service on the standby server!

standby.server {/home/oracle}: nc -l 7809

  • And try the telnet again:

remoteserver {/home/oracle}: telnet standby.server 7809

Trying 192.168.0.10…

Connected to standby.server.

Escape character is ‘^]’.

 

Cheers!

Rafael.