AUSOUG QLD May E-Bulletin information

Published by Peter McLarty | Filed under oracle

AUSOUG QLD is running the FNQ roadshow again. This is a chance for those in Central and North QLD to get a chance to see a number of presentations from Oracle and Implementers of Oracle solutions. if you are in the north of the state I would recommend you making an attempt to attend these presentations

AUSOUG QLD Branch presents Guy Harrison

Published by Peter McLarty | Filed under database, oracle

Atheros wireless drivers in Emachine dont like working with a Netgear WNDR3700

Published by Peter McLarty | Filed under General IT

Oh no non Oracle post

A few months ago I upgraded my home office to have a Netgear WNDR3700 wireless Router Dual N as they refer to it. Overall it has proven to be a great product albeit with a bug regarding image file on usb devices attached to it (not a big issue here). Early this month I bought an Acer Emachine Netbook  for the house and could only get it to work on the Guest network which I have configured with WEP (yes I know about the security unfortunately the DS only has WEP. So we need a WEP secure network available.  I had that network configured on the router to not be able to connect to local resources on my lAN only use Internet.

Unfortunately I have through some research come to the conclusion the Atheros chip set or its drivers are pretty substandard and am starting to get a distaste for their shortcomings. Generally the Linux drivers are difficult to get working and the Windows ones seem to come up short in their capabilities. This applies across Ethernet and Wireless drivers that I have used in recent months. It might make me shy away now from Asus of which I had generally preferred as my mother board manufacturer and from any devices that uses Atheros chip sets.

I wonder if this is not dissimilar to the problem that has been experienced with the IPad, Apple says name the Networks the same and use the same encryption, I wonder if that will work, A test is coming up unless a reader has some answers

See ya round

Peter

Oracle servers on Citrix Xen Server

Published by Peter McLarty | Filed under Linux, oracle

I have finally gotten around to getting a small but decent Server set up to build a set of Oracle servers on to create some testing environments. To do this I have a with box with an Asus P5KPL-CM motherboard with a Intel E2200 CPU and 4Gb RAM, probably sort of small but this is a start to being able to do some half decent testing of new products.  For reasons not quite clear I tried to do this on Citrix Xen Server. No great drama, download the CD and the Linux Pack and get to installing this was around 300gb in total.

Next was to install Oracle Linux and I also have a Centos Server on this configuration to build non Oracle products Download a few ISO’s and there in is my problem. I should have installed and got Xen working first.  The problem I encountered is that Xen has types of templates it uses to create a build environment for installing various Linuxes and Windows.  I had in my wisdom downloaded Centos 5 Update 3 and Oracle EL 5 update 4. Xen is not able to install either. So two more Downloads and I had the appropriate version of each 5.2 for Centos and Update 2 of OEL.  I am not sure what is involved with the bits required to support newer versions but it is a bug bear when there is nothing obvious about this.

While that was happening I had tried to install Xen on the host in question, cannot recognize the Atheros drivers used on many mother boards.  Most Linux has problems with those. I went back to the computer shop I use FTC in Sunnybank and obtained a network card for it. this time a TP-link with Realtek chipset on board. Xen could see it, it could use it but the driver made this about as flaky as it could be.  So download the driver development kit try and install it to build a better driver. Installation of the VM into the server kept failing due to the flakiness of the river being used. Just to clarify that is probably a fine driver with the correct chipset, I think mine was a borderline case of a match. After a few days of trying out went the TP-link for an alternative. I finally settled on a D-Link 503 which is on the HCL and can be obtained for around $50. Using the Xensource HCL is a must it seems for some of your kit to get this working. In the end it is just plain easier..

So I have succeeded to get 5 update 2 of Centos and OEL installed and have yum updating the installation of OEL as I write this. Should have a 5upd4 install after this is finished, might yet bump that to update 5, but can do that later some time

To get the update to happen you need to link back to the public repository using the following

# cd /etc/yum.repos.d# wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el5.repo

Activate the repositories you want as per the instructions on Public YUM server

Information available from Public YUM Server

Certainly a challenge without a bit of foresight and knowledge learned

See ya round

Peter

Great free tool for online meetings

Published by Administrator | Filed under General IT

I am sure as a consultant you have had the need to have an online meeting with someone close or further away. I know I have and I sure could have used it a little while back when i had a customer in Dubai I needed to do a support call for. With a bit of recent research I found  this product which  will  allow you to have a conference for a virtual team of up to 20 unless you want to take a paid subscription. Then you can increase your meeting size to 50 or 1000, all at very reasoable prices. Don’t miss what this might provide you for remote support or conducting an online trainings session for a small handful of those that might be want to find out something you know. It is easy to use and works in the browser, no software to install. It works with Firefox, and IE as well as a number of other browsers. Another great feature of a paid subscription is that you can record your conference or meeting and if appropriate content then using the embed details provided add the recording to your blog or website.  So if you think you might have a need then go check it out.

Have a great day

Peter