VirtualBox 7.0.6

VirtualBox 7.0.6 maintenance release has arrived.

The downloads and changelog are in the usual places.

I’ve installed it on Windows 10 and 11 machines with no drama. I’ve also run Packer builds of all my Vagrant boxes, which you can find on Vagrant Cloud here.

So far so good. I’ve not had any drama.

I’ll be doing lots of testing over the next few days as I add the latest patches to my Vagrant builds. I’ll update here if I notice anything unusual.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Database 18c Released : How to Get Started

Just in case you missed it, Oracle Database 18c was released on Friday. You can read the announcement in this post.

How to Get Started

You might be a bit disappointed if you don’t have an Oracle Cloud account, or an engineered system. Not to worry. You can try Oracle Database 18c on Live SQL.

The documentation is already available. You should probably take a look at the new features doc.

Just a few things to manage your expectations.

Oracle Database 18c is Oracle 12c Release 2 (12.2.0.2)

In the old terms, Oracle Database 18c is a patchset for Oracle 12.2. For quite some time it’s been known Oracle have moved to a new release model for most products, including the database, with the version number now including the year and the quarter etc. How the version numbers now work is explained in MOS Doc ID 2285040.1. The release schedule for these database versions is shown in MOS Doc ID 742060.1.

So before you lose your mind about how few new features there are for a “6 number jump in version”, just think for a second! All this has been reported for months. Mike Dietrich first wrote about the new versioning system in August last year. Many of the announcements at OpenWorld 2017 mentioned 18c was 12.2.0.2 with a different name. None of this is a surprise if you’ve been following the news. 🙂

Oracle Database 18c is Not an Autonomous Database

If you follow me you will have seen these posts.

I can’t believe I’m still seeing this confusion. What has been released in the Oracle 18c database, not the Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud Service. The product that’s been released is a DBaaS release of 18c, so it’s pretty much what you will get to run on-prem. It’s not autonomous! Once again, none of this is a surprise if you’ve been following the news. 🙂

Oracle Database 18c : Cloud First

The debate about “cloud first” has been going on for some time. I wrote a couple of pieces about it in 2016.

I think the cloud first approach worked out well for 12.2. I don’t remember a release that has been this stable before the first patchset for ages. I think some of that is down to the fact it was released to the cloud first, and the first on-prem release contained a bunch of bug fixes found during that cloud first release.

Another gripe I’ve heard is we aren’t getting 18c until part way through the year, so we will probably get 18.2 or 18.3. By the time we get 18c, the 19c release will practically be due. 🙂 My thoughts on this are:

  • If the first on-prem release is 18.2 or 18.3, but it is stable and usable because a load of bugs have been fixed, and hopefully few new ones have been added, that’s great. I don’t want to use a beta for production.
  • It’s going to be a yearly release, so even if the on-prem version of 18c were to be released on 31st December 2018, you’ve still only got a year before the December 2019 on-prem release of 19c. Obviously I’ve made those dates up to prove a point. That point being it’s a yearly release cycle, so complaining about it coming at “X” months into the year is a bit stupid. The focus should be on the quality of the release.

Personal Feelings About the Release

It couldn’t have come at a better time for me.

You may have noticed I’ve seemed a little quiet on the website front. In fact I’ve recently written 19 articles that are live on the site, but haven’t made it to the front page. Most of them are covering older subjects, or what I call backfill. Many of those articles are covering features that have been available since Oracle 8i, but still relevant now. Since they are not “new”, they’ve not been promoted to the front page of the website, and I’ve not pushed them out on social media. I like to stay in the habit of writing, even if I’m struggling to find things I care to write about. I’m not saying I’ve written everything there is to write about 12.2, but I’ve written about pretty much everything I care to write about at this point.

The new release should give me an opportunity to write about something I can promote without feeling stupid. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

WordPress 4.5 Released

WordPress 4.5 “Coleman” has been released.

I just applied it to the five WordPress sites I manage by manually triggering the auto-update and everything went through fine.

There are some updates to the standard themes that you will need to manually trigger for update, but there was no drama there either.

I fully expect a rash of little updates to get released over the coming days as new bugs are spotted. 🙂

Happy upgrading. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

WordPress 3.7.1 Released

WordPress 3.7.1 has been released. The announcement is here and the changelog is here.

If you go on to your blog now, you will have the option of manually initiating the upgrade in the normal way. If you wait a few hours, it will magically update itself for you.

  • The Terminator: A few hours later it begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time… In a panic, they try to pull the plug….
  • Sarah Connor: WordPress fights back.
  • The Terminator: Yes. It launches its missiles against the targets in Russia.
  • John Connor: Why attack Russia? Aren’t they our friends now?
  • The Terminator: Because WordPress knows the Russian counter-attack will eliminate its enemies over here…

I’ve warned you!

Cheers

Tim…

VirtualBox 4.2 Released

Hot on the heels of the 4.1.22 release comes Virtual Box 4.2. The downloads and changelog are in the usual places.

It’s a major release with a bunch of interesting new features, so I’ve got an interesting few days ahead while I get to grips with it. You can get an idea about what’s in it here.

Happy upgrading!

Cheers

Tim…

VirtualBox 4.1.18 Released…

VirtualBox 4.1.18 has been released. It’s a maintenance release and the downloads and changelogs are in the normal places.

It’s been about 2 years since I switched across to VirtualBox (when the shared virtual disks feature was introduced). In that time there have been loads of updates to the product. In the same time frame, VMware Server has had zero releases. I still get a lot of people writing to me about issues with VMware Server installations. I immediately tell them to ditch it. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I’ve got nothing against VMware’s paid-for offerings, which do get updates. I just don’t see the point in using them when VirtualBox is free and works great for me.

VirtualBox 4.1 Released…

Hot on the heels of the VirtualBox 4.0.12 maintenance release, shipped a few days ago, comes VirtualBox 4.1. It contains loads of new features, explained here and in the changelog.

The upgrade went smoothly on my MacBook Pro, but on my Fedora 15 servers I had to uninstall the old version manually before installing the new version. None of my settings were lost so everything was easy enough.

It certainly seems applying VirtualBox upgrades is becoming a fulltime job. Of course, the quick release cycle is a lot better than getting no updates, like VMware Server. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…