Oracle 12c on Fedora 27

As always, I have to start with a warning.

With that out of the way…

Fedora 27 has been out for a couple of weeks now, but I’ve not really been able to do anything with it because I couldn’t get it installed on VirtualBox. I finally managed to get the installation to work, provided I used the Live DVD when I was running VirtualBox on an Oracle Linux 7 host. That means I was finally able to have a play with 12cR2 on Fedora 27.

It’s pretty much the same as the installation on Fedora 26.

So now you know how to do it, please don’t! 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

 

VirtualBox 5.2.2

VirtualBox 5.2.2 has been released.

The downloads and changelog are in the usual places.

I’ve done the installation on my Windows 7 PC at work, macOS High Sierra and Oracle Linux 7 and all worked fine.

For some reason the automatic download of the extension pack failed on all platforms. I just downloaded it manually and installed it and it was OK.

I was hoping this would solve the problem I have with Fedora 27. I can’t complete an install (even with 3D acceleration turned off) on macOS or Windows 7 because I get this.

The new version of VirtualBox reacts the same as the previous one, so back to the drawing board with that. 🙂

The only way I can get Fedora 27 installed is to do it on a OL7 host using the Workstation Live DVD. The live DVD works on the other hosts too, but they won’t complete an install using it, or any other spin…

Everything else is happy though, so we are all good. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

A Test of Common Sense

Imagine you are a couple of window cleaners and you are presented with a glass fronted building like this.

The two doors are electric and will automatically open if anyone, including yourself, approaches them from the inside or outside. Whilst answering the question below, keep in mind this is lunch time, which happens to be the busiest time of the day for people entering and leaving this building.

Which of the following approaches would you choose? (pick only one)

  1. Lock one of the doors. Clean the glass above the locked door. When the water has stopped flooding down unlock the door. Lock the second door. Clean the glass above the locked door. When the water has stopped flooding down unlock the door.
  2. Lock both doors. Clean all the glass. When the water has stopped flooding down unlock both doors.
  3. Come back another time when there aren’t hordes of people trying to get through the doors, and clean the glass using the method outlined in (1), or maybe even (2).
  4. Leave both doors unlocked. Clean the glass above both doors so water is flooding down both of them at the same time. Since you are each standing in front of the doors, they keep opening and some of the water runs into the building.

I think you can guess which one I witnessed today. I truly worry for the future of the human race!

Cheers

Tim…

Bricklayers and DBAs may share the same fate…

A few days ago I was listening to a program on the radio that was discussing the current state of the building trade in the UK.

I wasn’t paying that much attention during the start of the show as they discussed the progress in 3D printing, which is allegedly now being used to produce prefabricated panels for buildings. The suggestion being that 3D printing makes building cheaper, quicker and less labour intensive. Prefabricated buildings have been around for many years in one form or another, so that wasn’t really news, but the 3D printing bit made it sound a bit cooler… 🙂

After extolling the virtues of 3D printing, the program moved on to the impact of all this on the building trade and that’s where it got interesting. To cut a long story short they said this method of building would have a big impact on employment levels in the building trade, saying bricklayers would be a thing of the past. Allegedly the UK building trade and the associated unions are resisting this change, but finance would inevitably make this happen and then what happens to all the builders? Allegedly there is no steer from the building trade, unions or government about how we will cope with the unemployment associated with this shift in the industry, or possible retraining necessary…

You’ll notice I’ve said allegedly a lot, as I don’t know how factual this discussion was, but it was interesting all the same…

So I was sitting in the car thinking, “That sounds familiar!” 🙂 I’ve been talking about the changes in our industry a lot recently. It’s not time to panic, but it’s not sensible to stick your head in the sand and wake up one day to find you are surplus to requirement…

Cheers

Tim…

Update: With reference to a comment, in the UK houses are still predominantly brick built. Offices and high-rise is a different story. 🙂

VMware Workshop : Video

A few months ago I wrote about a VMware Workshop in Cork, co-sponsored by Pure Storage. All the posts associated with that are linked from the wrap-up post here. This is just a quick note to say a short video of that event came out recently and can be seen here.

There is a brief clip of me sounding dazed and confused, which makes me laugh.

For your information, we use VMware for the following.

  • Oracle databases : All but two of our projects using Oracle databases have the databases running on Oracle Linux inside VMware virtual machines. The two projects that don’t are things we are hoping to switch off soon as they are being replaced.
  • MySQL databases : All run on Oracle Linux inside VMware virtual machines.
  • SQL Server databases : All run on Windows inside VMware virtual machines.
  • WebLogic : All run on Oracle Linux inside VMware virtual machines.
  • Tomcat : All run on Oracle Linux inside VMware virtual machines.
  • Node.js : We recent put some stuff live running on Node. That’s on Oracle Linux inside VMware virtual machines.

You get the picture. We pretty much do everything on VMware and almost always use Oracle Linux. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Birmingham City University (BCU) Talk #6

On Monday I did my 6th talk at Birmingham City University (BCU).

During this session I spoke to second year computer science students about graduate employment with a sprinkling of community involvement thrown in. This was a modified version of a session I gave about 2 years ago, which inspired a series of blog posts called What Employers Want.

I always find these sessions fun, as they are not normal tech presentations. I’ve mentioned this before, but these type of session require different skills compared to straight tech presentations, because you can’t hide behind the tech. 🙂

If you are a tech speaker, reach out to your local universities and colleges to see if they need some guest speakers. You will both benefit from this!

Thanks to Jagdev Bhogal and BCU for inviting me again. See you again soon.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle OpenWorld 2017 : Feedback

A couple of days ago I got an email from Oracle giving feedback about my session at Oracle OpenWorld 2017. I finally got round to checking it today.

I did a double-take at first as most of the feedback results I’ve seen before have been out of 5 or 6. I may be wrong, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen the feedback scored with a maximum score of 3. Here’s what it said…

Survey Results
The count and average of your survey score is shown below (scale of 1 to 3, with 3 being the highest).  Comments that were provided as part of the service are shown in aggregration (separated by a semi-colon).

Overall Rating
2.94

Number of Respondents
35

Comments
Very intriguing ideas.; Great and entertaining presenter.

I’m very pleased with that. Thanks to the people who left feedback and the two that wrote something. I like the thought of having intriguing ideas, but I suspect the “entertaining” bit was when I nearly fell through the stage a couple of times because I’m so fat. 🙂

The first four articles I wrote when I got back from OOW17 were inspired by the event.

I still have 3 more OOW17 inspired articles to come, but some other stuff that has jumped the queue because I need it for work. The work stuff will hopefully result in a series of articles, provided they are good enough to publish without making me look like a fool. If not, it will just look like I’ve not been writing/blogging for a while. I’m sure the world will cope… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…