UltraEdit for Mac, Production Release…

Just to let you know, UltraEdit for Mac has now been released to production.

I’ve been using the beta version for a while and it’s really cool. If you love UltraEdit on Windows, then you will love UltraEdit on Mac. It’s been released as version 2.0, which from what I can see has pretty much all the features of the Windows version 16.x. The Linux version (1.0)  is still missing a lot, but it is supposed to have a version 2.0 release in the new year.

I’ve upgraded my Windows license to a multi-platform license with unlimited updates, so I can run UltraEdit on Windows, Linux and Mac and never pay for an upgrade again. It’s not the cheapest option but for a bit of kit like this I’m very willing to pay up.

So now I have UltraEdit on everything and SnagIt on Windows and Mac. If I could switch from Shutter to SnagIt on Linux I would be ecstatic. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 14 on my desktop…

I wrote a post a few days ago about Fedora 14. Over the weekend I could resist no longer and switched to Fedora 14 as my desktop OS. Prior to this I had been using CentOS 5 for ages.

Now remember, I do almost everything in VMs, so all my Oracle stuff is still on OEL5 x86-64. This is just the desktop I use to run VirtualBox and a browser.

So far so good. The installation went fine and VirtualBox is behaving it self OK, so all my VMs are running with no problems. For the most part it all feels very similar to CentOS 5, but because all the underlying pieces are up to date I get to run a few extra things, like Chrome as my browser, Shutter for image capture and a newer version of Gimp.

I think Ubuntu is a more natural desktop than Fedora, but I’ve been using Red Hat versions of Linux for years, so I just feel a little happier on them. Fingers crossed this will work out OK.

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 14…

Fedora 14 is here and so are the obligatory articles:

My attitude to Fedora and Ubuntu as changed today, with most of that shift due to VirtualBox.

Before I switched to VirtualBox I was always reliant on my OS being able to run VMware Server. Over the years I had repeatedly encountered problems running VMware Server on Ubuntu and Fedora. Not all of them show stoppers, but enough to put me off them as my main desktop OS. Why did I stick with VMware Server? Just because it supported shared virtual disks, which allowed me to easily create virtual RAC installations. Version 3.2.8 of VirtualBox included support for shared disks for the first time, so I ditched VMware Server and launched full scale into using VirtualBox.

While I was playing around with Fedora 14 I was thinking how cool it would be to have a newer OS on my desktop that could run Google Chrome, then it dawned on me that now I can. I’ve been free of VMware Server for a while now and I hadn’t realized the knock-on effect of that.

My years of using RHEL mean I feel a little more comfortable with Fedora than Ubuntu, but to be honest all I do on a desktop is fire up VirtualBox, use a browser (preferably Chrome) and use a terminal for SSH. Virtually everything else is done in VMs.

Now, do I waste a few days assessing the various options for my desktop, or do I just stick with CentOS and deal with the fact I can’t use Chrome on it? 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

UltraEdit on Linux and Mac…

When I was a Windows user, one tool I felt I couldn’t live without was UltraEdit. It’s awesome.

A few months ago I checked the UltraEdit website and saw a Linux version of the editor was available. Unfortunately, it only had a subset of the functionality found in the Windows version. I checked again yesterday, and the Linux version is still lagging behind, but it’s a bit better than it was. I wrote to the company (IDM Computer Solutions) to ask when/if some of the functionality I require would be coming and it looks like the next release (start of next year) will include everything I need for my day-to-day use. What’s more, towards the end of this year there should be a Mac version available. Joy!

There are of course alternatives out there, but I really like Ultraedit and I’m happy to pay for a lifetime updates license on each platform (I already have a Windows one) if I have to. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a nice Christmas present from IDM Computer Solutions. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle RAC on VirtualBox…

With the recent news that the latest version of VirtualBox now supports shared disks, I thought I better give it a go and see if I could do a RAC installation on it. The good news is it worked as expected. You can see a quick run through here:

This is pretty good news as that was the last feature that tied me to VMware Server. I’ve now moved pretty much everything I do at home on to VirtualBox and it’s working fine.

It’s worth taking a little time looking at the VBoxManage command line. Some of the operations, like creating the shared disks, have to be done from the command line at the moment. It’s also handy for running VMs in headless mode if you don’t want the GUI screen visible all the time.

Cheers

Tim…

Red Hat heading for Oracle buyout?

I know it’s been said before, but I read this and thought, once Red Hat’s market value starts to drop Oracle could get a really good deal.

I thought the reference to the quality of Red Hat’s support was quite comical. I’ve always found their support to be terrible. To be more specific, you raise a service request and never get a response. If that is quality support I obviously have very different standards to the CIOs surveyed.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Database File System (DBFS) in 11gR2…

I’ve been having a play with the DBFS functionality in 11gR2.

For the most part it is extremely simple. If you are working on Linux then it’s a really neat solution. On any other platform you are limited to using the dbfs_client tool, which is currently lacking a lot of functionality. Even so, it’s a good first step.

I am having a bit of trouble with the “/etc/fstab” mounting. I’ve included it in the article, with a warning that it isn’t working for me. If anyone has got it to work I would really appreciate some input on what I’ve got wrong. The documentation is a little sparse on this subject even with some digging around it’s proving difficult.

I’ll probably be witing another article on a different aspect of DBFS soon.

Cheers

Tim…