Orcan Update…

I’ve been in Sweden for the last few days at Orcan, the Swedish Oracle User Group. The event was held in the Yasuragi Hasseludden hotel about 20 minutes outside Stockholm. I was a surprised when I arrived as the hotel is a Japanese Spa and it didn’t really seem to be an obvious place to hold a conference. As it turned out it was a great choice. The atmosphere was very relaxing and the social event involved sitting and chatting in a hot bath then going for food. It sounds a bit strange, but it was good fun.

Some of the sessions were in Swedish, so I took the opportunity to use the spa facilities, including a flotation tank. It’s quite freaky lying in a big plastic bubble full of salt water with no light or sound. Sensory deprivation is a strange thing…

It was good to see some familar faces (Julian Dontcheff and Laurent Schneider) and meet some new people including Joel Goodman.

I’d like to say a big thank you to Patrik Norlander for inviting me to speak at the event and thanks to everyone who attended my talks. Hope to see you all again soon.

I think I’m going to be at home for the next few months. It looks like I’ll be in Chile, Bulgaria and Finland in the middle of next year, but for the moment life is back to normal…

Cheers

Tim…

More Discworld Books…

The recent travelling means I’ve been able to do some more Discworld reading:

The Truth: Ankh-Morpork gets its first newspaper. It’s all downhill from there on…

Thief of Time: The perfect clock is built, time stops and the world as we know it ends. Susan, Death’s Granddaughter, and the History Monks come to the rescue.

The Last Hero: Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde decide to give the Gods what-for! Could this mean the end of Discworld?

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents: A talking cat, talking rats and a stupid looking kid pretending to be the Pied Piper. Life is never quite as simple as a fairy tale.

Next stop, book 29. The journey continues…

Cheers

Tim…

Missing UKOUG…

I’m a bit hacked off because I’m missing out on UKOUG…

I got a free pass to check out the conference this year and I can’t go because I’ve got a cold. I spent the whole of yesterday in bed and I think I’m going back there now. I’m bored out of my brain, but every time I try to do anything other than sleep I feel really dodgy and my joints hurt.

It’s my nephews birthday tomorrow. If I miss that I’m going to be in all sorts of trouble, but it’s not looking good at the moment…

I’m off to Sweden next week for a conference over there. I hope I’m feeling better by then!

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 10 and Oracle 11gR1…

I like to meddle with Fedora from time to time, just so I can see what’s coming round the corner in RHEL. I read recently that Fedora 11 will be the base for RHEL6, which means we are about 6 months away from seeing what the future of RHEL is going to be…

Much as I expected, there were no real problems getting Oracle 11gR1 running on Fedora 10. Here is an OS and an Oracle installation guide for Fedora 10.

The Fedora 10 network configuration dialog seemed to have a couple of issues/bugs. For a start, it was impossible to set the subnet mask. It was constantly overwritten by the default gateway. I adjusted it in the config file and it was fine, but it was a bit confusing for a while. 🙂

I’ve complained a number of times in the past that Fedora doesn’t seem to have an obvious direction. Is it server or is it desktop? Of course it’s both, but I think some clear intent helps from a marketing point of view. The fact that the Desktop Edition, a live CD, is at the top of the Get Fedora page will save many people form downloading a DVD full of software they will never need. Once installed, you get access to all the software via the “Add/Remove Software” dialog.

A few interesting things about the installation are:

  • The installation package list is fixed. There’s no customization during the installation.
  • The installer assumes you want DHCP for your network.
  • SELinux and the Firewall are on by default.
  • Services like SSHD are not on by default.

I guess if these issues annoy you, don’t pick the desktop edition. 🙂

I think this is definite step in the right direction as far as encouraging Fedora for desktop use.

Cheers

Tim…

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