Sentrigo Hedgehog…

During OpenWorld this year I bumped into a guy called Slavik Markovich from Sentrigo. We chatted about a couple of things and he gave me his card. That’s when I realized Sentrigo were the company who’d been advertising quite heavily through Google Ads on many Oracle sites, including my own.

I’m not really into reviewing products unless they really jump out at me, but Slavik seemed like a nice guy so I thought I’d take a look at what Sentrigo were doing. After returning to the UK I downloaded their Hedgehog product, but never got round to using it. The website says,

“Hedgehog: Real-time database monitoring, auditing and breach prevention”

Since then I’ve had a number of phone calls from their marketing department asking how I got on with the product, to which I’ve been replying, “I haven’t installed it yet.” 🙂

Well, today I finally got round to installing the Enterprise Product on an Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) 5 virtual machine running an 11g database. You have to install a server package, plus a sensor for each host you want to monitor. As this was only a test I installed the server and sensor packages on the same VM as my database. The installations went smoothly. All you have to do is execute a “.bin” file for each package.

Once the installation was complete I hit my first minor issue. How do you get into the product?

The installation didn’t give me any clue about the command or URL I should use to access the product. I did a search on the OS using “find / -name sentrigo” and found a directory called “/usr/local/sentrigo-server”, so I figured that was a place to start. A quick look in the “conf/server.xml” file told me port 8080 was used for non-SSL connections, so I pointed my browser at “http://oel5-11g.localdomain:8080” and I had a log in screen. Later I noticed the help text that comes with the product contained the default URL information, but as this is only available once you’ve logged in, including it in the installation output would have been a nice touch.

That’s when I hit my second minor issue. What do you log in as?

I tried admin/admin and got in. 🙂 The help text (available after you’ve logged in 😉 ) suggests you use the username/password entered during the installation. I assume the Windows installation includes this, but the Linux one certainly doesn’t. Once again, a message in the installation output telling you the default login credentials would have been nice. Either that, or put a link the help from the login screen.

So, what does it do?

The product contains a whole bunch of predefined rules for situations that Sentrigo believe represent a risk to your database. It also allows you to define your own rules using a rules wizard. For example, you may create a simple rule that says if the terminal accessing the database doesn’t equal “X”, this constitutes a breach. The rules can be as simple or complicated as you wish. The server then monitors your databases via the sensors and logs alerts when any of the rules have been broken. You can view the alerts through the server application, or have them emailed to you.

What do I think of it?

That’s a little difficult because I couldn’t get it to monitor my database (see update at bottom of post). The server was running fine. The sensor was running fine. The database connection information was fine. Even so, the database remained in the “Unmonitored” state. I tried the Standard Product also, but got the same result. Even so, I will make a few comments from my very limited use of the product:

  • It’s a neat idea.
  • It looks really nice.
  • The response to action buttons was not always clear. You hit the save button on some screens and nothing seems to happen. There is no alteration to the screen or message to say your changes have been saved. A few times I found myself clicking the Save button several times not knowing if the changes had taken effect. It may sound a little basic, but a “Your changes have been saved” message is sometimes quite useful, if a little ugly.
  • I have no idea why my database wasn’t monitored. At the time of writing the Supported Configurations and FAQ pages on the website were not available and I could see nothing in the help file. It might be as simple as 11g is not supported or a problem with my VM, but I have no evidence for either of these (see update at bottom of post).
  • It would be nice if the installation listed the URLs to access the product and the default login credentials somewhere near the bottom of the output. Maybe the default URLs and login details are available on the website normally, but they weren’t today.

It would be good to see a review of this product by an expert in the security field, like Pete Finnigan. It would also be nice to see some comparison between this product and the notification rules of Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control, but I don’t think I’m really the guy to do this.

I guess it would also be nice to see a working version of the product, but I don’t know if I’m going to spend any more time on this in the near future. I’m already in the weeds and this isn’t really top of my list. I might just look out for the Sentrigo stand at OpenWorld next year. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Update: I had a message from Slavik telling me that 11g on Linux is not supported, so my problems weren’t a reflection of problems in the product. Currently only 11g on Windows 32-bit is supported, but the next version will sort this. As I said before, I’m not sure when I’ll have the time to revisit this product, but it does look neat.

The Kite Runner…

I went to see The Kite Runner last night at the cinema. It’s hard to watch because the subject matter is so strong, but I did think it was a great film. A quick look at plot of the book on Wikipedia makes it pretty obvious to me they’ve softened the story quite a bit for the cinema, but it was certainly heavy enough for me.

If you’re looking for a mindless action blockbuster, this is not it. If you want some challenging viewing, give it a go. I think it’s worth it.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I don’t have any idea of the politcal or cultural accuracy of the film. I’m judging it from the story alone.

Tag Clouds and Navigation…

This post has nothing to do with the blog-tag game!

Whilst meandering around a multitude of blogs I’ve been checking out peoples blog clouds and they make quite interesting reading. They’re quite handy for giving you an idea of what people are writing about and the relative quantities of posts in those areas. I do allocate posts to groups, but I’ve never really bothered with tagging individual posts. Well that’s changing. I’ve added a tag cloud to my blog and tagged a handful of posts. I’m not sure if I can be bothered to tag all old posts, but I’m going to try and keep on top of any new ones. It will be interesting to see how my tag cloud develops.

During my tag cloud escapde I got a message on the Oracle Wiki from a lady called Claudia commenting on the naming and ordering of articles in the OCP new features sections of my website. Many of the OCP new features are so small they don’t really warrant their own article, so I try to group them under the section title from the exam syllabus checklist. This saves me having loads of 10 line articles, but it can make life difficult if you are looking for information on say “10g VPD enhancements”, but you don’t know they are in the “Database Security Enhancements” group. I must admit I’ve struggled with this myself and have been forced to use the site search (left hand side of my pages) on numerous occasions.

Using a tag cloud wouldn’t really be appropriate here, but it did inspire me to create a feature list at the bottom of the 11g New Features section. They’re just links to the relevant subsections of the articles, but hopefully it will make the navigation a little easier. I’ll do a similar thing with the 10g and 9i new features sections when I get time.

Funny how things coincide like that sometimes…

Cheers

Tim…

Post New Year Life Update and Moving Pictures…

Today marks the end of my first full week of “normal” life for quite some time!

I’ve managed to:

  • Swim every day.
  • Get to all my Karate lessons.
  • Do Yoga with my Yoga-buddies, as well do my regular stint of teaching.
  • Get to the gym.
  • Stretch a couple of times a day.
  • Do a bit of writing for the website. I’m concentrating on the OCP 11g new features stuff, but I still don’t think I’m going to be ready in time for the exam going live.
  • Do a bit of reading.

Things are starting to feel something like normal again. My routine has been all over the place since November. First I was in OpenWorld. Then I had a cold for a couple of weeks. Then my dad died. Then it was the Christmas and New Year holiday. I must admit I feel a lot more settled and positive now I’ve got back into my usual rut. 🙂

I finished reading Moving Pictures last night. As I said before, it’s been hard to connect with this book. I’m already starting to remember little bits of it fondly, but the overall experience was that it was a hard slog. I can’t explain why.

I opened up the next book, Reaper Man, and the first 40 pages flew by before I noticed how late it was.

Life goes on…

Cheers

Tim…

Quick note about publishing…

Howard Rogers has been very vocal on a few of points recently. I would link to his blog entries on the subject, but he’s thrown his toys out of the pram and blocked his blog for the time being.

The blog tag game. I love it. I like reading stupid stuff about people and I’m really glad Jake started it. It’s nice to see that we don’t all take life too seriously. I would hate to think that one person making a mountain out of a mole hill would stop people from trying new (for this community) things.

None of these blog posts are unsolicited. These blog posts are not being forced on anyone. If people don’t want to read them they can just switch off. I don’t remember ever asking for my blog to be included in one of the many aggregator sites, so I’m not going to apologize about writing lots of off-topic blogs. If you don’t like it, don’t subscribe.

Alternatively, just subscribe to the Oracle catagory of my blog, which probably will be on-topic:

https://oracle-base.com/blog/category/oracle/feed

Crediting other people. I would like to take this opportunity to say something about crediting the work of others. I got some grief from Howard because I did not reference his article, or give him any sort of credit in my article on rlwrap. There is a single very big reason for this. I didn’t know his article existed and I hadn’t read it when I wrote the piece. I Googled the term “rlwrap”, clicked on the first link returned, downloaded the utility, installed it as was obvious from the “./configure” output, and used it. Simple as that. It’s not exactly rocket science so I didn’t bother to search the net for other examples of how to do it. As a result I have no reason to credit him in this article.

If I had read his or anyone else’s article on this subject, I probably wouldn’t have written it in the first place, but I would certainly have credited them if I had.

You are not duty bound to search the net looking for similar articles and give credit where credit is not due. It’s good to credit people if their work has helped your understanding while writing your article. It’s important to credit people if you are quoting directly from them. It is illegal to republish information without permission.

Conclusion. Have fun with your blogs. That’s what the internet is all about. Write what you want to write. Don’t worry if someone has already done something similar. As long as you are not stealing it’s no big deal. Most of the articles the Oracle community write, including Howard’s, are variations on a theme, so to claim some form of ownership of the subject is wrong. Different people like different viewpoints and writing styles. There’s room for us all.

A request. Please don’t use the comments for this post for “me-too” posts. It’s only my opinion and it’s no more or less valid than anyone else’s. I’m not looking for support or validation because I’m secure enough in my self to not need it. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

rlwrap…

During his unconference session at OpenWorld 2007, Lutz Hartmann used rlwrap to give SQL*Plus and RMAN command line history and basic editing functionality. Like the Windows Process Explorer post I wrote recently, this is another example of a gizmo I’ve used in the past then completely forgotten about, so I’m grateful to Lutz for reminding me. To see how I install and configure it click here.

Cheers

Tim…

Update: Someone and just told me my rlwrap post is now ranked higher than Howard’s on Google. This is really a “duck and cover” event. 🙁

RMAN Enhancements in 11g…

My trip through the 11g new features continues with RMAN Ehancements. These combined with the Data Recovery Advisor and Flashback and LogMiner Enhancements I wrote about previously show that Oracle are really putting a lot of effort into getting this area right. I guess the Data Recovery Advisor will be the most outstanding new feature for most people, but there are loads of tweaks all round that all help to make life easier for us guys on the coal face.

Cheers

Tim…

Tag! Here goes a chain letter…

I just got tagged by Chris Muir, so here goes my 8 things you may not know about me:

  1. When I was 14 years old I weighed 19 stone. That’s 266 pounds or 121 kilos.
  2. I was a distinctly average student at school. A few of my friends were surprised when I passed my exams. Education only really started to click with me after I left school and could focus on subjects I was interested in. At sixth form and university I started getting into my groove.
  3. I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 15, so that’s about 23 years and counting. Even before that I ate very little meat and I never ate fish. I don’t like eggs and I can’t drink milk on its own. I love cheese. Life without cheese is not life. 🙂
  4. I have a form of diabetes known as MODY. In my case it relates to a mutation of the Glucokinase gene. It’s no big thing, but I have to avoid getting too fat and I have to be careful with sugary food (refined or natural).
  5. I played guitar in a couple of bands (Pondlife and Coppertongue) at University. The bands were pretty good, but I wasn’t. I specialized in making weird noises with my guitar effects, rather than actually playing.
  6. I love singing. If I’m alone I sing out loud. If I’m in public I sing in my head. If you see me in the street or in a shop I’m not a crazy guy talking to himself. I’m just singing. 🙂 I can hold a tune, but I’m no star in the making.
  7. Most of my adult life I’ve been an insomniac. I find it very difficult to get to sleep and when I do I wake up a lot during the night. As a result I tend to remember lots of dreams. On average about 3-5 distinct dreams a night. I keep meaning to start writing them down but I’ve never got round to it yet.
  8. I started working with Oracle by accident. I was at an interview and they asked me if I’d heard of Oracle and I said, “Is that the teletext stuff on TV?” At the time Oracle was the name for teletext on ITV, so it wasn’t as dumb as it sounds. Somehow I got the job anyway and the rest is history.

I’m going to tag Andrew Clarke, Andy C, David Aldridge, Dimitri Gielis, Howard Rogers, Jeff Hunter, John Scott and Kevin Closson. (Alphabetical from my blogroll, hopefully not repeating anyone. 🙂 )

Cheers

Tim…

Data Recovery Advisor…

When I first saw the name Data Recovery Advisor, I thought I was going to have a really dull time figuring how this new 11g functionality worked, but it is really quite cool!

I don’t care if you are a beginner or a battle-scarred DBA, every time you have to recovery a database, you get a little twinge of doubt about whether it’s going to work. Sure, if your backups are good and you’ve practiced your recovery scenarios it should work, but what if…

The Data Recovery Advisor goes some way towards calming those jitters by automatically identifying, diagnosing and optionally repairing the problem for you. I think this is totally cool and a great move by Oracle.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. This article got on the front page before it was actually finished. I apologize if you caught the half-done version. 🙂

Guards! Guards! Eric and Moving Pictures…

I recently finished reading Guards! Guards! and Eric. Guards! Guards! has got some great characters and is probably one of my favorite books so far in the series. Eric is a really short story, but it quite pacey, so it was pretty good.

I’m about a third of the way through Moving Pictures and I’m really struggling. There are lots of elements I should find funny, but it’s just not fitting together for me. I think the subject matter is just too dull. I don’t really care about a bunch of sideways references to Hollywood, or in this case Holy Wood. I’m hoping it’ll click so I’m going to persevere.

Cheers

Tim…

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