Tag: Linux

Bringing new life to an old MacBook Pro

I’ve got an old MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009) that sits next to my bed. I use it for watching films and streaming rain sounds while I sleep. It stopped getting OS updates a while ago, and more recently it doesn’t want to play Prime videos, so I figured it was time to take action.

It’s got a Core 2 Duo processor, 8G RAM and a 500G SSD, so it’s not great, but it’s more than capable of doing what I need it to do…

I would like to say I did a lot of research to decide the best OS for it, but that would be a lie. I figured I wanted Ubuntu, and I wanted to run a simple window manager, so I picked Ubuntu Mate.

  • I downloaded the ISO to my Windows 11 desktop.
  • Used the Portable Apps version of Rufus to burn it onto a USB stick.
  • Put the USB stick into my old MBP.
  • Restarted the MBP and held down the “alt” key to give me the boot menu, and picked the USB stick.
  • The live version of Ubuntu Mate started and I clicked the install icon.
  • A few questions later and I had a running Ubuntu Mate installation.

The first problem was I didn’t have wifi access, so I had to plug directly into my router to get internet access. I installed a suitable driver for my wifi card, did an update and I was ready to go. If I had read the installer pages properly, I could have loaded the proprietary drivers as part of the install, but randomly clicking the “Continue” button without reading is the way I roll. 🙂

I installed KeePassXC and DropBox to get access to my passwords, and that’s about it. It’s working really well, and saved me having to think about what to replace the old laptop with.

So my current operating system landscape looks like this:

  • My main workstation is a Dell XPS laptop running Windows 11.
  • I also have a MacBook Pro 15-inch on my desk running macOS Big Sur, which I use to stream films while I work, and test my Vagrant builds on macOS.
  • I have a server running Oracle Linux 7, which I tend not to use much these days as my XPS laptop has more than enough power to do most things I want to do in VirtualBox VMs.
  • I have the old MacBook Pro 13-inch next to my bed running Ubuntu Mate.

I believe in operating system diversity… 🙂

I know people become fanboys/fangirls/fanpeople of their operating system of choice, but I really can’t be bothered with all that anymore. I used Red Hat Linux, then Fedora as my main desktop for 10+ years. I spent a few years with macOS as my daily driver. Now I’m happily using Windows. I’m not even that partisan about my Linux distros these days. I use Oracle Linux for all my Oracle software, but I’ll use any Linux distro for non-Oracle stuff. It’s all the same but different… 😉

Cheers

Tim…

Video : Convert CentOS to Oracle Linux

In today’s video we’ll demonstrate how to convert a CentOS installation to an Oracle Linux installation.

The video is based on this post.

The star of today’s video is Dan Norris, in a clip from a previous OpenWorld, which seems like a long distant memory now.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I know I said there would be no more videos this year, but this was very much “of the moment”, so I thought it was worth doing.

Video : Using Podman With Existing Dockerfiles (Oracle Database and ORDS)

Today’s video shows me using some of my existing Docker builds with Podman. Specifically a 19c database container and an Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) container.

For those with an understanding of Docker, it should look really familiar, but it does introduce a twist in the form of a pod.

The video is based on this article.

You can see more information about containers here.

The star of today’s video is Bart Sjerps. It was really hard to find a piece of this recording that didn’t have James Morle wittering over everyone on it. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Video : Install Podman on Oracle Linux 8 (OL8)

In today’s video we’ll take a look at installing Podman on Oracle Linux 8 (OL8).

This is based on the article here.

You can see more information about containers here.

The star of today’s video is John King. John’s been on the channel a couple of times before. Once to do a message to one of his super-fans, a work colleague of mine who was impressed that I know John, and once for a regular “.com” appearance. I blame the wife for the terrible audio. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Linux 8 (OL8) : Podman

When Oracle Linux 8 (OL8) was released, one of the first things I did was check for the Oracle supplied Docker engine. Nothing.

Not to worry I thought. They are probably waiting for UEK6 to ship before they worry about the Docker engine. I pretty much left it at that. I wasn’t really in much of a rush. To be honest, a new version of Oracle Linux doesn’t really hit my radar until the Oracle database is certified on it. 🙂

UEK6 went live in March and still no sign, so in a recent email exchange with Simon Coter I mentioned it, and was set on the path to Podman.

If I’m honest my first thought was, “Oh FFS! I’ve only just learnt Docker and now I’ve got to start again!” To qualify that, having used Oracle databases for 25 years, using Docker for about 2.5 years feels like I’ve only just started. 🙂

First things first. We currently use Docker in production, so I wanted a route to OL8 without any substantial change, should I need it. So I did this.

It’s not a recommendation. Just something to keep in my back pocket.

After a quick bout of denial I sat down and started to work through some stuff with Podman. Time for a couple of quotes to set some context.

“What is Podman? Podman is a daemonless container engine for developing, managing, and running OCI Containers on your Linux System. Containers can either be run as root or in rootless mode. Simply put: `alias docker=podman`.”

https://podman.io/

“The podman, buildah, and skopeo container tools are provided in the Oracle Linux 8 release. These tools are compatible with the Open Container Initiative (OCI) and can be used to manage the same Linux containers that are produced and managed by Docker and other compatible container engines. Because these tools are light-weight and primarily focused on a subset of features, you can run them minus the overhead of working with a daemon process.”

Release Notes for Oracle Linux 8

After reading this, I was a little less daunted. I installed Podman on OL8 and started to play. That resulted in these posts.

The later is an example of how I run up my demo Docker system using Podman. It’s made up of a container for Oracle Database 19c, and a separate container running ORDS on Tomcat. You’ll notice I use my Docker builds with no changes. It just shows that from a basic usage perspective Podman=Docker.

A few quick things I noticed immediately when switching to Podman.

  • Networking is a little different. You define a pod to hold containers, and you expose services to the outside world at the Pod level. Containers inside the Pod can speak to each other. For the simple examples I’ve worked with is actually easier than using Docker networks.
  • There is a package called “podman-docker”, which allows you to use the Docker command, even though you are using Podman. I don’t really like this. I think it’s better to just stick to a regular alias if you feel the need to retain the Docker command. Better still, just get used to typing podman instead of docker.
  • There is no native equivalent of docker-compose. There is a podman-compose project you might want to try. Of course the name “Podman” gives you a clue about what you should really be doing. Defining pods. In addition to manually defining pods, they can get run from a YAML file that’s compatible with Kubernetes. You can generate these YAML files from an existing pod. I’ve not written up this aspect yet, but it’s coming. 🙂

So far it’s been a pretty simple journey, but remember I’m a noob. The articles and my opinions on this will evolve over time.

A quick mention about Vagrant. When I am playing with Docker and Podman I use Vagrant to build a play VM. As a result of this stuff I’ve changed things around a little. If you look at my Vagrant respository you will see the old docker directory has gone and now we have these.

I’ve now pretty much ditched my OL7 Docker environment in favour of the OL8 Podman environment. The only way I’m really going to learn it is by forcing myself to use it. 🙂

If anyone else is in the denial phase, I understand where you are at. Just get started. It’s not so bad. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I’ve not played with Buildah and Skopeo yet.

PPS. The image has no significance. It just looks good. 🙂

Video : Docker : Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) Build

In today’s video we’ll take a look at a simple Docker build for Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS). In this example we’re using Tomcat on Oracle Linux 8 (oraclelinux:8-slim), which is connecting to an Oracle 19c database.

This video is based on the following articles and links.

The star of today’s video is Colm Divilly, of ORDS fame. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Video : Oracle Linux 8 Installation

Today’s video is a quick run through a manual installation of Oracle Linux 8.

I put out a number of articles about Oracle Linux 8 when the beta was first released. I’ve now updated them where appropriate.

I’ve also gone through my Vagrant builds for 18c on OL8 and 19c on OL8. They work fine, although there isn’t a Vagrant box for OL8 yet, so I had to make my own using the method similar to this.

Remember, OL8 has only just come out, so the database is not certified on it yet. I’ve put at note a the top of the database installation guides saying as much.

The star of today’s video is Mahir M. Quluzade. He was grinning most of the way through filming this. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Dbvisit Standby 9 Installation on Linux (and Vagrant)

The folks at Dbvisit recently released version 9 of their Dbvisit standby product.

It’s been a while since I last played with the product, so I downloaded the free trial and gave it a whirl.

I have to admit I forgot just how easy it is to work with. It feels pretty much like “unzip and go”. The result of my playtime was this article.

I also knocked up a Vagrant build, so I can easily recreate it. You can find that here.

I stuck to a basic configuration of a single instance primary (node1) and standby (node2), with the console on a separate VM (console). If you want to try something more exotic, or you are using Windows, you can get more information from the Installing Dbvisit Standby documentation.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. This isn’t a sponsored post. I’ve known the folks at Dbvisit for years so I keep an eye on what they are doing.

Oracle 18c and 19c on Oracle Linux 8 (beta)

Fresh on the back of yesterday’s Fedora 30 post, I noticed a post from Avi Miller about the release of Oracle Linux 8 Beta. I had a day off work, so once I had finished the Fedora 30 builds, I started on the Oracle Linux 8 builds.

It should be obvious, but this is a beta release of the OS, so everything below is just me playing. It will all have to be done again, and done “properly” once the final release appears. Even then, it will be a while before anything is certified against the new OS, so don’t take this seriously.

I’ve pushed some stuff up to GitHub. It uses a Vagrant box I created myself, in the same way I wrote about here.

I think it’s time I did something “real”, rather than playing around with stuff that doesn’t relate to something I would do at work. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Database 18.3.0 On-Prem for Linux

I was just about to go to bed when I saw this post by Mike Dietrich. Yay!

I’ve had access to 18c on the Oracle Cloud for some time, so I’ve already been able to write a bunch of stuff about it (see here), but it always feels geekier when it’s running on your own kit. It also makes demos a little less dangerous if you can fall back to your own machine. 🙂

Of course I’m starting the downloads now, so maybe I’ll get to have a play tomorrow? 🙂 If you want it you can grab it from here.

Happy upgrading…

Cheers

Tim…