Tag: oracle linux 9

Oracle Enterprise Manager 13.5 Release Update 22 (13.5.0.22) Certified on Oracle Linux 9 (OL9)

We’ve been pushing out some Oracle 19c databases on Oracle Linux 9 (OL9) since it was certified, see here, but those databases have not been monitored or backed up by Cloud Control, because the Enterprise Manager (EM) 13.5 agent was not certified on OL9. Instead we had reverted to the bad old days of using CRON scripts to do everything.

Since we started running 19c on OL9 I had been regularly searching for the EM certification notice. Last week I noticed MOS Doc ID 2978593.1, which said, “EM Agent 13.5 with Enterprise Manager 13.5 Release Update 22 or higher is certified on RHEL9 and OL9”. Happy days. I subsequently found this post announcing update 22, which I had somehow missed. I was also nudged by someone on Twitter/X to check the certification matrix again.

EM 13.5.0.22 at Work

We have EM 13.5 running on OL8 at work. As soon as I found the agent was certified on OL9 servers I updated our installation to release update 22 and started to try and push out agents to the OL9 servers.

We hit an initial problem, which was EM uses SSH to push out the agent, and uses SHA1 to do it. Unfortunately SHA1 is not allowed on our OL9 servers, so that kind-of scuppered things. This is the error we got.

  • Error: SSH connection check failed
  • Cause: Connection to the SSH daemon (sshd) on the target host failed with the following error : KeyExchange signature verification failed for key type=ssh-rsa
  • Recommendation: Ensure that SSH daemon (sshd) on the target host is able to respond to login requests on the provided sshd port 22.Ensure the provided user name and password or ssh keys are correct.Ensure that the property PasswordAuthentication is set to yes in the SSHD configuration file (sshd_config) on the remote host.

To resolve this the system administrators issued the following command as root on the OL9 servers.

update-crypto-policies --set DEFAULT:SHA1

Once that was done the agents pushed out with no problems.

I’m currently pushing out agents to all our 19c on OL9 servers, and replacing all the CRON scripts with EM backups and monitoring.

This brings OL9 into line with out other databases servers. Happy days.

EM 13c Installation on OL9

Although I don’t need it for work, I decided to spend the bank holiday weekend trying to do a fresh installation of 13.5 on OL9. I tried several different ways, with the main two being.

  • Install and configure the base release without the patches.
  • Install with the patches downloaded and applied as part of the installation and configuration.

In both cases everything looked fine until near the end of the process, where the OMS refused to start. Unfortunately I couldn’t find anything obvious in the logs. It takes a long time to run the build, so having it fail near the end is quite frustrating.

At the moment I can’t see any OL9 specific docs, so I can’t tell if I’m missing out a vital step. As mentioned in the previous section, there are definite differences between OL9 and OL8, so I would not be surprised if the documentation (or MOS note) is released that includes an obvious gotcha.

As soon as I get it working I’ll release an article and a Vagrant build.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Database 19c on Oracle Linux 9 (OL9): Installation Articles and Vagrant Builds

Earlier this year I wrote a rant about the lack of product certifications on Oracle Linux 9 (OL9).

One of the points I made was we are having to replace OL7 servers, but were forced to go to OL8 because Oracle 19c was not certified on OL9, and Oracle 23c on-prem is not available.

This blog post by Mike DieTrich changed all that because now 19c is certified on OL9, provided you are on patch 19.19 or above, and are on the correct version of UEK or the RHEL kernel. See Mike’s post for details.

Installation Articles

Of course, this triggered some installation articles.

Vagrant Builds

There are database, RAC and Data Guard vagrant builds here.

Odd Occurrence

I noticed something a little odd when doing these builds using the 19.21 RU patches.

For the database and Data Guard builds I used the DB RU and OJVM combo patch, and I was still forced to fake the distribution using the CV_ASSUME_DISTID environment variable. For the RAC build I used the GI RU and OJVM combo patch, and I didn’t need to fake the distribution.

I went back to the DB build, and instead used the GI RU and OJVM combo patch, and I no longer needed to fake the distribution. So it looks like there is something different about the database patches between these two types of RUs that slightly affect the installation process. It’s no big deal, but it might catch you out.

Oracle 19c is old. Why do you care?

We are in the process of replacing a load of VMs that are currently running OL7, and we want to go to OL9. Prior to this announcement were were going to have to do one of two things.

  • Migrate to 19c on OL8, which would be OK for 23c when it drops, but not ideal as building an OL8 box now seems like a fail.
  • Wait for 23c on-prem to drop and move to 23c on OL9. The problem here is we could run out of time waiting for 23c to come.

This announcement gives us a new option.

  • Migrate to 19c on OL9, then upgrade to 23c when the on-prem version drops.

This third option is way better for us!

Remember

There are a couple of things to remember.

  • You need to be on 19c to upgrade to 23c, so getting your 19c database on an OS that is supported for 23c is important. We’ve had confirmation that 23c will be available for OL8 and OL9 on release.
  • The extended support waiver for 19c was increased from 1 year to 2 years. Mike also wrote about this here. That means you get free extended support for 19c until April 30, 2026.

Conclusion

This is massive for us. I’m very happy!

Cheers

Tim…