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Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for Oracle now supports version 23.2 of Oracle Application Express (APEX) for 19c and 21c versions of Oracle Database. Using APEX, developers can build applications entirely within their web browser. View the full article

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Oracle now offers Oracle Database Standard Edition 2 (SE2) with the License-Included (LI) purchase option in additional AWS Regions and for additional instance classes. R6i instances are now available in Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Europe (Zurich), and Israel (Tel Aviv). T3 instances are now supported in Europe (Zurich) and Israel (Tel Aviv). View the full article

OCFS2 stands for Oracle Cluster File System version 2, which is an open-source, POSIX-compliant disk-based file system developed by Oracle Corporation. It was designed to be used with Linux-based systems. The key feature of OCFS2 is its ability to be accessed concurrently from multiple nodes in a cluster, making it particularly useful for shared-disk, high-availability applications, and for use with Oracle RAC (Real Application Clusters). OCFS2 supports features such as: Journaling: This helps ensure the integrity of the file system data, allowing quick recovery after a crash or power failure.Direct IO: For efficient access to disk, bypassing caching layers for certain types of applications.Sparse Files: These are files that can allocate storage space non-contiguously to save space, useful for databases.Extended Attributes: Allows files and directories to have additional metadata beyond standard filesystem attributes.POSIX Access Control Lists (ACLs): This provides a flexible permission mechanism.Cluster-wide Locking: Ensures data consistency when multiple nodes access the file system simultaneously.OCFS2 is designed to work in high-availability environments, where system continuity and data integrity are crucial. It’s often used in scenarios where a cluster of computers needs to access a common set of data on shared storage, such as SAN (Storage Area Network) environments. Oracle has integrated OCFS2 into its product ecosystem, ensuring that it works seamlessly with their other products, especially for database solutions that require high availability and scalability. OCFS2 Troubleshooting Guide Troubleshooting issues with OCFS2 can involve various steps depending on the specific problem you’re encountering. Here’s a structured approach to help you identify and address common issues: 1. Gather information: Distribution and version: Knowing your operating system (e.g., RHEL, SUSE) and version helps identify appropriate troubleshooting steps and potential distribution-specific quirks. Cluster setup: Is this a single-node or clustered setup? Clustered setups involve additional configuration checks. Error messages: Any relevant error messages from system logs (/var/log/messages and /var/log/dmesg) can provide valuable clues about the issue. Specific problem: Describe the exact behavior you’re observing (e.g., not mounting after reboot, I/O errors). 2. Initial checks: Network connectivity (if applicable): If the OCFS2 volume resides on shared storage, verify network connectivity between nodes and ensure firewalls aren’t blocking necessary ports. o2cb service (if applicable): In some setups, the o2cb service manages the OCFS2 cluster. Check if it’s running and enabled using commands like systemctl status o2cb and systemctl enable o2cb. 3. fstab entry: Ensure the fstab entry for the OCFS2 filesystem is correct. It should include: Device name (e.g., /dev/sdb) Mount point (e.g., /var/www) Filesystem type (ocfs2) Appropriate options: _netdev: Used for network-based mounts, ensures the network is up before attempting to mount. 4. Common troubleshooting steps: Manually mount the filesystem: Try mounting the filesystem manually using the mount.ocfs2 command. This can help identify permission or configuration issues preventing automatic mounting. Check permissions: Verify that the user or group mounting the filesystem has the necessary permissions to access the mount point directory. Verify disk space: Ensure sufficient free space is available on the OCFS2 volume. Review logs: System logs (/var/log/messages and /var/log/dmesg) might provide additional clues about the issue. Look for errors related to OCFS2 or the specific device. 5. Advanced troubleshooting (if necessary): Use fsck.ocfs2: This utility can check and potentially repair file system errors, but use it with caution and back up your data beforehand (refer to the documentation for specific options and usage). Cluster configuration (if applicable): In clustered setups, review configuration files (e.g., /etc/ocfs2/cluster.conf) and ensure consistency across all nodes. Consult distribution documentation or community forums: Refer to your specific OS and OCFS2 version documentation for detailed troubleshooting steps and known issues. Additionally, community forums can provide insights from other users who might have encountered similar problems. List of all commands to work with OCFS2 Here’s a list of some common commands used to work with OCFS2: Basic management: mkfs.ocfs2: Formats a partition or device for use with OCFS2. mount.ocfs2: Mounts an OCFS2 filesystem. umount.ocfs2: Unmounts an OCFS2 filesystem. fsck.ocfs2: Checks and potentially repairs an OCFS2 filesystem. Advanced management: tunefs.ocfs2: Changes various options and parameters of an OCFS2 filesystem. ocfs2_info: Displays information about an OCFS2 filesystem. ocfs2_clrchk: Checks and clears cluster configuration information. o2cb (cluster only): Manages the OCFS2 cluster communication layer. Informational: ocfs2_lsclusters (cluster only): Lists available OCFS2 clusters. ocfs2_showconfig (cluster only): Displays the current OCFS2 cluster configuration. ocfs2_controldump (cluster only): Dumps information from the OCFS2 cluster control daemon. Debugging: debugfs.ocfs2: A debugging tool for examining internal OCFS2 data structures. 1. o2cb Service Management: Manages the O2CB cluster service, which is crucial for OCFS2 operation. Start the service: service o2cb start Stop the service: service o2cb stop Check the status: service o2cb status Enable on boot: chkconfig o2cb on (SysVinit) or systemctl enable o2cb.service (systemd) 2. tunefs.ocfs2 Tune File System Parameters: Used to adjust various file system parameters on OCFS2 volumes. Example: tunefs.ocfs2 -L "NewLabel" /dev/sdb1 changes the volume label. 3. mkfs.ocfs2 Create File System: Used to format a disk partition as an OCFS2 file system. Example: mkfs.ocfs2 -L "VolumeLabel" /dev/sdb1 4. fsck.ocfs2 File System Check: Checks and optionally repairs an OCFS2 file system. Example: fsck.ocfs2 -fy /dev/sdb1 5. mounted.ocfs2 List Mounted Volumes: Lists all OCFS2 volumes currently mounted on the system. Example: mounted.ocfs2 6. o2info Cluster Information: Displays information about the cluster configuration and status. Example: o2info --status 7. mount and umount Mounting/Unmounting File Systems: Standard Linux commands used to mount and unmount OCFS2 file systems, with options specific to cluster file systems. Mount: mount -t ocfs2 /dev/sdb1 /mnt/point Unmount: umount /mnt/point 8. debugfs.ocfs2 Debugging Tool: Provides a means to examine and debug an OCFS2 file system. Example: debugfs.ocfs2 /dev/sdb1 Additional Tools and Files: /etc/ocfs2/cluster.conf: The main configuration file for OCFS2 clusters. This file defines nodes, cluster name, and other important settings. /etc/init.d/o2cb: The init script for managing the O2CB cluster stack on systems using SysVinit. systemctl [start|stop|status] o2cb: Commands to manage the O2CB service on systems using systemd. Notes: OCFS2 Console (ocfs2console): In some distributions, an OCFS2 management GUI called ocfs2console is available. This tool provides a graphical interface to configure and manage OCFS2 clusters, but it may not be included in all Linux distributions. Cluster Management: Managing an OCFS2 cluster often involves more than just handling the file system. It might require managing network configurations, coordinating with cluster management tools (like Pacemaker or Corosync), and ensuring that all nodes maintain consistent configurations and time synchronization. The post What is OCFS2 Oracle Cluster File System? appeared first on DevOpsSchool.com. View the full article

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Oracle now supports the October 2023 Release Update (RU) for Oracle Database versions 19c and 21c. View the full article

Oracle has again proved why it’s a leading player in the database market by releasing its latest version, Oracle Database 23c (code-named “App Simple”) ... View the full article

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Oracle now supports M6i, R6i, and R5b instances in additional regions. M6i instances for RDS for Oracle will now be available in 9 new regions: Africa (Cape Town), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong, Hyderabad, Jakarta, Osaka), Europe (Milan, Stockholm), and Middle East (Bahrain, UAE). R6i instances for RDS for Oracle will now be available in 8 new regions: Africa (Capetown), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong, Osaka), Europe (Frankfurt, Milan, Stockholm), and Middle East (Bahrain, UAE). R5b instances for RDS for Oracle will now be available in 6 new regions: Asia Pacific (Seoul, Sydney), Canada (Central), Europe (Milan, Stockholm), and South America (São Paulo). View the full article

Oracle made generally available a Java 21 edition and provided early access to more than 15 proposed enhancements to the JDK. View the full article

With the release of 6.1, Oracle is once Click to Read More at Oracle Linux Kernel Development The post Oracle is the #1 contributor to the Linux kernel in 6.1 appeared first on Linux.com. View the full article

Docker Extensions build new functionality into Docker Desktop, extend its existing capabilities, and allow you to discover and integrate additional tools that you’re already using with Docker. More extensions are added every month, so let’s take a look at some of them released in September. And if you’d like to see everything available, check out our full Extensions Marketplace! InterSystems The new InterSystems extension is a convenient way to access InterSystems Container Registry right from Docker Desktop. It provides an integrated UI that contains public and private images for products like IRIS, IRIS for Health, and many more. With the extension, you can: Observe the list of public images available — and private images if you have access to WRC Filter images by name, tag, and ARM64 Easily pull images Delete local images Copy image name with tag Microcks Looking to Mock or test an API? If so, the Microcks extension can help. With Microcks, you can: Mock REST APIs importing local OpenAPI specification or Postman collections Mock GraphQL APIs importing GraphQL Schema and samples via Postman collections Mock gRPC APIs importing Protobuf and samples via Postman collections Simulate event-driven APIs (both on Kafka and WebSockets) importing AsyncAPI specification Test local REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSocket and Kafka endpoints to check conformance Bootstrap your API specification using Direct APIs Oracle SQLcl Client Tool Oracle SQLcl (SQL Developer Command Line) is a Java-based command line interface for Oracle Database. Using SQLcl, you can execute SQL and PL/SQL statements in interactive or batch mode. The Oracle SQLcl Client Tool extension provides: Inline editing Statement completion Command recall Support for your existing SQL*Plus scripts Volumes Backup & Share Volumes are the best choice when you need to back up, restore, or migrate data from one Docker host to another. With the Volumes Backup & Share extension, you can: Back up data that’s persisted in a volume (for example, database data from Postgres or MySQL) into a compressed file Upload your backup to Docker Hub and share it with anyone Create a new volume from an existing backup or restore the state of an existing volume Transfer your local volumes to a different Docker host (through SSH) Other basic volume operations like clone, empty, and delete a volume To learn more check out our blog post. Check out the latest Docker Extensions with Docker Desktop Docker is always looking for ways to improve the developer experience. We hope that these new extensions will make your life easier and that you’ll give them a try! Check out these resources for more info on extensions: Try September’s newest extensions by installing Docker Desktop for Mac, Windows, or Linux. Visit our Extensions Marketplace to see all of our extensions Build your own extension with our Extensions SDK View the full article

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) Custom for Oracle now supports Oracle Database versions 12.2 and 18c. Amazon RDS Custom is a managed database service for applications that require customization of the underlying operating system and database environment. With support now added for 12.2 and 18c, you can now run your legacy, packaged and customized applications that are dependent on these database versions on Amazon RDS Custom for Oracle. View the full article

I’m excited that Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is sponsoring and participating in this year’s Kubecon + CloudNativeCon EU in Valencia, Spain. There, the OCI team can answer any questions that you have about modernizing your applications and demo how customers can use cloud services to build and manage modern applications in the most cost-performant way. […] The post OCI at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe appeared first on DevOps.com. View the full article

Starting today Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for Oracle supports publishing Oracle Management Agent (OMA) logs from your DB instances to Amazon CloudWatch Logs. View the full article

Starting today Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for Oracle supports Amazon RDS Cross-Region Automated Backups. This feature extends the existing RDS backup functionality, giving you the ability to setup automatic replication of system snapshots and transaction logs from a primary AWS Region to a secondary AWS Region. View the full article

On December 1, we announced support for Amazon EC2 R5b instance types in the US East (Ohio), Europe (Frankfurt) and Asia Pacific (Singapore) Regions. Starting today, we’re happy to announce you can now launch Amazon EC2 R5b instance types using Amazon RDS for Oracle and Amazon RDS for SQL Server in additional AWS Regions: North America US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon) Asia Pacific Asia Pacific (Tokyo) View the full article

Amazon RDS for Oracle now supports the October 2020 Patch Set Updates (PSU) for Oracle Database 12.1, and the October 2020 Release Update (RU) for Oracle Database 12.2, 18c, and 19c. October 2020 PSU for Oracle Database 11.2 will be launched soon. View the full article

Amazon QuickSight has added a powerful new data governance feature: Column Level Security (CLS). This feature compliments the existing Row Level Security (RLS) feature and, in combination, gives authors control over who can access what data within their visualizations. CLS enables dataset owners to apply restrictions on a per column basis. This ensures that users only see columns that they are allowed to see. For example, a dataset owner could set up their dataset so that only members of a Human Resources group could see salary information, while everyone can see less sensitive information, like first and last name. CLS can be configured on a dataset through the QuickSight interface and through APIs. See here to learn more. View the full article

Starting today Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for Oracle supports the creation of Oracle Data Guard physical standby DB instances which run in mount mode, which fully manage the configuration of Oracle Data Guard, and asynchronously replicates data over secured network connections between a primary DB instance and its physical standby mounted DB replicas. Amazon RDS for Oracle Data Guard mounted DB replicas require Oracle Enterprise Edition (EE) but not Oracle Active Data Guard. View the full article

Starting today, you can launch additional configurations of the R5 instance class when using Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for Oracle. Featuring up to 4x the RAM per vCPU of existing R5 instance classes, the new configurations are available in the following AWS Regions: North America US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (N. California), US West (Oregon), AWS GovCloud (US East), AWS GovCloud (US West), Canada (Central) South America South America (Sao Paulo) Europe, Middle East and Africa EU (Frankfurt), EU (Ireland), EU (London), EU (Milan), EU (Paris), EU (Stockholm), Middle East (Bahrain), Africa (Cape Town) Asia Pacific Asia Pacific (Hong Kong), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Osaka), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo) View the full article

When installing new packages on any operating system, a common piece of advice is to update the system before installing any new packages. This is so that your system will be free of any potential software bugs that may occur due to outdated software. While using your computer system, you may also mess up some of the packages and dependencies. A package update is also required to fix such issues. This article shows you how to update all packages in your Oracle Linux 8 system. Method for Updating all Packages in Oracle Linux 8 The next sections show you the method for updating all packages in Oracle Linux 8. To update all packages in your Oracle Linux 8 system, perform the following four steps while logged into the system. Step 1: Check for Available Updates Before updating your system, it is always good to look for any available updates. You may skip this step and head straight to updating all the packages. However, this command can be useful if you do not actually want to update all the packages. By following this step, you will be able to list all the packages for which updates are available so that you can select only the specific packages from this list that you want to update. In the Bonus Tip section of this article, we will also show you how to update only a single package in Oracle Linux 8. To check for all available updates in your Oracle Linux 8 system, issue the following command: $ sudo yum check-update After running the above command, wait a few seconds, and then you will see a list of all packages installed in your system for which updates are available, as shown in the image below: Step 2: Execute update Command Once you have checked for all available updates, if you still wish to update all the installed packages in your system, run the following command to do so: $ sudo yum update Using the update command without any options, flags, or parameters will update all packages that are installed in your Oracle Linux 8 system. Step 3: Provide System Password When you execute the update command, since you used the sudo keyword with this command, you will be prompted to enter the system password, as shown below: After you provide the system password and press the Enter key, the following message will appear in your terminal, after which the update process will begin. Step 4: Give Confirmation to Update Packages During the update process, the update command will run a quick scan that will list all the packages installed in your Oracle Linux 8 system. The scan also provides a summary of the packages that will be upgraded and/or installed after running this command. You will be asked to provide confirmation to update all the packages in your system, as highlighted in the following image. You can provide confirmation by typing “y” in your terminal. After you provide this confirmation, the “Downloading Packages” message will appear in your terminal, indicating that the package update is in progress, This message can be seen in the image below: Finally, when your system has completed updating all the packages it contains, you will see the “Completed” message in your terminal, as highlighted in the following image. It took around 15 minutes for our system to update all the installed packages. This update time may vary according to the number and complexity of packages installed in your system. Bonus Tip As a bonus tip, we will share a very quick command that allows you to update only a single package in your Oracle Linux 8 system. This command can prove to be extremely helpful in situations where you do not want to update all the installed packages in your system. Using it will save you precious time and conserve your system’s resources. To update a single package in your Oracle Linux 8 system, run the command below: $ yum update PackageName Here, replace the term “PackageName” with the name of the specific package that you wish to update. If running this command renders any error messages, then you can try it out with the “sudo” keyword. Running this command will update only the single specified package, as shown in the following image: Conclusion This article showed you how to update all the packages installed in your Oracle Linux 8 system without any hassle. An important point to remember is that the time taken to update your system is directly proportional to the number of packages installed in that system. The more packages you have installed in your system, the longer will it take to update your system. If you are running the “update” command for the very first time in your Oracle Linux 8 system, regardless of the number of packages installed, it will naturally take longer; in our case, it took around 15 minutes to fully update all packages. View the full article