Update / install Oracle Linux 6.4 corrupts console in Oracle VM 3.x

After updating Oracle Linux 6.3 to 6.4 or installing 6.4 from scratch will give a corrupt (blank) VNC remote console when launching the console from Oracle VM Manager:

oracle_vm_3_oel_6.4_console

As discussed in https://oss.oracle.com/ol6/docs/RELEASE-NOTES-U4-en.html#idp513536 and Oracle Support note ‘Corrupted VNC console in PVM guests running Oracle Linux 6.4 on Oracle VM’ (Doc ID 1537278.1), this issue is addressed in ‘X Window System Does Not Run in a PVHVM guest’.

Uninstalling the xorg-x11-drv-cirrus guest driver solves the issue

If you uninstall the xorg-x11-cirrus driver from the guest OS, it will solve this issue.

# rpm -ev --nodeps xorg-x11-drv-cirrus

Reboot the guest OS after uninstalling.

Happy Launching!

Get wget command for a Metalink / My Oracle Support download with FireFox cliget add-on

Today I ran into an add-on for FireFox which can create a wget command from a download file dialog box. First thing that came in mind was; Will this work for Metalink / My Oracle Support? Yes is does!

The add-on is called ‘cliget’ and can be downloaded here: cliget add-on for FireFox. Continue reading

Oracle Database version compatibility and support matrix

— Checked for relevance on Januari 21, 2017

The Oracle Database version compatibility matrix and version support status matrix are almost mandatory when installing or upgrading clients or servers.

Oracle Database client / server version compatibility matrix

Oracle calls this Client / Server Interoperability Support, Note ID 207303.1

Oracle Database version release support status matrix

Oracle calls this the Database Releases Support Status Summary, Note ID 161818.1

You will be redirected to Oracle Support and you must be registered to gain access to the pages. I did not include the matrices, because these change over time.

Oracle Information about Windows 32 / 64 bit database and client versions

Certification Information for Oracle Database on Microsoft Windows x64 (64-bit), Doc ID 1307195.1

DB instances does not wait for ASM to be finished

Yesterday, I came across a small problem with an Oracle RAC installation using ASM. After a restart of one of the three (Windows Server 2003) nodes, three of the five database instances did not start automatically…

Running ‘crs_stat’ showed status OFFLINE and target ONLINE for these instances, but strangely there was no entry in the alert log telling these instances did not start because of ’something’ was wrong. It even looked like that they did not got any signal to start at all! OK, so I checked the CRS log for any strange behavior and it showed ASM finishing after the database instances gave up starting.

A quick search on the ‘new and improved’ My Oracle Support (old Metalink), resulted in running ‘crs_stat -p’ and check for [REQUIRED_RESOURCES=] for each instance. It showed that for the particular node, ASM was not required for these three database instances. Modifying this with ’srvctl modify instance -d db1 -i node1 -s +ASM1′ (for example), did the trick.

I found this solution on Metalink: Doc ID: NOTE:276208.1 “CRS is not starting first the ASM instance”, although I can not imagine hitting this bug on 10.2.0.4.

Happy consulting!