Tag Archives: OracleVM

Oracle Linux patches for Meltdown and Spectre information

By | | , ,
4 Comments

Oracle Linux

Shown are the latest kernel versions as of the 9th of January which have Meltdown and Spectre patches.

Kernel versions can be found when running the `uname -r` command.

After the kernel is installed one can find the kernel/packages changelog and security info with the following commands and see in the page table isolation has been activated:

# yum updateinfo list
# yum updateinfo list cves
# yum updateinfo list kernel-uek
# yum updateinfo list --sec-severity=Important
# yum updateinfo info --sec-severity=Important
CVE-2017-1000407 Important/Sec. kernel-uek-4.1.12-112.14.13.el7uek.x86_64

# dmesg | grep isolation
[ 0.000000] Kernel/User page tables isolation: enabled

# rpm -q --changelog kernel | egrep 'CVE-2017-5715|CVE-2017-5753|CVE-2017-5754'
# rpm -q --changelog kernel-uek | egrep 'CVE-2017-5715|CVE-2017-5753|CVE-2017-5754'

Oracle Linux version 6

Kernel: 2.6.32-696.18.7 (errata: ELSA-2018-0008), 2018-01-04.

Kernel-uek: 4.1.12-112.14.10 (errata: ELSA-2018-4006), 2018-01-09.

Oracle Linux version 7

Kernel: 3.10.0-693.11.6 (errata: ELSA-2018-0007), 2018-01-04.

Kernel-uek: 4.1.12-112.14.10 (errata: ELSA-2018-4006), 2018-01-04.

Oracle VM version 3.4

Xen: 4.4.4-155.0.12.el6 (errata: OVMSA-2018-0006), 2018-01-08.

Continue reading →

OEL 6.9 PVM guests on Oracle VM 3.4.3 won’t start

By | | , ,
Leave a comment

I recently upgraded by OVM to 3.4.3(.1511), but now my Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.9 PVM guests won’t start up any more. They don’t finish the ‘Starting automount’ in the boot / startup screen. It does not fail, it just won’t continue.

There is nothing special in the /etc/fstab I guess… : Continue reading →

Server error: ‘The backing device /dev/mapper/xyz is not allowed to contain partitions’ on OracleVM

By | | , ,
Leave a comment

Ok, I added a new disk (well old actually, but new for the machine) to my Oracle VM server. It discovered it (or do it manually) and I wanted to create a new repository on it. Unfortunately it came with the following error:

Server error: 'The backing device /dev/mapper/3500a075109146bee is not allowed to contain partitions'

Continue reading →

Add a larger disk and remove smaller disk from LVM, online!

By | |
2 Comments

Goal: To add new larger disk to LVM, move data and remove old smaller one

When using Oracle VM in my work, a disk can be enlarged in Oracle VM manager for a virtual machine. But because of an internal loop-mount on the XEN hypervisor level, the disk-file which is presented to the virtual machine as a disk, is not able to ‘pass on’ it’s resize information to the OS. This requires an unmount and mount of the disk-file on hypervisor level, or in simple words: a reboot of the virtual machine… yikes! Continue reading →

Oracle 12c installation will fail: Error in invoking target ‘irman ioracle’

By | | , ,
3 Comments

During the installation of Oracle 12c (12.1) I encountered the following error:

Error in invoking target 'irman ioracle' of makefile
    '/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/dbhome_1/rdbms/lib/ins_rdbms.mk'.
See '/u01/app/oraInventory/logs/installActions2015(...).log' for details.

Inside the logfile the following error is encountered:

INFO: collect2: ld terminated with signal 9 [Killed]

According to metalink doc 2040972.1 this is due to less memory available (in a VM environment). Continue reading →

Booting Oracle VM / Linux (ISOs) with UEFI ‘bios’ does not work

By | | , ,
Leave a comment

It seems Oracle VM (<=3.3.1 *) and Oracle Linux (<= 5.10/6.6 *) both install ISOs and installed OS’s are not capable of booting when UEFI on the bare-metal hardware is used. I have seen two configurations now where this happened, one using a USB HDD drive capable providing a ISO to boot from as CD/DVD (Zalman ZM-VE300)  and one HP iLO4 (http and local ISO) ‘remote’ booting. Continue reading →

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

By | | , ,
1 Comment

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!

Oracle VM Server on Oracle VirtualBox freezes / hangs

By | |
Leave a comment

I had a virtual machine in VirtualBox for an OracleVM Server to test an OracleVM setup, but it froze every 5 minutes and had to restart the OVS again and again.

I got this tip from Robert Pastijn, Oracle Netherlands; When you create a virtual machine in VirtualBox for OracleVM Server, do _not_ choose the ‘Intel PRO’ type adapter type, but the ‘PCnet-FAST‘ one!

Continue reading →

Updating Oracle VM Servers with public YUM

By | | , ,
3 Comments

You can update your Oracle VM Servers (3.x) with the Oracle Public Yum Server. In the Oracle VM Manager console go to the ‘Tools and Resources’ tab and click ‘Server Update Management (YUM)’.

For the ‘YUM Base URL:’, use:
http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleVM/OVM3/latest/x86_64/

When enabling the GPG key, use:
http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-el5
(Oracle VM 3.x is based on OEL5) Continue reading →