Connecting to Sun Netra T1's serial console from an Asus wl500g Permium router

I've bought a Sun Netra T1 machine on an auction recently. Unfortunately none of my PCs at home have serial ports so I had to postpone to play with this newcomer.



It seemed to be a great idea to connect this box to my Asus wl500g router which executes OpenWrt instead of the defalt firmware. I was suggested buying an ATEN serial/USB converter which was built using the PL2303 chipset and belived to be able to work with Linux, but I ventured to buy a HQCC-146 instead at the expense of the fact that it may not be recognized by OpenWrt. HQCC-146 was cheaper and it's available in almost every Auchan hypermarket.

Setting up OpenWrt was very easy only the corresponding kernel module, minicom and ser2net needed to be installed.

# ipkg install kmod-usb-serial-pl2303
# ipkg install minicom
# ipkg install ser2net

Right after attaching the converter to the router box it has been discovered immediately.

# dmesg | tail -5
usbserial.c: USB Serial support registered for PL-2303
pl2303.c: Prolific PL2303 USB to serial adaptor driver v0.10.1
hub.c: new USB device 01:03.0-2, assigned address 2
usbserial.c: PL-2303 converter detected
usbserial.c: PL-2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0 (or usb/tts/0 for devfs)

I've configured ser2net, but it doesn't seem to be as convenient as minicom.

# cp /etc/ser2net.conf /etc/ser2net.conf.orig
# egrep -v '^#|^$' /etc/ser2net.conf
BANNER:netra:Welcome to SUN Netra T1 TCP port \p device \d\r\n
2001:raw:600:/dev/usb/tts/0:9600 NONE 1STOPBIT 8DATABITS XONXOFF LOCAL -RTSCTS netra

Minicom was able to connect to my netra after a little configuration.

# cat > /etc/minirc.netra <<EOF
pu port /dev/usb/tts/0
pu baudrate 9600
pu bits 8
pu parity N
pu stopbits 1
EOF


# minicom netra
Welcome to minicom 2.2-rc2

OPTIONS:
Compiled on Sep 30 2007, 06:39:46.
Port /dev/usb/tts/0

Press CTRL-A Z for help on special keys

lom>poweron
LOM event: power on
.
Netra t1 (UltraSPARC-IIi 440MHz), No Keyboard
OpenBoot 3.10.27 ME, 1024 MB memory installed, Serial #16382248.
Ethernet address 8:0:20:f9:f9:28, Host ID: 80f9f928.

Boot device: disk0 File and args:
:217: The file just loaded does not appear to be executable.
ok power-off


Cool, isn't it.

Oracle database silent installation on Debian Lenny (Part 2)

This is the continuation of my previous post, I'll install Oracle RDBMS 11gR2 in this part.

A lot of steps can be skipped at this time, because installation will be taken place on the same machine and Oracle RDBMS 10gR2 has already been successfully deployed.

Change the current directory on that one to where Oracle install kit has been extracted.

$ cd /path/to/rdbms112_install

Create a response file.

$ vi rdbms111.rsp
oracle.install.responseFileVersion=/oracle/install/rspfmt_dbinstall_response_schema_v11_2_0
oracle.install.option=INSTALL_DB_SWONLY
UNIX_GROUP_NAME=dba
INVENTORY_LOCATION=/usr/local/oracle/inventory
SELECTED_LANGUAGES=en
ORACLE_HOME=/usr/local/oracle/product/rdbms112
ORACLE_BASE=/usr/local/oracle
oracle.install.db.InstallEdition=EE
oracle.install.db.isCustomInstall=false
oracle.install.db.DBA_GROUP=dba
oracle.install.db.OPER_GROUP=dba
SECURITY_UPDATES_VIA_MYORACLESUPPORT=false
DECLINE_SECURITY_UPDATES=true

Start Oracle Universal Installer. (Note that swith -ignoreSysPrereqs has been changed to -ignorePrereq as of this release)

$ ./runInstaller -ignorePrereq -responseFile /path/to/rdbms111.rsp -silent

Execute the plain old root.sh.

# /usr/local/oracle/product/rdbms112/root.sh


Oracle database silent installation on Debian Lenny (Part 1)

This is a short write-off about only the absolutely necessary steps how to deploy Oracle 10gR2 on a box running debian lenny.

Check out the packages need to be installed here.

I usually only set up those kernel parameter that have lower default values than recommended by ORACLE.

# echo "kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128" >> /etc/sysctl.conf
# echo "kernel.shmmax = 1073741824" >> /etc/sysctl.conf
# sysctl -p

Create dba group and oracle user (groups oper and oinstall can be safetly omitted, I've been never using them)

# useradd -m -d /home/oracle -g dba -s /bin/bash oracle
# groupadd dba

Create directories for software. In the majority of articles dealing with Oracle RDBMS installation /u01, /02, etc. are used, but I prefer to put it into somewhere in the standard directory layout.

# mkdir -p /usr/local/oracle/inventory
# mkdir -p /usr/local/oracle/network/admin
# mkdir -p /usr/local/oracle/product/rdbms102

Directories for data files, trace files and for flashback recovery area.

# mkdir -p /var/local/oracle/oradata
# mkdir -p /var/local/oracle/fra
# mkdir -p /var/local/oracle/admin

Let user oracle to take possession of the directories created above.

# chown -R oracle:dba /usr/local/oracle
# chown -R oracle:dba /var/local/oracle

Mark the location of Oracle software inventory. This step is optional universal installer will ask you to define it if you skip this step.

# cat > /etc/oraInst.loc <<EOF
inventory_loc=/usr/local/oracle/inventory
inst_group=dba
EOF
# chown oracle:dba /etc/oraInst.loc

Log in as oracle and change the working directory to that location where the installation package was extracted.
$ cd /path/to/rdbms102_install
I like silent install because this way I don't have to care for X window system.

$ vi rdbms102.rsp
RESPONSEFILE_VERSION=2.2.1.0.0
UNIX_GROUP_NAME="dba"
FROM_LOCATION="../stage/products.xml"
ORACLE_HOME="/usr/local/oracle/product/rdbms102"
ORACLE_HOME_NAME="rdbms102"
ACCEPT_LICENSE_AGREEMENT=true
INSTALL_TYPE="EE"
NEXT_SESSION=false
s_nameForDBAGrp=dba
s_nameForOPERGrp=dba
n_configurationOption=3

As a final step run the installer.

$ ./runInstaller -ignoreSysPrereqs -responseFile /path/to/rdbms102.rsp -silent

Execute the plain old root.sh.

# /usr/local/oracle/product/rdbms102/root.sh


Clone Oracle AS 10gR3 home for patching on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

I've got on Oracle As 10gR3 installed on my laptop. It really isn't my favourite application server, yet I have to use it every day in the course of my work

I have a base on version (10.1.3.1) on that box and this article is about to show how to clone, patch and replace the original JVM of an Oracle AS home.

Logged in as oracle.

$ id -a
uid=1001(oracle) gid=1001(oinstall) groups=1001(oinstall),1002(dba)

List of the non-RDBMS Oracle homes on the machine.

$ egrep -v '^$|^#' /etc/oratab | grep '^*'
*AS1:/usr/lib/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.1.3.1/as_1:N
*MRCA:/usr/lib/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.1.4.0/mrca:N
*CLN:/usr/lib/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/client_1:N

Select the appropriate Oracle home and check the environment before proceeding to patching.

$ . oraenv
ORACLE_SID = [*AS1] ?

$ env | grep -i ora
USER=oracle
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.1.3.1/as_1/lib
ORACLE_SID=*AS1
USERNAME=oracle
TNS_ADMIN=/home/oracle/network/admin
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/lib/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.1.3.1/as_1/bin
PWD=/home/oracle
HOME=/home/oracle
LOGNAME=oracle
ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.1.3.1/as_1

Check perl where it is and what's the version of it.

$ which perl
/usr/bin/perl

$ perl -v

This is perl, v5.8.8 built for i486-linux-gnu-thread-multi

Copyright 1987-2006, Larry Wall

Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License or the
GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5 source kit.

Complete documentation for Perl, including FAQ lists, should be found on
this system using "man perl" or "perldoc perl". If you have access to the
Internet, point your browser at http://www.perl.org/, the Perl Home Page.

Cloning an Oracle AS home is quite easy, first I prepare the current home (the process is further detailed in Oracle AS's admin guide)

$ perl $ORACLE_HOME/clone/bin/prepare_clone.pl ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_HOME
Clone log file location: /usr/lib/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.1.3.1/as_1/clone/logs/clone1245401177.log
Error log file location: /usr/lib/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.1.3.1/as_1/clone/logs/error1245401177.log
Fri Jun 19 10:46:17 2009 INFO: Starting with the Prepare Clone operation at the source
Fri Jun 19 10:46:17 2009 INFO: The temp directory being used is /tmp
Fri Jun 19 10:46:17 2009 INFO: The prepare clone operation completed successfully.

After the preparation finished copy the original Oracle home as it is and do the cloning.

$ cp -Rpv $ORACLE_HOME $ORACLE_HOME/../as_2 &< copy.log
$ export ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.1.3.1/as_2
$ perl $ORACLE_HOME/clone/bin/clone.pl ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_HOME ORACLE_HOME_NAME=oracleas2 -instance as_2 -oc4jadmin_old_password <old_pwd> -oc4jadmin_new_password <new_pwd>

Execute root.sh since it always has to be done in situations like this.

# /usr/lib/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.1.3.1/as_2/root.sh

Registering the newly created Oracle AS home must be done manually.

$ vim /etc/oratab
...
*AS1:/usr/lib/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.1.3.1/as_1:N
*AS2:/usr/lib/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.1.3.1/as_2:N
...

Oracle AS patchset installation is coming which is very common, so I'm not going to specify it in-depth.

Tell OPMN to shut all running managed processes down.

$ . oraenv
ORACLE_SID = [*AS1] ? *AS2
$ $ORACLE_HOME/opmn/bin/opmnctl shutdown
opmnctl: shutting down opmn and all managed processes...

Unpack the patch set and launch the installer.

$ mkdir -p ~/install/ias_patch3
$ cd ~/install/ias_patch3
$ unzip /path/to/Downloads/p7272722_101340_LINUX.zip
$ cd Disk1
$ ./runInstaller -ignoreSysPrereqs