A Brief Pep talk: Finally there
In part
10, we covered an important topic called security. I think with the world
(IT and likewise) gearing up for Utility Computing that
virtualization will play greater role in helping utility computing become
reality. There is a lot of talk of hosting applications from distant servers.
The concept of AJAX
will be used to eventually develop a fully functional OS on the web (webOS) and applications (there
are already so many of them) that will make almost everything virtual–a kind
of IBM mainframe concept, where you get your space on a big fat server
somewhere. OS, Network, almost everything will be virtual. Certainly, security and
performance will be the biggest challenges to organizations worldwide. Oracle
recently launched the Database
Vault, which I think is a very smart move. “Protect yourself from
yourself“. That will be the motto when we all go out on the web.
Ok now let’s get on to testing our configurations and on our
path to install and configure OCFS2 for our RHEL 4.2. (There is already a RHEL
4.3/Centos 4.3 available for download). So what will we be doing?
- Final Checks
- OCFS2
Final Checks
Checking the /etc/modprobe.conf file, the following
lines must be present.
options hangcheck-timer hangcheck_tick=30 hangcheck_margin=180
Checking the /etc/sysctl.conf file, the following
lines must be present.
net.core.rmem_default=262144
net.core.wmem_default=262144
net.core.rmem_max=262144
net.core.wmem_max=262144
kernel.shmmax=2147483648
kernel.shmmni=2147483648
kernel.sem=250 32000 100 128
fs.file-max=65536
Checking the /etc/hosts.conf file, all your
PRIV, VIP and Public addresses must be present (all machines).
Checking the /etc/hosts.equiv file, remember
the file we needed for logging in for copy operations? The following lines must
be present:
+node1 oracle
+node2 oracle
+node1-priv oracle
+node2-priv oracle
Checking the required RPMs for your linux
distribution.
Now this can be pretty tricky. I have had
pretty nasty experiences when installing Oracle (and also RAC) on distributions
which were similar to RHEL but not exactly the same. As a rule of thumb, for
development purposes, I go ahead and do a complete install. If you follow the
installation procedure for RHEL 4.2/Centos 4.2 on my installation
article then all should go fine.
The Oracle manual does say (a bit outdated
since U3 is already out there) :
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (Update 1) Packages
The following packages (or later versions) must
be installed:
binutils-2.15.92.0.2-10.EL4
compat-db-4.1.25-9
control-center-2.8.0-12
gcc-3.4.3-9.EL4
gcc-c++-3.4.3-9.EL4
glibc-2.3.4-2
glibc-common-2.3.4-2
gnome-libs-1.4.1.2.90-44.1
libstdc++-3.4.3-9.EL4
libstdc++-devel-3.4.3-9.EL4
make-3.80-5
Note:
openmotif21-2.1.30-11.RHEL4.2
is required to install Oracle demos.- GNU Compiler Collection (
GCC)
2.96 is not supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0.
Installing and Configuring OCFS2
Did I mention OCFS2? Oracle develops a lot of its applications
on linux and OCFS2 is one of the many projects. I did blog
about it briefly, during Oracle’s speculation of acquiring its own Linux.
Anyways what is it? In OCFS team’s words :
OCFS2 is the next generation of the Oracle
Cluster File System for Linux. It is an extent based, POSIX compliant file
system. Unlike the previous release (OCFS), OCFS2 is a general-purpose file
system that can be used for shared Oracle home installations making management
of Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) installations even easier. Among the
new features and benefits are:
- Node and architecture local files using Context
Dependent Symbolic Links (CDSL)- Network based pluggable DLM
- Improved journaling / node recovery using the
Linux Kernel "JBD" subsystem- Improved performance of meta-data operations
(space allocation, locking, etc).- Improved data caching / locking (for files such
as oracle binaries, libraries, etc)
Follow this project closely.
What do I need for my OCFS2? For a listing of software and where to get it, see
Part
6 of this series. I also recommend that you go ahead and install the
OCFS2Console as it comes in handy as we move ahead to install and configure OCFS2..
Installing OCFS2
Installing OCFS2 is pretty simple. I put all the binaries in the /tmp folder
and did the following:
Configuring OCFS2
Choose cluster/Configure nodes:
You get this message:
