Since I can never remember how to install Virtualbox Guest Additions I thought I’d write it down. Maybe it’ll save you a few minutes; I know it will save me a lot of time ;)

For this post I used the latest versions at the time of writing:

• Virtualbox 6.1.10 for Linux (my host is running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS)
• Oracle Linux 8.2 (V996906-01.iso)

The VM was installed using the “minimal-environment” group and booted into UEK 6. I believe this change came with Oracle Linux (OL) 8.2 and I seem to remember OL 8.1 used the Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK) by default. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, it’s just an observation. I am going to stick with UEK 6 in my lab, instructions are different from using RHCK.

By Franck Pachot

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Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) is a Linux distribution which is binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). However, unlike RHEL, OEL is open source, free to download, free to use, free to distribute, free to update and gets free bug fixes. And there are more frequent updates in OEL than in CentOS, the free base of RHEL. You can pay a subscription for additional support and features (like Ksplice or Dtrace) in OEL. It can run the same kernel as RHEL but also provides, still for free, the ‘unbreakable kernel’ (UEK) which is still compatible with RHEL but enhanced with optimizations, recommended especially when running Oracle products.

Hopefully this post saves you a few minutes looking the procedure up. I know it’ll save me some time ;) In this rather lengthy article I’d like to cover how I copied a SQL Plan Baseline from one database to another. If you find this procedure useful, please ensure your system is appropriately licensed for it and test it first!

My Setup

My source database is named ORA19NCDB, patched to 19.7.0 running on Oracle Linux 7x/UEK 5. As I do so often, I’m using Dominic Giles’s Swingbench as the source for this experiment. This is the query in question:

Today’s video shows me using some of my existing Docker builds with Podman. Specifically a 19c database container and an Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) container.

For those with an understanding of Docker, it should look really familiar, but it does introduce a twist in the form of a pod.

The video is based on this article.

• Podman : A Basic Example of Using Podman With Dockerfiles (Oracle Database and ORDS) on Oracle Linux 8 (OL8)

You can see more information about containers here.

In today’s video we’ll take a look at installing Podman on Oracle Linux 8 (OL8).

This is based on the article here.

• Install Podman on Oracle Linux 8 (OL8)

You can see more information about containers here.

https://oracle-base.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/f32-final-816x34... 300w, https://oracle-base.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/f32-final-816x34... 768w" sizes="(max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px" />

Fedora 32 was released at the end of April (see here). Here comes the standard warning.

https://oracle-base.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/king-tut-161521_... 272w" sizes="(max-width: 197px) 85vw, 197px" />

When Oracle Linux 8 (OL8) was released, one of the first things I did was check for the Oracle supplied Docker engine. Nothing.

By Franck Pachot

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I used to have many VirtualBox VMs on my laptop. But now, most of my labs are in the Cloud. Easy access from everywhere.

GCP

There’s the Google Cloud free VM which is not limited in time (I still have the 11g XE I’ve created 2 years ago running there) being able to use 40% of CPU with 2GB of RAM:

In my last post I summarised how to enable versioning for Vagrant box outside Vagrant’s cloud. In this part I’d like to share how to update a box.

My environment

The environment hasn’t changed compared to the first post. In summary I’m using

• Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
• Virtualbox 6.1.6
• Vagrant 2.2.7

Updating a box

Let’s assume it’s time to update the base box for whatever reason. I most commonly update my boxes every so often after having run an “yum upgrade -y” to bring it up to the most current software. A new drop of the Guest Additions also triggers a rebuild, and so on.

Packaging

Once the changes are made, you need to package the box again. Continuing the previous example I save all my boxes and their JSON metadata in ~/vagrant/boxes. The box comes first:

I have been using Vagrant for quite some time now can’t tell you how much of a productivity boost it has been. All the VMs I have on my laptop are either powered by Vagrant, or feed into the Vagrant workflow.

One thing I haven’t worked out though is how to use versioning outside of Vagrant’s cloud. I don’t think I have what it takes to publish a good OS image publicly, and rather keep my boxes to myself to prevent others from injury.

My environment

While putting this post together I used the following software:

• Ubuntu 20.04 LTS acts as my host operating system
• Virtualbox 6.1.6
• Vagrant 2.2.7

This is probably as current as it gets at the time of writing.