Simon Krenger

As I am currently fiddling around with Oracle Solaris and the related technologies, I wanted to see how the ZFS file system compares to a hardware RAID Controller. The ZFS file system allows you to configure different RAID levels such as RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, 6. In this post, I want to test the RAID 10 performance of ZFS against the performance with the HP RAID Controller (also in a RAID 10 configuration) over 4 disks.

Because of its minimalistic interface and blazing speed, I am a big fan of Google Chrome. I am using the Developer channel version to get early access to the latest features such as the integrated PDF viewer or GPU acceleration. You can find more information on how to install this version here.

Another nice feature added with the latest version (8.0.552.0 dev as of this writing) is the “Instant” feature. It is basically Google Instant for your browser and greatly accelerates your browsing experience. This Instant feature loads the pages as you are typing in the URL bar of your browser. This means as soon as you see the correct page displayed (while typing), hit Enter and you are already there. Nice!

I keep this post mainly for my own reference, since I needed to do this multiple times already.

Edit the file sqldeveloper.conf in the bin/ directory of your SQL Developer installation and add the following lines to change the language to English:

AddVMOption -Duser.language=en
AddVMOption -Duser.country=US

Source

After a database update from 10.2.0.1.0 to 10.2.0.5 on Windows Server 2003, we encountered the ORA-12571 error when starting the Application Server. In the log files, the error showed up as an SQLException:

java.sql.SQLException: Io exception: Connection reset by peer: socket write error

I then used TNSPing to validate the connection to the database and I basically received this result:

OK
OK
OK
ORA-12571: TNS:PACKET WRITER FAILURE

This means that there is a problem with the TNS Listener. I checked the listener log ($ORACLE_HOME\network\log\listener_name.log) for errors and saw this:

One of the regularly recurring tasks is to apply a Patchset to a database. This post contains the basic steps required to apply Patchset 10.2.0.5 to an unpatched Oracle 10g Database (10.2.0.1). I am using this post mainly for my own reference, so please do not expect an extensive step-by-step guide. Note that you need Oracle Support (formerly Metalink) to access and download the patches.

Before we begin, I must state that I provide these instructions based on my experiences with database upgrades and these are by no means complete. When applying a Patchset, always refer to the patch_note.html provided in the installation media. This means you can use my steps only as a coarse guide. These steps can also be used to create your own “Upgrade Checklist”.

This week and next week I am participating in an Oracle Architecture and Internals training at Trivadis in Berne. Today, we received an overview of Oracle (Editions, Licensing, Support) and took a first look into the Oracle Architecture. This first chunk of information included Parameters, Memory and Process Structures. While looking at the PGA structures, I noticed a graph showing “PGA Cache Hit Percentage” in relation to the sizing of the PGA.

The term “PGA Cache Hit Percentage” does not make sense, since there is no cache in the PGA. According to my training material, the PGA consists of the following structures:

In my first post, I took the first steps in Solaris 10 and created a basic environment for anyone with Linux experience. Now, in Solaris I really miss the possibility to add packages via a repository. So in this post, I will set up the OpenCSW (Open Community SoftWare) repository, so people with Linux background can easily add new packages in a familiar way. This post includes all steps from the OpenCSW site.

Although I already have some experience with Linux (Debian, Red Hat), the first steps with my brand new Solaris 10 installation turned out to be a little bit harder than expected. This was due to the minimalistic shell (SH) and problems while installing the SSH server. So here are my notes for those trying to get into Solaris. The first part includes the steps necessary to install the BASH shell. In the second part, installation of the SSH daemon is shown.

Setup: Solaris 10 Update 9, No remote services enabled, POSIX C locale, Core System Installation

This week I purchased a OCZ Vertex 2 SSD drive for my laptop, a Lenovo ThinkPad T61p. After replacing the old HDD, I was greeted by the following error message, just after the BIOS screen:

ERROR
2100: HDD0 (Hard Disk Drive) initialization error (1)

That does not sound good. Anyway, I searched around and found one simple advice:

Don’t use the ThinkPad HDD cage and the corresponding anti-shock bumpers. The problem lies with the physical connection of the SSD. I inserted the SSD without the bumpers and the bracket and voilà : It worked flawlessly.

The SSD does not need shock-protection from the rubber bumpers, but in order to stabilise the drive I put some padding at the end of the SSD, so there is no stress on the connectors.

When you want to use the Oracle Client for 10g on Windows and your computer uses the Swiss German Region and Language options, you will stumble across the following error when trying to connect to a database with Enterprise Manager:

Error occurred at recursive SQL level 1

Now what? It turns out that this is Oracle Bug 4598613: ORA-2248 from 10.2/10.1.0.5 client with NLS_LANG set to territory SWITZERLAND. Metalink has this to say:

ORA-604 / ORA-2248 occurs when NLS_LANG is set to 
FRENCH_SWITZERLAND.WE8ISO8859P15 on the client side , 
or a similar string using territory SWITZERLAND.
eg: GERMAN_SWITZERLAND

Solution

Set your NLS_LANG to something else than GERMAN_SWITZERLAND. For example:

set NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8MSWIN1252

To make the change persistent, edit the following Registry key:

My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE\KEY_%ClientHomeName%\NLS_LANG