Best DEBUG for WNA in OAS 10.1.2

In my experience the best way to trace what’s going on if configuring SSO with WNA is to enable JAZN debug. In OAS 10.1.2 it can be enabled with -Djazn.debug.log.enable=true as a Java startup parameter for OC4J_SECURITY

Syncronize and optimize Portal text indexes

To improve performance with Oracle Text based searches in Oracle Portal, you should on a regular basis make sure to syncronize and optimize Portal text indexes (if this is not allready set up during installation).

sqlplus portal/<password>

exec wwv_context.sync
exec wwv_context.optimize
exit

Finding grants from data dictionary

Unless you make an full export with grants you won’t get all grants when doing a export/import with Oracle. So if you don’t have a list of all grants across those schemas you imported, you will have a huge job of compiling and establishing which grants are missing.

The solution to this is to find those grants through the data dictionary on the source system. For instance, if you want to find all grants made by the PORTAL schema, the query would be like this:


SET HEADING OFF
SET PAGES 999
SPOOL grants.sql
SELECT 'GRANT '||privilege||' ON '||owner||'.'||table_name||' TO '||grantee||DECODE(grantable,'YES',' WITH GRANT OPTION;',';')
FROM DBA_TAB_PRIVS
WHERE grantor = 'PORTAL';
SPOOL OFF
EXIT


Now you have everything you need in the grants.sql and this script can now be run on the target system.

Which languages are installed in my Portal ?

select title from portal.WWNLS_SYS_LANGUAGE$
where installed <> 0;

Oracle Q-Quote

To avoid quoting quotes in string, Oracle 10g offers the Q-Quote technique.

Let’s say yoy want to select the following from dual: I’m into rock’n’roll

This would normally mean you should quote the three quotes, but with the Q-Quote technique it’s much simpler:

SQL> SELECT q'[I'm into rock'n'roll]' FROM dual;

Software for your Mac

VersionTracker is much like download.com, except it also has a large collection of software for Mac OS X. You browse by categories, and can sort by licenses, so it’s easy to find software at a decent price (for instance free).

I was however not satisfied with any of the FTP clients I found for Mac. As a devoted FileZilla user, I didn’t think any of the FTP/SCP clients for Mac was living up to the standard. Furtunatly the FileZilla project has decided to release FileZilla on Linux and Mac too, and there is allready a beta available

A really nice open source text editor with syntax highlighting is Smultron.

Mac keyboard combinations on a Windows keyboard

I recently bought a Mac mini and a Belkin KVM switch, which enables me to use my existing monitor, keyboard and mouse with both my current Windows PC and my new Mac mini. There are however quite a few characters I couldn’t find when using the Windows keyboard on Mac, so I will use this thread to remember them. Thanks to Allan for supplying many of the keystrokes for a Windows keyboard with Danish layout.

1. Commercial at @ : ALT Gr-* (just ALT-* in some applications)
2. Pipe | : ALT-i
3. Left brace { : SHIFT-ALT-8
4. Right brace } : SHIFT-ALT-9
5. Apple Command Key: Windows Key
6. Less than < : §
7. Greater than > : SHIFT-§
8. Copy : Windows Key-C
9. Cut : Windows Key-X
10. Paste : Windows Key-V
11. Quit Application : Windows Key-Q
12. Dollar $ : <
13. Euro € : SHIFT-4
14. Backslash \ : SHIFT-ALT-7

I also found this article, which suggests a software solution to the problem. When I get a Mac keyboard, I should study this. The layout of a Mac keyboard can also be useful.

Taking screenshots on a Mac

• Command-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Control-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard
• Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard
• Command-Control-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard

These screenshot tricks where found in MacRumors.

Add A New Harddisk To Linux Using Parted

If you have added a new harddrive, and want to take advantage of it in Linux, parted is a great tool to get you started. Parted is like fdisk, but a bit more challenging. Please note that when following this tutorial you will loose any data on the harddrive in question.

Finding the device name

The first task is to find the devicename of your new harddrive. SCSI disks are usually given device names like /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, /dev/sdd and so on (dependening of how many phsyical disks you have got. IDE disks are usually given device names like /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, /dev/hdc, /dev/hdd and so on. In this tutorial we will image we have added a second SCSI disk, we will treat it as /dev/sdb

Using parted

As root, type
parted /dev/sdb
and parted will now startup, expecting to perform work on our new harddrive.

First we create a disk label
(parted) mklabel msdos

Then we need to find the size of the disk, or more correctly the start- and end sector of the disk
(parted) print

The print command should display something like this:

Disk geometry for /dev/sdb: 0.000-102400.000 megabytes
Disk label type: msdos
Minor Start End Type Filesystem Flags

The geometry data will come in handy in our next command where we create a filesystem on the disk
(parted) mkpart primary ext2 0.000 102400.000

We can also make extra sure that we get a ext2 disk with the following command (please note that parted doesn’t support ext3):
(parted) mkfs 1 ext2

Now exit parted:
(parted) quit

Mounting the new drive

First create the mountpoint that you want to use for the new drive:
# mkdir /u01

Change the filesystem from ext2 to ext3:
# tune2fs -j /dev/sdb1
Now edit /etc/fstab and add the following line:
/dev/sdb1 /u01 ext3 defaults 1 1

The mount the new drive on mountpoint /u01:
# mount -a

Finally check that the new drive is mounted:
# df -k

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 5526416 2081024 3164660 40% /
/dev/sda1 101086 8613 87254 9% /boot
none 387852 0 387852 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sdb1 10317828 33460 9760252 1% /u01

Upgrade Fedora Core from version 5 to 6

I found an execellent guid on how to upgrade from FC5 to FC6 the other day. Unfortunatly I did not bookmark the site, but I did save the steps to a text file, which I will post here for future use.

Upgrade Fedora Core

yum update
yum clean all
rpm -Uhv http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-6-4.noarch.rpm

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-notes-6-3.noarch.rpm

yum -y update
yum -y update

I don’t know why I had to run yum -y update twice.

Upgrade the kernel

rpm -Uhv http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/fedora/updates/6/i386/kernel-2.6.18-1.2869.fc6.i686.rpm

http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/fedora/updates/6/i386/kernel-doc-2.6.18-1.2869.fc6.noarch.rpm

http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/fedora/updates/6/i386/kernel-devel-2.6.18-1.2869.fc6.i686.rpm

Reboot server to use the new kernel

init 6