The latest release of Oracle Database came with an overhaul of the Oracle Universal Installer GUI. There is a strange interaction between gnome and the OUI (runInstaller) that causes the screen to flash uncontrollably and not resize properly when the screen resolution is 800×600 and gnome is configured as per defaults of RedHat Enterprise Linux and Oracle Enterprise Linux, which consumes a few pixels on top and bottom reducing overall screen space to under 600 pixels tall.
This video was produced while sitting on a flight from YVR (Vancouver) to YOW (Ottawa), in seat 1A in J (Exec/First) class. I had food over my MacBook Pro, and it’s a wonder the built-in microphone picked up anything. I demonstrate this via a VNC connection in response to a question posted on Oracle forums regarding using VNC to install. It is not VNC that is at fault; it is the lack of screen realestate that causes Oracle to blink and flash, and ultimately fail to visibly draw the “Next” button (although the ALT-N key combo still works)
Note that Oracle specifies a minimum of 1024×768 resolution for 11gR2 installation. See documentation here.
I put together a video on a recent flight (September 11, 2009) from Toronto to Vancouver while killing time. I just happened to have all the 11.2.0.1 distribution downloaded and ready to install, so I whipped up a few Virtual Machines, iSCSI based shared storage (No, I don’t use openfiler; rolled my own iSCSI Enterprise Target (iet) based VM), and Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL 5.2).
I messed up the NTP configuration, so the root.sh during the Grid Infrastructure install failed. My intention is to build up a demo environment to show off all the features of 11gR2 as best as possible, all in Virtual Machines so that you can simulate the same educational environment on your own poor-man’s-garage-cluster. =)
I’ll whip up some documentation and procedures some time next week if there’s any interest from the community. If no interest is expressed, I shall just keep my own notes for personal purposes and publish tidbits that might mean very little to others, so let me know (via comments or otherwise) what you think, and what you’d like to see.
Host machine: MacBook Pro (my portable lab) with 4GB of ram and built-in HD for all VM storage; VMWare Fusion 2.0.5; 2 Nodes attempted with Grid Infrastructure (ASM and Oracle Clusterware components).
For some reason all the browsers I use on OS X Snow Leopard (Camino, Firefox, Safari) cannot upload to YouTube. Leopard 10.5 works fine, as does Windows XP/Vista/7. At first I thought it might be browser or flash plugin related, but I’ve tried installing fresh flash plugins and updating the browsers to no avail. This is putting a kink in my video uploading to see what uptake the IT community (specifically Oracle) has to demo videos of new features and administrative tasks.
YouTube not allowing uploads from Snow Leopard screenshot of bug
This represents my first blog entry on my site, masterschema.com. As a a complete newbie to both reading and writing blogs, hopefully my writing and publishing skills improve with time. In the meantime the purpose of this blog is to serve as a dumping zone for ideas, concepts, and ultimately whitepapers and tutorials that are targeted at the IT professional. As I get older, I find I’m forgetting details more and more, and documenting them in a way I can find later is essential. I figure I might as well make it public too. =)
Hope you enjoy reading. I hope to keep this place flame-free… if it’s useful then I’m glad I could help!
