Installing Blackboard (pre-9.1) on Oracle ASM Storage
March 17th, 2010
Blackboard claims that new version 9.1 will “support” installation on Oracle’s ASM (Automatic Storage Management), which is really just Oracle’s own LVM (Logical Volume Manager) geared specifically for Oracle files. Blackboard’s installer, prior to version 9.1, will balk if ASM disk paths like +ASM_DBPROD_DATA/ are entered for the installation path on the database, as opposed to normal (ocfs2, ext3, nfs, etc.) /ocfs2_dbprod_data. This is because the installer’s script validates that there is a ‘/’ on the beginning of the path to the database. However, if you enter a fake path, like say ‘/fakepath’ for the installer, it executes some CREATE TABLESPACE SQLs that specify the file name for the tablespace. This SQL of course failes, because /fakepath doesn’t exist. I copied the failing SQL out of the installer path and noticed something: the installer was querying Oracle’s specialUSER_TABLESPACES (or DBA_TABLESPACES, I forget) to see if tablespaces like BB_BB60_DATA and BB_BB60_INDX existed. If they didn’t exist, the failing SQL would then try to create them, and fail due to ‘/fakepath’ being… fake. A complete and detailed solution to this problem follows after the break.
Sledding In The Shadow of Abandonment
March 4th, 2010
Cincinnati is full of abandonments, most of the time you drive right past them without knowing their history. Many people take the presence of these historical treasures for granted, some call them blight, but their significance in Cincinnati’s history remains strong. They are an ever present reminder of Cincinnati’s past, and in some cases, a beacon for Cincinnati’s future; but more than likely they’re just a playground for explorers like me.
Nota Bene: you can click these and see the full resolution versions on My Flickr, or view a slideshow of all 4 photos.
Standing quitely behind a snow-blind sledder in Mt. Echo Park, the Crosley Building was once home of WLW radio (better known today as 700WLW.) The radio tye-in doesn’t stop there though, previously Crosley Radio Corporation used the building to manufacture low-cost table top radios until 1942 when World War II operations within the Crosley Building demanded that manufacturing operations be moved elsewhere.

Autocentric Development Was A Mistake, Let’s Fix It.
March 2nd, 2010
I took the bold move when I was living downtown to ride my bike and/or public transport to get back and forth to work. It saved me time not having to find a parking space and I got some fantastic exercise riding around Cincinnati and felt great doing it. Then the derailer failed on my bike — I’d better to something about that.