Living

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.

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My friend Eric asked me to write up a list of skills that I thought I an entry level tech should have. I’m writing it from the point of just having hired said entry-level technician position. The “guy” I just hired has the following skills, and I am VERY happy with him:

• Basic knowledge of DNS, how to add/change/delete A/CNAME/RREF records in a generic point and click environment like Windows DNS or a DNS appliance
• Knowledge of DHCP, leases, static DHCP, adding/change/delete leases
• Basic DOS/*nix command line navigation (cd, type, less/more, etc.)
• OS installation, install all drivers, patch system
• Basic virtual machine knowledge, installing OSs inside VMs, cloning VMs, re-IP & re-SID clones, etc.
• Disk drive imaging like ghost
• Network connection troubleshooting knowledge, finding whether problem is local to PC, segment, etc.
• IP subnetting
• Basic Office suite use
• Printer Drivers (enhanced vs os-built in)
• Identifying unknown hardware by reading device IDs, using www.pcidatabase.com or search engine
• Web Browser issues/compatability

That’s it for now — but I’m about to get in the truck for the seven hour drive back to Cincinnati from St. Louis. I may edit this post an add to it when I return, or not. Good luck Aryc!

DISCLAIMER: I still hate windows.

I spent a decent portion of today hunting around for a way to script or otherwise automate (at the command line) uploading a file to one of $wageslavery’s external vendors. After diddling with curl -T only to find that it only works if the destination file doesn’t exist, I finally bit the bullet and installed Cygwin. Cygwin provides a win32 version of expect, the command line automation tool and cadaver, the command line WebDAV utility, basically smbclient for WebDAV. Working example code after the break!
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On December 22nd, as soon the time rolls from 2008-12-22 7:59 to 2008-12-22 08:00, our seven Blackboard application servers will be changed over to authenticate against LDAP instead of the standard Blackboard RDBMS (passwords stored in the Oracle database). This transition is not without issues, and this blog post will serve to inform FTRC members of several support scenarios and other important information on how to handle them. Support Personnel: Please be sure to read this post throughly, and feel free to ask questions in the comments.
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