Setting Xhost for the Oracle User and Creating a custom Yum Repository for the local Media

In setting up environments and running the GUI I've always just used xhost + as the root user.

I'm currently moving a customer to Oracle Linux from Windows and helped out our system administrator who was on site with a list of packages needed for an Oracle Database and Ebusiness Suite ( oracle-validated took care of most things).

Its actually a great project to be involved with as we are using VMware and have created template images to deploy new environments as needed. It takes about 20mins to create a new machine which is already configured and has the Oracle Database 11gR2 software installed.

Of course in any deployment there have been missing packages not listed in Oracles Documentation(but they are on oracle support as notes for some reason)  and interactions with the GUI's when running the installers.

At the start I was using xhost + to help with the GUI's , but having come from a support background, I realized I was breaking a big rule. I promised myself that once involved with projects i'd stay away from root as much as possible( a bad experience where a person installed the oracle RAC clusterware as root).

So I needed to work out how to stop using xhost +

Answer :
The below turns back on the access control lists
$ xhost -
The below add the oracle user to the list and the local IP
$ xhost +SI:localuser:oracle
$ xhost + hostname

The second thing bugging me was that the templates were on dhcp and could use yum for installing the packages but with the cloned vm's , no such luck as they were static and locked down. I found a great note on mounting the media dvd and creating a custom yum repository which could then be used.

The steps are below :

# mkdir /media/disk

Insert EL5.7 DVD (or attach to your Oracle VM guest)

# mount /dev/cdrom /media/disk

Edit /etc/yum.conf, adding the following section:

[EL5.7 DVD]

name = Enterprise Linux 5.7 DVD

baseurl=file:///media/disk/Server/

gpgcheck=1

enabled=1

# yum install oracle-validated

The last step was to go back to the template and update it with all the lessons learned from the first couple of environments.

Scaphoid Fracture and Oracle 12c

After taking up American football with the American Trojans back in October I had an injury on St Patricks day which I put down to a sprain. 8 weeks later and after some physio I decided to get an Xray and found out I had a fracture.

I've had a cast on the arm for the last 6 weeks so although i'm working and in the middle of an R12 upgrade for a customer and studying for the 10g OCM , 11g OCP upgrade exams, blogging has been put on a back burner.

I think I'll need to start back with Web Services , ODI when I return as their is enough blog posts about the release of 12c which would put me to shame. I installed it on the 2 hour return train journey the other day without any issue on OEL 6_4 and look forward to playing with it. The guys over at pythian already have a great post on setting up a 12c RAC cluster on the laptop, building on previous post on setting up the 11gR2 cluster.

Having read the 12c concepts guide, they have a nice picture of a bunch of DBA's being replaced by Container and Pluggable database Administrators. I'd just about convinced my friends what I did, now I have to learn a whole new piece.