Wim Coekaerts Blog

Yesterday morning I was at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco. Intel announced this new community effort called lesswatts. (http://lesswatts.org) (I suggested fewerwatts but the folks involved said less sounded better...ok then

Either way - the idea behind the project is to help Linux make better use of the new power features that are in the various new chips and also provide users with the tools and information needed to set up the OS and applications in order to make more efficient use of resources. This will then result into power savings. Lower power bills, better for the planet and so forth.

Renee James, general manager of Intel's software group made the announcement in her keynote and I joined her on stage for a few minutes to explain how Oracle and Intel are working together to get this into the hands of our customers. This project is important to Oracle as a consumer of Linux and because of the Unbreakable Linux support program we provide to our customers.

This really means a few things

Oracle plans to:

- Extend the validated configurations program we have (http://www.oracle.com/features/hp/linux-validated-0606.html) and add hints and tips to set up a system with power savings in mind. This will be based on internal (Oracle) testing.

- Help with making Linux be able to use the hardware features better (kernel and userspace code changes). At the same time, Intel will spend a lot of effort on power management in Linux.

One complaint we sometimes hear, is that even though Linux has a lot of new functionality and rapidly picks up new technologies, the distributions lag. Mainline Linux testing is still not on par and backporting untested features can be difficult. We have a lot of work to do here but there also is a lot of opportunity to work together and make this happen.

Bottom line :using less/fewer watts is good for all.

Yesterday, a few folks sent me this link : http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4120/. I read it with interest as there are a few things, ignoring the tone of the article, which I thought were interesting. 

I don't know how to make this clearer, so I'll reiterate what we've said from the start...Oracle Enterprise Linux is fully source and binary compatible with RHEL, so the same "experience" exists when you install either product. For good or bad. If we made it different, so that Oracle's installation was different, there would have been a complaint that we are not compatible. hmm no win ? But remember, our focus is on enterprise-quality support and that means we strive to provide customers with the best possible user experience. Oracle Enterprise Linux is compatible with RHEL and what we do is provide a great support service on top of either/both. We didn't launch a Linux distribution business, we started a Linux support program. I think we have made that very clear many a times. 

Next is the claim that it takes many hours to get things working... that made me wonder... So I decided to take an old laptop, a 2gz p4 with 1gb ram, install everything from scratch(OS + Oracle database 10gR2) and time it. To the minute (or second) give or take a few seconds, but given the comment of "many hours" those few seconds surely won't matter. 

So I started at 1:50pm, booted up my laptop and with the EL4U5 for x86 DVD. At 2:01pm, I had the entire distribution installed and the system did the reboot. This was the default installation, no customizations.  

The box reboots. I configure a regular user, oracle. It starts up Xwindows, I run rhn_register as the root user and configure my box to connect to ULN. This took me 3 whole minutes ! Time flies... 

then I run : 

[root@localhost ~]# up2date oracle-validated 

Fetching Obsoletes list for channel: el4_i386_latest... 

Fetching Obsoletes list for channel: el4_i386_oracle...

######################################## 

Fetching rpm headers...

######################################## 

Name                                   Version        Rel

----------------------------------------------------------

oracle-validated                        1.0.0          4.el4             i386 
 

Testing package set / solving RPM inter-dependencies...

########################################

oracle-validated-1.0.0-4.el ########################## Done.

compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-4 ########################## Done.

elfutils-libelf-devel-0.97. ########################## Done.

gcc-3.4.6-8.0.1.i386.rpm:   ########################## Done.

gcc-c++-3.4.6-8.0.1.i386.rp ########################## Done.

glibc-devel-2.3.4-2.36.i386 ########################## Done.

glibc-headers-2.3.4-2.36.i3 ########################## Done.

glibc-kernheaders-2.4-9.1.1 ########################## Done.

libaio-0.3.105-2.i386.rpm:  ########################## Done.

libaio-devel-0.3.105-2.i386 ########################## Done.

libstdc++-devel-3.4.6-8.0.1 ########################## Done.

sysstat-5.0.5-15.0.1.el4.i3 ########################## Done.

Preparing              ########################################### [100%] 

Installing...

   1:libstdc++-devel        ########################################### [100%]

   2:libaio                 ########################################### [100%]

   3:glibc-kernheaders      ########################################### [100%]

   4:glibc-headers          ########################################### [100%]

   5:glibc-devel            ########################################### [100%]

   6:gcc                    ########################################### [100%]

   7:gcc-c++                ########################################### [100%]

   8:libaio-devel           ########################################### [100%]

   9:sysstat                ########################################### [100%]

  10:elfutils-libelf-devel  ########################################### [100%]

  11:compat-libstdc++-33    ########################################### [100%]

  12:oracle-validated       ########################################### [100%]

The following packages were added to your selection to satisfy dependencies: 

Name                                    Version        Release

--------------------------------------------------------------

compat-libstdc++-33                     3.2.3          47.3

elfutils-libelf-devel                   0.97.1         4

gcc                                     3.4.6          8.0.1

gcc-c++                                 3.4.6          8.0.1

glibc-devel                             2.3.4          2.36

glibc-headers                           2.3.4          2.36

glibc-kernheaders                       2.4            9.1.100.EL

libaio                                  0.3.105        2

libaio-devel                            0.3.105        2

libstdc++-devel                         3.4.6          8.0.1

sysstat                                 5.0.5          15.0.1.el4 
 

so now we are at 2:05pm.  

I grab the oracle 10.2.0.1 CD and put it into the laptop and start runInstaller.

This is a standard out of the box install with the starter database created. 

2:15pm. software installed, products relinked and creation of the clone/seed database started. Remember, this is a laptop with one of those 5400rpm disks.  

2:26pm. database created, configuration assistants ran, I type as fast as I can to run the root.sh scripts and about a minute later. done. 

2:27pm, after 37 minutes, on the slowest machine I could find near me, I installed the OS from scratch (EL4U4), I installed Oracle RDBMS 10.2.0.1 with the default started database from scratch. And now have everything up and running and configured. Including a registered system with ULN.  

So for the default Linux install, get the oracle-validated rpm which we have talked about plenty and clearly tell people this is the sort of add-on stuff we can provide to make it easy to install Oracle products without having to modify the distribution. 

Maybe I cheated a few seconds left or right while reading the clock, so say 38 minutes. Still far less than an hour, and certainly not many many hours and certainly no installation problems, at all. No errors, no finding packages from CDs to get something going. Just hit the next button and enter a password here or there. 

Did I miss something ? It didn't feel like rocket science to me, even though, admittedly, it wasn't my very first Linux or Oracle installation. Someone want to try and beat me on installation time ? I can try it on a current desktop, I bet I can bring it down to about 20 minutes. Yes, it really is that easy and on top of that, if I had a problem, I could call support and I am sure they'd have been very helpful :) 

Reference URLs

http://linux.oracle.com

http://oracle.com/linux

http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux

http://www.orablogs.com/sergio/archives/001882.html

ok, so it's been about a year since my last entry :-) sorry ! it has been a tad busy as many of you can probably guess from all the activity that's been going around.

The Unbreakable Linux launch at Oracle OpenWorld has been a huge effort and it is very exciting to be in the middle of all this, so to speak. For those that don't recall, we announce a Linux support program called Unbreakable Linux (a second incarnation if you will). We offer support subscriptions for any customer (no Oracle required ! :) which either has an existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation (we support RHEL3 and RHEL4) or starts from scratch by downloading our re branded but otherwise identical distribution Enterprise Linux 4(see http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux)

A lot has changed, yet a lot hasn't changed. What hasn't really changed is the type of work we do, we have expanded this and made it a formal worldwide contractual program but in actuality we have been doing this since about 2001/2002. The old program was more of an informal way of helping our Oracle product customers that moved to Linux to have a place to go to if something goes really wrong on the OS side. We have been helping a set of customers over the last number of years in pretty much the same way as we do now. We help them fix the hairy bugs and we provide the best level of support we can provide, and they require. What has changed is that the team has gotten a lot bigger over the years and the capability to offer this to the public at large.

So, many things are going on, and I think it's a good time to re-cap a number of these and clarify some of the misconceptions out there. A few weeks ago I was thinking of writing something up but that was after reading some article written by an individual who had not done any sort of research, randomly put some comments together that were totally off base and I was very upset. That blog entry would not have been very pretty :) so I decided to just delete it. Over the last few months a lot has been said in various places about what it is we do and why, and much of that info has been, quite frankly, wrong. But since it's been so busy and we prefer to focus on helping customers and making this successful, it was better to ignore those things and just move on and let results speak for themselves.

Where to start ... the program

Many people out there still think we jumped into the distribution business. I 'd like to say we are in the Linux OS support subscription business not the building-yet-another distribution business. What our customers have come back to us with over the last 2 years is the request for Enterprise quality support. The ability to talk to someone that will help with difficult problems and provide fixes for those difficult problems in a timely manner. Not having to apply a ton of changes at once, not having to wait 6 or 9 months for a critical bug to get fixed, someone that understands that a system that goes down once a week is in fact, -not- a good thing.

You might say, well duh, of course - well you know though, that actually IS missing (or rather was, until last year ;-) .

That is what we are doing now, that is where we are targeting our efforts. And as I mentioned a few paragraphs earlier, what we have been doing for a few years already but mostly behind the scenes. The reason it is now public is because at some point, we didn't see the previous partner offerings succeed or go where it should go and this was pretty much our only alternative.

So what does this mean to you, the customer. Well first off, if you already run Linux, in particular rhel. It's very easy, just like the demo at Oracle OpenWorld (which was real not fake, and yeah my connection timed out to the server but hey it was a quick fix ;) . you basically keep your existing installation, zero change needed and just use Oracle to get support (metalink/phone) and ULN (unbreakable linux network) for patches (linux.oracle.com). just change up2date as a package that points to our server. everything else will then just be the same from an OS point of view and support comes from here. you might suddenly boot up with a darned cute confident looking penguin :) and see Enterprise Linux rather than Red Hat Enterprise Linux but that's pretty much it.

Secondly, if you don't already have RHEL installed or you are new to Linux or what not, we offer a FREE, yes, FREE, no hassle, no phone calls to sales people or non-free evaluation copies or whatever crippled versions of 2 years ago, download of a set of ISOs which we call Enterprise Linux 4 update 4. It is fully compatible and basically identical to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 4. We removed the trademarks and applied a few serious bugfixes. This is where all the hoopla and controversy starts. Pretty painful ;-) . It is the same code people, it is the same code. We HAD to re-brand the RHEL setup because you just can't get free for download from anywhere. So we take out trademarks,  copyrights and  graphics and we replace it with, well, other names and definitely a cuter logo ! Between Red Hat, Novell and Oracle, we 're the only one with a penguin as a mascot ! duh. And that becomes our "distribution". Do we want to fork ? No, not at all, not one bit, do we do this for fun ? No. Do we do this to create more work ? No. We do it because that's the only way we can build a CD set based on an open source product from an open source company that we can make available for download for free. That is what we do, I already posted the link above. And guess what, it's update 4, and when we release the next update (5), you can also freely download that one. It's free for production use if you want, no support provided then, but it's fine.  So people still try to say it's a fork. I just don't know how to convince them, I'd say - all the source code is out there, feel free to grab it, compare every single bit of code and post a follow-up to this blog as to where we break application compatibility or any sort of compatibility. There is a link http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/el4cert-ds.pdf which shows the differences that you have to be aware of and as you can see it's related to text not to actual applications running.

We are in this to provide a great level of support service that is required in the enterprise space and we offer the software ISOs for free for download so that everyone can deploy this.

That's another topic that has been going around - comparing our downloads with desktop stuff. Ya know - this is an enterprise distribution, we never uttered the work - home, or desktop or cutting edge development distribution. We build a service for businesses. EL4 will likely install on your desktop and if you do and use it we will support everything as we support it for our big  customers, but we 're not focusing on that. So I find it funny how there were comments on how Fedora and OpenSuSE downloads are as many a day as we have had total. Can I point out, there is no free easy download of RHEL or SLES - at all. there is of EL4 , so can I then state that we have had infinite more downloads than both those companies for the enterprise distribution ? If you find that a silly statement then you have to admit that the other statements made are just as silly :) also- the folks downloading our ISO set don't do this at home, they do this at work, and in general make this available to the company on an internal website. so one download for a big company might mean 100's of actual users or 1000's. Either way, what it comes down to is that you cannot compare the download numbers.

ok I am going to stop here for this one and promise that I will add more soon, I might end up writing a book here so let's call this prologue and soon chapter 1 will come. stay tuned.

Linuxworld Boston is over.

't Was that time of year again. The east coast Linuxworld show, like last year, in Boston. I have always found it funny that we have the Boston (or New York) show early in the year and the San Francisco one in August. Boy it can be cold.

So the show was quite small, the showfloor had fewer booths than last year, and a few big companies were missing, there was no big HP, IBM or Sun presence. It sounds like there are a few too many Linuxworld events going on across the globe and they want to make a statement by not showing up. Why not just one nice big Linuxworld San Francisco !

Anyhow, the show - I did not attend talks, just met with a number of customers, partners and research analysts. That really is the main reason to go for me. I love getting feedback from our customers and how well (or not) things are working out so we can help address some of this. We have this event called the Linux customer advisory forum and we try to present some of our plans to customers and get feedback in a more open way, get a discussion going. This is extremely valuable, especially if you have something to show in response to prior meetings ! I prefer to make this an interactive discussion event rather than presenting grand ideas and powerpoint slides and the "it's all good" talk. Reality is important and I prefer to listen and react.

At the booth there were a number of presentations, Mike Olson was doing a great job presenting on berkeleyDB and embedded databases. I saw Margo hanging out there as well. We made quite a few announcements on customer success stories on Linux in press releases and local chats. Linux really is in every company these days, large or small, test or mission critical, cluster or single node, small smp or large smp. Everywhere. And most of all, it can handle it. For those that like to hear it again - we are fully committed to this OS. Nothing has changed around our strategy, use of Linux as platform for development and production deployments. It is all still the same, very active and very much alive. If anything, it's growing stronger by the minute!

I believe that one of the biggest things we have to do a better job of is documentation, provide more papers, more information, more configurations we have tested and such online. In many cases, stability issues can be solved through some tuning. So let's work on that ! Actually a lot of this is coming on line real soon.

On another note, there was an announcement also around ocfs2 and how it got merged into the mainline kernel. This just to re-iterate our commitment to Linux and working well with everyone out there. Oracle donates a lot of code back to the community. We are not just users of Linux or other products/projects but actual contributors .

We have a huge developer community for our products. Developers that write products in any form under any license that work well with our very solid database and middle tier applications. In most cases this all just works transparently, or mostly transparently with other solutions out there, as long as it's based on using standard methods to access storage engines. At the same time, we also provide a lot of stuff back to where it belongs, and I can of course talk specifically about Linux. Look at all the QA, all the bugfixing, the feature work, all that stuff is good for us, granted, but also good for the community, other application vendors and so forth.

I have been reading some blog entries by some folks that were involved with Linux at Oracle and now work elsewhere... Sometimes I feel like responding to some of the stuff they now say but it is best to ignore the blabber and just let them rant. One thing I do want to state is that in the Linux team we have many people that have been doing this for years and really are part of the community and understand how things work.

Life is good, having fun, doing the right thing.

For this first entry I would like to take the time to give an overview of what I would like to discuss going forward. This blogging thing is actually quite an interesting vehicle. Often we end up talking to the press or have press releases in order to broadcast a message to the world. The drawback there is that it generally has to be "big news" for it to get out so we don't have an easy way to present small topics or some interesting information that does not warrant a full paper to be written.

I would like to discuss questions that came up at customer visits, provide feedback on comments that come from reactions to my postings, and provide some hints and tips on architectures, configurations, and technologies. My hope is that we can have both technical entries and some higher-level type of conversations. Feel free to ask anything, and we will do our best to respond.

As many of you know, Oracle has been doing a whole lot on Linux over the last few years--all our products have been ported, but we didn't stop there. The Unbreakable Linux campaign has been a huge success in helping the adoption of Linux in the corporate world, and a lot of our focus has been on the OS itself, not just our products.

We spend a huge effort on testing; across the company thousands of systems run Linux in test or production environments. The hosted business (On Demand) deploys pretty much every server on Linux and so on. It is literally everywhere. There is no doubt that we will continue this and much more going forward. Many good things to come--stay tuned, this is just the beginning.