Categories
bdg dev2dev Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction

ALI G6 on Ubuntu?

Some of you may be familiar with my rants on the bdg blog about how Linux just isn’t ready for the desktop. My opinion on that matter has largely changed with the release of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake), which I have been running with minimal hassle on my newish Gateway MP6954 laptop since last summer. It has a tasty coffee-colored UI (mmm), it NEVER crashes, it basically takes care of itself with updates and has equivalent — or better — software for pretty much everything you’d ever want to do with Windows or OSX at a great price: free.

Of course ALUI is only officially supported on two Linux plaforms: RHEL and Suse. But Linux is Linux, right? Well, sort of. I had all sorts of “fun” getting ALUI running on Oracle on Fedora. However, with Ubuntu, getting Oracle and ALUI up was a breeze.

First off, unless you call yourself a DBA, you don’t want to mess around with a full-blown Oracle instance. Instead, just follow these easy steps to install something called Oracle XE. It has certain limitations — the most important of which is that you can’t create more than one database.

My first — and really my only — mistake during this setup process came next (and it’s related to this one-database issue). I tried to drop the XE default database (ORACLE_SID=XE) and run the crdb1_oracle_unix.sql script to create the PLUM10 database. This was a bad idea. I poked around on Google a bit and then thought, well, I don’t really need my own database. (Had I had this epiphany before starting down that path, I could have saved two hours and had ALUI up and running on Ubuntu in fewer than 30 minutes.) So, instead of running crdb1_oracle_unix.sql, just edit create_tables_oracle.sql and remove any reference to PLUMINDEX, then run the following commands on the XE database:

$sqlplus sys as sysdba
SQL>create user plumtree identified by password
SQL>grant connect, resource, create view to plumtree

This creates the plumtree user on the XE database, which gives ALUI its own schema, which, for our purposes, is just as good as having your own DB. Now you can basically just run the out-of-the-box scripts (keeping in mind the changes I made to create_tables_oracle.sql):

$sqlplus plumtree/password@XE
SQL>@create_tables_oracle.sql
SQL>@load_seed_info_oracle.sql
SQL>@stored_procs_oracle.sql
SQL>@postinst_oracle.sql

At this point, ALUI was ready to rock. I only ran into one small snag. One of the native search libraries complained about a missing LD_LIBRARY_PATH dependency on libstdc++. This was not a showstopper. I did the following:

$ln -s /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6.0.7 /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2

From there I configured the bundled tomcat to host the portal and the imageserver and viola, ALUI 6.0SP1, in all its glory, was up and running on Ubuntu. (BTW, I would have used ALUI 6.1.0.1, but when I wrote this article, the RHEL and Suse versions weren’t available yet.)

Comments

Comments are listed in date ascending order (oldest first)

  • I’ve also successfully installed ALUI 6.1.1 (6.1MP1) on Ubuntu 7.04 (Server). Required one workaround for the LAX installer shared libraries problem (can’t find libc.so.6 etc):
    $cp AquaLogicInteraction_v6-1_MP1 AquaLogicInteraction_v6-1_MP1.bak
    $cat AquaLogicInteraction_v6-1_MP1.bak | sed "s/export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL/#xport LD_ASSUME_KERNEL/" > AquaLogicInteraction_v6-1_MP1

    Posted by: rdouglas on May 7, 2007 at 10:45 AM

  • hey Chris, appreciate the post! just wanted to give the hint that to change the plumindex on the create_tables script, you can do this in vi: :1,$s/PLUMINDEX/USERS/g

    Posted by: jbell on June 2, 2007 at 8:57 PM

  • Chris, nice post…I referenced this post while trying to get the new ALUI 6.1 quickstart installer to correctly intall the portal on windows xp. I’ve tried the installer on several xp machines but it is still failing…i think the error has to do with the way the installer is setting up the paths/environmental variables – when i run the diagnostics tool i get an invalid entry point…my paths look correct and i’ve tried re-installing multiple times on multiple machines…any ideas? Thanks.

    Posted by: phil- on September 10, 2007 at 8:41 AM

  • Well, after some troubleshooting I figured it out…here is the solution…I hope this is helpful to someone in the future…I needed to rename the icuuc30.dll in C:WINXPsystem32 to icuuc30_from_system32.dll and paste the icuuc30.dll from C:beaaluicommoninxight3.7.6binnative into the C:WINXPsystem32 directory before the installation would work.

    I did try just moving the INXIGHT_PATH variable so that it is loaded on the PATH before the C:WINXPsystem32 but the error still occured. BTW – icuuc30.dll is a component for Unicode version 3.0

    Posted by: phil- on September 12, 2007 at 11:47 AM

  • Thank you so much for this post, I had the same problem on XP. I’m just curious, how were you able to debug this problem? What pointed you to icuuc30.dll?

    Posted by: fhkoetje on December 4, 2007 at 9:31 AM

Categories
Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction

More adventures in desktop linux

Everything I do in linux seems to be an adventure. That couldn’t be more true for Oracle 10g. After fighting with the installer, monkeying around with the ALUI database scripts and editing the start-up script, I got the database to start, but it would only shut down immediately afterword. Drats!

This morning, I deleted every trace of Oracle 10g from my system and attempted an install of Oracle 9i. The adventure begins . . . .

First off, Oracle 9i requires JRE 1.3.1, which Sun is planning to retire very soon (as soon as Java 6 comes out). Damn, I remember working on Java 1.0 — am I getting old?

JRE 1.3.1 doesn’t install cleanly on Fedora Core 5. Then again, does anything? Java is closed-source — meaning you can’t build it yourself — so once again I was in a linux bind. When I tried to unpack the 1.3.1 JRE I downloaded from Sun, it gave me this:

tail: `-1' option is obsolete; use `-n 1' since this will be removed in the future
Unpacking...
tail: cannot open `+486' for reading: No such file or directory
Checksumming...
1 The download file appears to be corrupted. [etc]

I downloaded the file again a few times to make sure it really wasn’t corrupted. Of course it wasn’t.

Then I found this great blog post that explained exactly what was going wrong and offered an easy fix. Easy, that is, if you’re a developer. (I’m becoming more and more convinced every day that linux is not at all poised to take over the desktop unless the entire earth’s population goes out and gets a CS degree.)

Alas, the antiquated JRE was really to roll and now it was time to run the Oracle installer. Of course, that didn’t run either. Instead, it spat out JRE errors;

Error occurred during initialization of VM
Unable to load native library: /tmp/OraInstall2006-08-19_11-59-35AM/jre/lib/i386/libjava.so: symbol __libc_wait, version GLIBC_2.0 not defined in file libc.so.6 with link time reference

Nice. Back to Google.

The fix this time came (ironically) from IBM’s web site. No problem, just make a change to libcwait.c, recompile it as a shared object and then set the LD_PRELOAD variable. I’m sure my mom could do that, right?

Then of course I had the standard “this only works under X” problem, but I had already figured that one out. Here’s the error:

Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.InternalError: Can't connect to X11 window server using ':0.0' as the value of the DISPLAY variable.
at sun.awt.X11GraphicsEnvironment.initDisplay(Native Method)
at sun.awt.X11GraphicsEnvironment.(X11GraphicsEnvironment.java:59)
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:120)
at java.awt.GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment(GraphicsEnvironment.java:58)
at java.awt.Window.(Window.java:188)
at java.awt.Frame.(Frame.java:315)
at java.awt.Frame.(Frame.java:262)
at oracle.sysman.oii.oiic.OiicInstaller.main(OiicInstaller.java:593)

And the fix (as root):

%>xhost +
%>xterm &
%>su - oracle
%>/tmp/Disk1/runInstaller &

And finally, the Oracle 9i installer launched. Now of course it’s totally hung at 18% on “Linking Oracle Net Required Support Files” and it’s been stuck there since before I started writing this blog post.

Gotta love it.

Categories
dev2dev Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction

Handy Startup Script for ALUI G6 on *nix

I just wrote a nice little startup script for ALUI G6 on *nix. If you want to use it, place a file in /etc/init.d called “plumtree” with the following contents:

#!/bin/sh

. /opt/plumtree/pthome.sh

case "$1" in
 'start')
   $PT_HOME/ptportal/6.0/bin/automationserverd.sh start
   $PT_HOME/ptws/6.0/bin/apiserviced.sh start
   $PT_HOME/ptdr/6.0/bin/drserverd.sh start
   $PT_HOME/ptsearchserver/6.0/bin/searchserverd.sh start
   $PT_HOME/ptupload/6.0/bin/plumtreefileuploadd.sh start
   /opt/httpd/bin/apachectl.pt start
   /opt/tomcat5/bin/startup.sh
   ;;

 'stop')
   $PT_HOME/ptportal/6.0/bin/automationserverd.sh stop
   $PT_HOME/ptws/6.0/bin/apiserviced.sh stop
   $PT_HOME/ptdr/6.0/bin/drserverd.sh stop
   $PT_HOME/ptsearchserver/6.0/bin/searchserverd.sh stop
   $PT_HOME/ptupload/6.0/bin/plumtreefileuploadd.sh stop
   /opt/httpd/bin/apachectl.pt stop
   /opt/tomcat5/bin/shutdown.sh
   ;;
esac

Now make the script executable:

%>chmod +x /etc/init.d/plumtree

To run all the ALUI components, type:

/etc/init.d/plumtree start

To stop them, use

/etc/init.d/plumtree stop

If you want to start ALUI automatically when the server comes up, do this (assuming you want ALUI to start at run level 3):

ln -s /etc/init.d/plumtree /etc/rc3.d/S50plumtree

Of course you need to make sure that Oracle is started first if you go this route. If you’re not running all the ALUI services on the same machine (not a recommended configuration, but good for development), you’ll need to edit the script above to start and stop only the components you have installed on each server. Enjoy!

Categories
dev2dev Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction

ALI Install Issues on Fedora Core 5

Note: I don’t think this is officially supported, so YMMV.

I encountered a problem installing ALUI G6 on Fedora Core 5. Just for the record, it’s not a problem with ALUI — it’s a problem with InstallAnywhere, the software that BEA uses to install ALUI.

Here are the errors I got:

[plumtree@bdg-chris]# ./PlumtreeFoundation_v6-0
Preparing to install...
Extracting the JRE from the installer archive...
Unpacking the JRE...
Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...
Configuring the installer for this system's environment...
awk: error while loading shared libraries: libdl.so.2:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
dirname: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
/bin/ls: error while loading shared libraries: librt.so.1:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
basename: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
dirname: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
basename: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
hostname: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Launching installer...

grep: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
/tmp/install.dir.17585/Linux/resource/jre/bin/java: error while loading
shared libraries: libpthread.so.0: cannot open shared object file:
No such file or directory

I resolved these errors by doing the following:

[plumtree@bdg-chris]# cat PlumtreeFoundation_v6-0 | sed
"s/export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL/#xport LD_ASSUME_KERNEL/" >
PlumtreeFoundation_v6-0.new

[plumtree@bdg-chris]# chmod a+x PlumtreeFoundation_v6-0.new

[plumtree@bdg-chris]# ./PlumtreeFoundation_v6-0.new

This may work to get ALUI installed on other unsupported flavors of *nix, although I’ve never tried it, so again, YMMV.

Comments

Comments are listed in date ascending order (oldest first)

  • once you got it installed how did it run on core 5?

    Posted by: phil- on April 13, 2007 at 12:30 PM

  • It ran pretty well aside from the occasional JVM segfault, which I could have probably fixed by upgrading to the latest 1.4.2 JVM and plugging that into Tomcat 5, rather than running the OOTB bundled Tomcat/JVM supplied by BEA.

    Instead, I’ve switched to Ubuntu (with Oracle XE), which is a great platform because, for the most part, it just takes care of itself. It’s like having RHEL with a lifetime subscription to RHN, but without actually paying for it! 😉

    Posted by: bucchere on April 14, 2007 at 6:17 AM

Categories
Software Development

Fedora Core 5 Support for Intel Pro Wireless (Centrino)

I bought a new Gateway MP6954 Laptop yesterday and decided to give Linux another go. This time I told myself: I’m not even going to attempt to run any Windows applications using Crossover Office or anything else. I’m just going to go with what works best: httpd, Tomcat, Java, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Oracle, MySQL, etc.

I installed Fedora Core 5 again (kernel build 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp) from the same CDs I used last time and it installed and came up cleanly, but with no wireless support. There is very little documentation about running Linux on my particular laptop model, but the wireless hardware (Intel Centrino/Pro Wireless ipw3945) is fairly commonplace and, according to the many sources I referenced, it’s “well supported” by Linux. Intel even offers a driver for it, but it’s a source-only distribution.

According to the install guide for the driver, I first needed to download and compile the IEEE 80211 subsystem. I later found out that in most cases, doing so is a bad idea. Compiling the subsystem (version 1.1.14) and then the driver (version 1.1.0) led to runtime incompatibilities — “Invalid Module Format” was the exact error. However, against the 80211 module included with the 2.6.15 kernel source, the driver wouldn’t even compile. So I was in a bind.

I needed to find an IEEE 80211 subsystem that was compatible with the 1.1.0 version of the driver. The answer was actually more simple than I thought. All I needed to do was upgrade to the latest FC5 kernel 2.6.17, install the latest kernel sources (yum install kernel-devel) and then build the driver from there. These are the instructions I followed.

And just like that, I had wireless support for my new laptop under FC5. Now only if I could get the sound card working . . . .

Categories
Software Development

Adventures in desktop linux

I’ve had such a good experience using Fedora on several of bdg’s enterprise systems (SugarCRM, Subversion, Bugzilla, Vetrics, Connotea, etc.) that I thought I would give desktop linux a shot.

What a mistake.

Actually, it was a good learning experience. But still, a mistake.

First I download Fedora Core 5 (Bordeaux) using BitTorrent. My first problem was mastering the ISO files to CD. Windows has no native support for this (surprise) and for the life of me I couldn’t find a free product without filesize restrictions or other issues. Finally I remembered that I had a purchased a license for Sateira DropToCD some time ago, so I attempted to use that miserable excuse for a program. I tried to burn the five CDs at 24x (~10 minutes each) and my computer would not recognize them. The CD-Rs, once burned, were useless, yet Windows did not show any data on them nor a volume label.

I did a little Googling and then remembered that I needed to burn at 4x in order to get Fedora Core 4 (and Solaris x86 — another mistake) to work. So I tried that (at ~30 minutes per CD) and again, total failure. Finally I used a real operating system, OS X, running on my wife’s Mac laptop, to create the ISOs. (Of course OS X has built in support for ISO burning that works like a charm.)

After all this nonsense, I was finally ready to install FC5. So I backed up all my company files, music, photos and other stuff to my Western Digital 250 Gb external firewire drive and off I went.

I must say, there are some nice things about FC5. Unfortunately, it’s a short list:

  1. The installer, Anaconda, is awesome.
  2. The graphic design is beautiful.
  3. Wireless networking just works.
  4. Firewire just works.

So I was off to a running start. But here is where my problems began. At the top of my shit list is CodeWeavers‘ CrossOver Office. What a complete piece of garbage. From all their press releases, I was led to believe that they actually supported some useful Windows programs such as Office and, more recently, iTunes on various flavors of Linux. Don’t believe what you read. It’s all lies. Damn lies.

I started with Office 2003. That just failed utterly and completely. I wasn’t about to go back to Office XP, so I gave up on running M$ Office. FC5 comes with OpenOffice, which claims to support Word, Excel, etc. so I figured I would just use that.

Next I moved to iTunes. First off, installing it is a series of hacks and kludges. Upon following these ridiculous instructions, iTunes actually launched! But:

  1. All my playlists were gone, even though I repeatedly pointed iTunes to my backed up iTunes Music folder.
  2. The best feature in iTunes, search, didn’t work — the search box was grayed out.
  3. A basic feature — scrolling — was inconsistent and buggy.
  4. It crashed about 10 times before I completely gave up on it.

So now I had limited options. I decided that I would give up on purchasing DRM music through the iTunes store (and save about $500/yr in the process) and switch to Banshee, which claimed to be everything that iTunes was minus the music store.

Okay, so music is just music. But what about e-mail? I’m totally addicted to Outlook — the proof is my 1.5+ Gb .pst saved mail file. Without CrossOver Office running Outlook, I had to fall back on Evolution or Thunderbird. Access to saved mail, however, was a showstopper. To use my gi-normous .pst file in a non-M$ program, I needed to convert it to MBOX format. That proved impossible. Or at least not possible within my own personal constraints of time, patience and most importantly, sanity.

First I tried Thunderbird, because I remembered using its Outlook .pst conversion program. After struggling for a long time with compilation issues, linking issues/missing dependencies (including the wrong version of libstdc++) and segfaults, I finally got the ol’ T-bird working on FC5. But to my disbelief, the option to import a .pst was missing. After some Googling, I found out that Mozilla’s hairbrained implementation actually relies on MAPI, so you need to have Outlook installed and configured on the machine with Thunderbird in order to convert from .pst to MBOX.

I tried various other programs, including a useless dungheap called MailNavigator. I also tried hand-compiling a C program called libpst that was supposed to work and didn’t. I was beginning to think that my .pst file had been corrupted, but that was impossible because it was running fine in Outlook.

After all this nonsense, I used my wife’s laptop to download a DOS book disk with fdisk, deleted all my partition info, and now here I am back on Windows XP.

Lessons learned:

  1. Linux is not ready for the desktop, even if you’re a hardcore developer.
  2. Don’t believe anything CodeWeavers say about CrossOver Office. It just doesn’t work. Period.
  3. Windows, for all its faults, is actually not that bad. I can’t believe I just said that, but it’s true. 😉