26. Nov. 2008

When you want to use SQL*Plus or exp/imp on the same server on which you have installed your database you might get errors like these:

sqlplus: error while loading shared libraries: libsqlplus.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

or

Error 6 initializing SQL*Plus
Message file sp1us.msb not found
SP2-0750: You may need to set ORACLE_HOME to your Oracle software directory

Syntax:
$ sqlplus username/password

You get this error only when you execute ‘sqlplus’ as a user outside of the dba or Oracle group, because in Oracle Database 10g Release 2 the Oracle Home was locked down by setting umask to 007 prior to installation, so that the files that sqlplus needs to execute do not have read/execute permissions for group “others” and some directories under $ORACLE_HOME have no world read nor execute permission (rwxr-x—)

Warning , don’t use the following command to lower the permissions, this may corrupt your Oracle-Installation:
chmod -R 755 $ORACLE_HOME/

The better way is to use an script which is provided by oracle:
$ORACLE_HOME/install/changePerm.sh

This script will relax the permissions on most files and directories in your Oracle Home, and allow “others” to execute them.

23. Nov. 2008

Being forced to work with MySQL Databases, not every Web Developer is familiar with databases in general.

Now the good news is that when working in a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) environment you do not really need to have deep knowledge about relational databases to succeed.

Most tools like CMS do a full automated setup for you and the only knowledge it needs to have starting with them, is the server and database name and finally the login credentials (username/password) to access it.

Just later on the one or other maintenance work will occur and you will feel the need of having some nice and neat database interface to work with. Knowing about this need today I will recommend you a few tools and you should feel free to choose one or each of them based on your platform and taste.

The first tool I will recommend you is called phpMyAdmin. It is written in PHP and as a so called browser tool it works platform independent and flawless in all common browsers. Very often being offered by hosting providers it is mostly already part of your hosting package and easy to access and use. Coming along with all necessary options like browsing and navigating through your databases, it also offers a SQL interface and the often necessary export/import options. Personally it is my favorite tool to work with.

Once you are familiar with phpMyAdmin, phpMyBackupPro is another very similar tool you might find it worth to look at. Also browser based it is mainly written for interactive exports and imports, but can get also use for scheduled automatic backups.

For Windows platform only I would like to recommend you a tool called MyDB Studio. Coming along with a well designed interface it offers all features you need and the license it needs is given away for free in case you only use it for private and non commercial interests. It just needs you to give them a valid email address and the key is emailed to you quickly after.

And now finally and last in case you are such a Macintosh guru, I would like to recommend you CocoaMySQL. It does a similar great job like the others and can get used right away after the installation has taken place. What I like is the console view of is, showing you all command issued during the past and looking at it you might even learn some SQL (Structured Query Language).

21. Nov. 2008

When transferring data from one server to another – maybe for backup reason – most people use tar to create an archive. Then they copy it to the new server and untar it or leave it as a tarfile as backup.

Working with UNIX and using a trick  you can transfer it with compression and speed up the whole transfer time a lot.

Using the output result of  a command directly as the command line input of a second command  using a  Unix Pipe the need of writing it down to disk first no longer exists. Finally accessing the remote system though a ssh tunnel will even transfer the compressed data over the network within one single step.

Invoking the following single command will transfer all your data within sourcedirectory an Server B and immediately store it locally  on Server B within a compress archive:

ssh username@hostname “cd /sourcedirectory/ ; tar czf – .” > /targetdirectory/filename.tgz

While the following variation:

ssh username@hostname “cd /sourcedirectory/ ; tar czf – .”> /targetdirectory/filename.tgz| tar xvf –

will directly extract it again for you on the your local system.

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