Switching from Redhat Linux to Oracle Linux on 5,000 easy steps

Wayback when

I remember being at Oracle Open World when Larry Ellison unveiled Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL, which are now just Oracle L    Inux, or OL).  I think I even have a foam Oracle penguin and maybe even a T-shirt somewhere.  I was trying to understand so, as a loyal RedHat customer, I ' d ever consider switching over to the ' dark side '. I even remember laughing to a colleague "who in their right mind would want Oracle to support their Linux environment, the Y can ' t even support their database? ".

Warming up to the idea

I thought it might is useful to note, for a moment, my experience level with linux.  I ' ve been using some flavor O F Unix/linux in various workplaces since 1999.  I hold an RHCSA (Red Hat certified System Administrator) cert and I H Ope to pursue the next level, RHCE, within a few months.  what am I mentioning this?  to demonstrate this I ' m not An Oracle fan boy and if anything I has more than a inclination to run Red Hat than all other flavor of Linux at the Mome NT.

As I mentioned in another post, we recently do a fairly major hardware refresh in our datacenter.  My 11i product Ion database is currently a physical machine, and the box were available to me to tinker with prior to migration.  We ' D even gotten to the point where we ' d installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.7 before I got the crazy idea to take a 2nd look at Oracle linux.  i has no idea why the adoption rate was for OL, but they claim 8,000 customers on their I nformation page.  I don ' t know if that's a lot or not.

What initially drove me to even consider Oracle Linux is not cost, but rather a series of really bad support tickets I ha  D with Red Hat.  Unrelated, system service requests where Red Hat support went 0 for 3.  Why does my system lock up and the kernel panic? Redhat:no idea.  Twice.   The second time with really good logging enabled. Then I had a issue where the system CPU (as opposed to user CPU) time is crazy high–in some SAR reports as much as 20%  Of the total CPU usage.  Why are it so high?  Redhat:no idea.  At this point, the little light bulb went off in my head.  I can pay less than half as much to bad support from Oracle.  And that ' s really a pessimistic view. In truth, there is some actual advantages to running Oracle on Oracle Linux, especially if you consider the Oracle UNBR Eakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK).

The flavors of Oracle Linux

You can go, right now and pull the Oracle Linux and install it on your machine.  You'll, of course not being able to open a ticket (through my Oracle support). Basically, there ' s 3 flavors of support with different cost levels:

• Network support:patches and updates only (this flavor is not a offered by sales, not sure on this level)
• Basic support:add "Complete Linux server lifecycle management, cluster Software"
• Premier Support:add Ksplice

I think I should take a minute to define a few things more clearly, as I wish my sales team would has:

• Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK): Oracle ' s Home-grown Kernel, available at any level of support. From what I can tell, this kernel especially optimizes what Oracle perceives as deficiencies in the Red Hat kernel ' s Abili Ty to handle big multi-processor (SMP) machines.
• Ksplice:a zero-downtime kernel patcher. This is available only if you buy Premier support and running the Oracle unbreakable Ent Erprise Kernel (UEK)
• Red Hat compatible kernel:the kernel Oracle creates based upon the same open-source feed Red Hat gets. You can run Oracle Linux using either the UEK or the RH Compatible kernel, selected at boot time via grub
• The physical Address Extension (PAE) 32-bit kernel is available for Oracle Linux 5 (x86). This is important to me because I run the 11i front end (have to is 32-bit!) on the PAE kernel which gets around the 4GB R AM limit imposed by 32-bit architecture.

Things I wish I ' d known (or researched better) in retrospect

Before I dig into the "what" part of what to convert your Red Hat 5 machine to Oracle Linux, I thought I ' d tell you more Abo UT the areas in which I has buyer ' s remorse.

• UEK.  This is one of the big upsells for me to Oracle Linux.  I planned to cut through to the Red Hat compatible kernel and then begin regression testing the "super" UEK kernel.  Except for one thing.  We ' re a VMWare shop.  It ' s not certified to run as a VMWare guest.  Until that changes, UEK are DOA in our datacenter.  If UEK is the DOA, then so is ksplice. If Ksplice is the DOA, then that means I definitely don ' t need Premier support.
• Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) pales in comparison to the Redhat Network.  You cannot release patches for update to the servers like you can with the Red Hat network.  Basically you can see what systems am registered, if they need updates, and what's your CSI is. Beyond that, you can see what versions of what packages is available in what release.
• Managing servers is rather manual. There is some promise the Enterprise Manager may do server management easier, but I can ' t verify this.

Switching to Oracle Linux

I ' m assuming at the this point, which you ' re running RHEL 5.7. While certainly you could is running something else, you ' d has to be smart enough-make some changes in the steps I wil   L outline. RH6 isn ' t certified with much, as far as I can tell.

This outline was derived from a lot of disparate sources. In fact, I wish Oracle would has one, good, thorough document to walk me through all this, but they don ' t appear to.

• Go get the appropriate up2date packages from Oracle, based on the RH release "re running, and land the RPMs somewhere o n Your server.

• Install the Up2date RPMs
  • RPM-UVH up2date*rpm

• Import the GPG Key for RPMs
  • Rpm–import/usr/share/rhn/rpm-gpg-key
• Save yourself a headache, update the portal UUID of your server
  • #/usr/bin/uuidgen-r
    • E949dadc-c182-3ec2-9de7-44ag8a0d2bea
    • Vi/etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date-uuid
      • Confirm the line Rhnuuid matches the key you just generated
      • If not, pound it out and replace it:
        • Rhnuuid=e949dadc-c182-3ec2-9de7-44ag8a0d2bea
• Run the Oracle registration TUI (Text User Interface)
  • Up2date-nox––register (this actually launches the TUI) * * For OL6, it's bundled now just run Uln_register
  • If you had a proxy server between you and the Internet
    • Export Http_proxy=http://username:[email protected]yourproxy.domain.com:<yourrt>
    • edit/etc/yum.conf for the futureease
      • Under [main] Add this line
      • Proxy=http://username:[email protected]yourproxy.domain.com:<yourrt>
      • Import the GPG Key for RPMs
  • Here's screenshots from the TUI

  It always seems-say this ...

  Hit next to waive all your rights

  Not sure I like hard coding my ULN login

  Hardware gathered information

  RPMs

• Update your Repos and packages
  • cd/etc/YUM.REPOS.D
  • Rename your existing. Repo files
    • MV Rhel-source.repo rhel-source.repo.old
    • MV Rhel-debuginfo.repo rhel-debuginfo.repo.old
    • Note that the. Repo suffix are what signifies, a repo file is "active"
  • Use wget to fetch the Oracle repos
    • wget Http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el5.repo
  • Edit the Public-yum-el5.repo to activate (enable) the appropriate subscription channels
    • [Ol5_u7_base]
    • ...
    • Enabled=1
  • Update your Packages
    • # up2date-i Yum-rhn-plugin
    • # Yum Update
  • #yum Install kernel
  • #yum install Kernel-uek (optional, install the unbreakable kernel)
  • #yum Install oracle-linux (optional Oracle packages, pair with UEK I believe)
• Reboot to new kernel
  • check/etc/grub.conf to ensure it's to your satisfaction
  • #reboot-I to restart the host, select the appropriate kernel when the Grub menu option appears

First Impressions

So, I failed to mention in my original post were impressions about the migration.   We ' ve been running Oracle Linux 5.7 for 3 weeks now. Aside from the Branding/logo changes (A penguin in Oracle armor instead of the "Red Hat Shadow Man") I don ' t see much Diffe  Rence at all. Not that I ' d really has any reason to expect to.

Since This OS upgrade coincided with a hardware upgrade, I feel it would is unfair to speculate on performance improvemen  T. Meaning, I suspect anything works better on the latest CPU and hardware architecture.  Suffice it to say, after a short period of fretting about the new OS, I just don ' t monitor it anymore. It works fine.

My concern about what much more manual the Oracle Linux experience hasn ' t changed much.  i now understand that I Co Uld Create a local RPM mirror, which would be updated daily through Oracle Enterprise Manger 11g, and thus through ENTERPR Ise Manager, I could push or release updates to my Oracle Linux servers.  that's all fine and good, but that's just one more layer of the complication I ' d rather not has to deal with.  i may go this route eventually, but since I ' m comparing apples to apples, I simply say:   "I don ' t has to do th At with Red Hat.

One impression I got throughout the whole conversion process is a general disjointedness from Oracle.  one of the main reasons I posted this blog entry is because the whole process from information (sales) to install Is all over the place.  i mean literally, all over the place.  the steps above is provided in a complete manner nowhere that I am aware of.  there's a document here's how to wget the repo's, a document there about how to deal with duplicate the portal UUID ' s, Another page to download the Up2date RPMs, another page telling the "register with the Oracle Linux network."  i Suppose I can ' t expect Oracle to advertise so the UEK kernel isn ' t certified for VMWare, but it's important, and I ' d rather have learned, front than on my own trying to boot a DEV VM into UEK.   Support told me-up2date to update my packages, if I put that in my (original) blog posting here, I was Corrected in the comments and told of Yum-rhn-plugin (Noted in the steps above).   I looked back to see what the Open World I is at when Oracle Linux is announced:  it was Fall of 2006.  i would think the 5 years, this would is a bit more refined.

All so said, my final word on the frustrating and non-intuitive, the migration to Oracle Linux have been f  Ine. It's too early to say I recommend it, but I'll say at this point, that I'm not regretting moving to it, and I think it ' s  Worth a look. Even if you ' re from the Old-school sun/redhat/aix/hpux environments like me.

Switching from Redhat Linux to Oracle Linux on 5,000 easy steps