Pythian Group

Welcome, readers! It’s time for another update to our series of posts on installing Oracle on Ubuntu Linux. In this edition, we’ll be installing Oracle 11g R1 on Ubuntu 9.04, both 32-bit.

This time, I’ve used VirtualBox to run a virtual machine (VM) to perform our work. (Virtualization has a number of advantages; in this case, I made several trial installs, trying different combinations and configurations. Having a pristine, basic set-up accelerated the whole process, since I didn’t had to reinstall from scratch on every new attempt.)

You might want to review the previous editions of this series, as there are technical references on this text fully detailed on previous posts. See these HOWTOs for Ubuntu:

• 8.10 – Intrepid Ibex
• 8.04 – Hardy Heron
• 7.10 – Gutsy Gibbon
• 7.04 – Feisty Fawn

Since we’re installing on a VM, we’ll be using Ubuntu 9.04 32-bit Server edition, , so let’s download it and check the MD5sum:

user@jackalope:/media/trezentos/downloads$ md5sum ubuntu-9.04-server-i386.iso
20480057590ff8b80ad9094f40698030  ubuntu-9.04-server-i386.iso
user@jackalope:/media/trezentos/downloads$

Download Oracle Database 11g Release 1 (11.1.0.6.0), and verify the provided cksum:

Read the rest of this entry . . .

This post might seem outside of our focus, but life brings all kinds of challenges. A friend of mine bought a MacBook when she was on vacation in the USA. For obvious reasons, Macs are more common on the other side of the Atlantic. In Europe it’s still rare to see a person using Mac as a personal computer (no flame intended, just stating a fact).

Her Mac completely broke down. The service guys told her she’d need to replace the motherboard, which would cost almost the same as a new computer. The problem was her Mac wouldn’t even start, and all the data she had on a hard-drive was stuck in the neat white box without any signs of life.

Sure, I said, I’m a computer guy I can recover it, can’t I?

I had never worked with Mac before, so I started with initial research to find out what options I have with hardware available in my home computer den.

I came to know that Mac uses filesystem called HFS+, and it can’t be read from Windows 32bit. Great, I thought, I’ve two options—find someone else with a Mac or get it mounted on Linux.

Fortunately, I have a Linux box at home, so it should be easy. I unscrewed the MacBook, and behind the battery there was 2.5 SATA drive. To be able to connect it, I need the interface between 2.5″ SATA drive and USB. For this purpose I’m using a QCP converter cable, which allows you to connect internal 2.5″/3.5″ ATA/SATA drives directly to USB port. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMtAPgcMtLQ) I really like this piece of hardware—it’s exactly the kind of gadget you want to have around for saving notebook drives.

After connecting the disk, I found that my OEL5.1 wouldn’t be friends with it. I simply couldn’t find the right hfsplus module for this distribution. Fortunately, there were many references about mounting hfsplus disks on Ubuntu Linux, which is my second system.

I downloaded the required package and dependency libraries for Ubuntu from here:

http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/hfsplus

The packages installation is straight forward:

root@silverbox:~# dpkg -i libhfsp0_1.0.4-10ubuntu1_i386.deb libc6_2.3.6-0ubuntu20_i386.deb hfsplus_1.0.4-10ubuntu1_i386.deb

After that, I needed to load the hfsplus module:

root@silverbox:~# modprobe hfsplus
root@silverbox:~# cat /proc/filesystems | grep hfs
        hfsplus

Next, I had to check which partition is the one I need to mount. For this purpose, I used parted:

root@silverbox:~# parted /dev/sdd
GNU Parted 1.7.1
Using /dev/sdd
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print

Disk /dev/sdd: 160GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End    Size   File system  Name                  Flags
 1      20.5kB  210MB  210MB  fat32        EFI System Partition  boot
 2      210MB   160GB  160GB  hfs+         Untitled

Knowing the partition containing the data was /dev/sdd2, and I could mount it.

root@silverbox:~# mount -t hfsplus /dev/sdd2 /mnt/macosx
root@silverbox:~#

The next problem I faced was privileges. The directories I needed to save were owned by a non-existent user, and so I wasn’t able to access that path.

To work around this, I created a new user and assigned the directory owner UID.

root@silverbox:~# useradd macuser
root@silverbox:~# usermod -u 501 macuser

This allowed me to access the directory I needed to recover, and copy files to another ntfs disk which will be readable by regular Windows machine.