From dmorgan@bartertrust.com Fri, 16 Mar 2001 08:52:37 -0800 From: Dave Morgan Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 08:52:37 -0800 Subject: Offtopic:DBA Math, Beer and OEM Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain jkstill@cybcon.com wrote: > > Well, I doubt that. With an average reach of 5 feet, it would take less > than 8 million people to hold hands along the Canada/US border. > > You should check your math more carefully before spouting such nonsense. > Huh? I used 28,000,000 people 7000 miles 5000 feet/mile = 0.8 ft = 1 ft/person One!! I thought it was 10, must of dropped a zero somewhere. I tell my developers when sizing tables an error of 2 or 4 times is okay but an order of magnitude is a bit much. Thanks for the correction. More math, Steve has asked how many mile I put on my bicycle while in the valley: 11 months 10 days/month (I telecommuted the other 2 weeks) 8 miles/day = 880 miles add the zero I dropped earlier = 8800 miles I thinks thats why it didn't work out in the valley for me. Only a four mile commute, I just didn't have the right attitude :) You're right Steve, it is still a little cool to be riding in Calgary right now. (though there are some crazies who ride all winter, the thought of it being 30 below, on a bike makes me shiver as I sit here, Brrrrr). March in the valley is very similar to May in Calgary. In Calgary I usually bike from the middle of April to the middle of October. My house is six miles from downtown so I usually put on about 1200 (oh, add the zero, 12000) miles a year there. Beers!! I found a place that served Humboldt Red Pale Ale. Any companies in Humboldt county looking for a DBA? I patronized the place (The Fish Market) until the keg ran out, notice I didn't mention this until the keg ran out, and then they told me they were not going to order another one. The nerve of some people. Really good beer, I was impressed. OEM, after reading about the trials and tribulations of people trying to install OEM, why are people wasting their time and money running a product that requires you to take a massive security risk by running Intelligent agent. I have a set of monitoring scripts (email me offline if you want a copy, do not ask for support if, they do not work on your db, you will learn more if you fix them yourself) that I install at every site. Within 15 minutes I have realtime text reports that cover everything from invalid objects, snapshot refreshes, extents, I/O memory. latches , config parameters.... ( about 6 pages of data). Create a reporting schema, install perl DBI, (not on the db server, on a client somewhere) gnu-plot or a similar graphing package (anyone know a good perl one?) and within a week you have graphical historical reports. It's free and you have increased your skills. As for detecting outages, here is a short ksh script that connects to the db as normal user. If the connect fails, do a network ping. This is to determine which type of admin gets paged. It used to do a tnsping before the ping but since the DBA has to fix it anyways that was redundant. Far more relieable than OEM. And yes I know it is lousy code, but look at my math, what do you expect. #!/bin/ksh # Database monitor scrip, cron at desired time interval # requires host ip address, email addresses for dba and sysadmin # requires $ORACLE_HOME if [ X$1 != X ]; then export DBNAME=$1 else echo "The database name must be passed as a parameter" exit fi DBA="page_the_dba@yourcompany.com" ADMIN="page_the_sysadmina@yourcompany.com" DBTEST=test_account/test_password@${DBNAME} export ORACLE_HOME=/wherever/your/oracle/binaries/are export HOSTN=ip_address_of_your_db_server ${ORACLE_HOME}/bin/sqlplus -s $DBTEST > /dev/null 2>&1 << EOF whenever sqlerror exit 1 select * from dual; exit 0 EOF if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then echo "`date`: Database $DBNAME is up and running." else ping -c 1 $HOSTN | grep " 0% packet loss" > /dev/null if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then echo "ERROR !!! Network or Server DOWN !!!!" echo "Ping of $HOSTN failed !!!" mailx -s "ALERT !!!...$HOSTN ping failed" $ADMIN <<-EOF2 Subject: Pinging $HOSTN failed Pinging $HOSTN failed. Please investigate!!! EOF2 mailx -s "ALERT!!!...$HOSTN ping failed. sysadmin notified." $DBA <<-EOF4 Subject: Pinging $HOSTN failed Pinging $HOSTN failed. Please investigate!!! EOF4 else echo "`date`: Database $DBNAME on $HOSTN is down!!!" mailx -s "ALERT!!!...Database $DBNAME is down on $HOSTN" $DBA <<-EOF1 Subject: Database $DBNAME is down on $HOSTN Database $DBNAME is down on $HOSTN. Please investigate!!! EOF1 fi # end-of-script The problem with point and click GUI's is that they isolate the DBA from the detailed sql that is needed to really MANAGE Oracle. IMHO Dave -- Dave Morgan Senior Database Administrator Internet Barter Inc. www.bartertrust.com 408-910-4183 -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com -- Author: Dave Morgan INET: dmorgan@bartertrust.com Fat City Network Services -- (858) 538-5051 FAX: (858) 538-5051 San Diego, California -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists -------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: ListGuru@fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).