Category: Howto

Easy setup of Kerberos Authentication for Oracle Databases

I have previously published a couple of blog posts related to Kerberos authentication for databases. In this post, I want to provide a simple, step-by-step tutorial for configuring Kerberos authentication. This tutorial is based on my lab setup within Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Within this environment, I run both a database server and a corresponding […]

Quickly run X11 Apps from an Oracle DB Container

Running an Oracle Database (DB) Container on your laptop, regardless of your device, is a common practice for professionals in lab and engineering environments. These containers offer a convenient solution for setting up and managing Oracle databases for various purposes. However, there are scenarios where you need to interact with the Oracle DB Container using […]

Simplified Keytab creation using Linux Tools #JoelKallmanDay

Today’s  #JoelKallmanDay, my topic is about simplifying the configuration of Kerberos authentication of Oracle databases using Linux tools. I have already written a few things about Kerberos in the past. The blog posts on this topic are usually tagged with Kerberos. Today I want to show you an alternative method how to create the keytab […]

Oracle SQLNet Encryption, why is it needed in first place?

I recently wrote a blog post about Oracle SQLNet TLS encryption and how easy it is to configure. See also Oracle SQLNet TLS configuration simplified. This was followed by a short discussion about whether a simple ALTER USER … IDENTIFIED BY is encrypted in a regular connection or not. So let’s validate this by examining […]

Oracle SQLNet TLS configuration simplified

Most security measures for Oracle databases are usually aimed at protecting and hardening the database itself. This includes secure configuration, implementation of the least privilege principle, reduction of the attack surface, encryption at REST, database audit and much more. Sometimes, however, it is forgotten that the database also communicates with the outside world. Without additional […]

How to safely resize an LVM volume on Linux

I have several Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) based Lab environments, which I build with Terraform and corresponding shell scripts. Unfortunately the labs are not one size fits all. Depending on what I’m testing, I have different requirements for the available filesystems. So every now and then I face the problem that I have to increase […]

Get Oracle Database 23c for free on your Mac M1

Oracle Database 23c Free – Developer Release is all over since Oracle released it yesterday. See the Official Oracle pages Oracle Database Free or the blog post by Gerald Venzl Introducing Oracle Database 23c Free – Developer Release. Connor McDonald even got a special delivery from Oracle. A few important web pages related to Oracle […]

Uncover free hand-drawn like sketches for DBAs

As you could see in my blog post as well as presentations of the last months, I use Excalidraw for drawing hand-drawn like diagrams for a while now. A colleague at work made me aware of the tool. A colleague at work made me aware of the tool. And since the first use of Excalidraw, […]

How to write Unified Audit Trail Records to SYSLOG 

With the introduction of Oracle Unified Audit, Oracle has completely redesigned the process of logging audit events. With the new unified audit trail, there is only one place where audit records are stored. Ok, the audit trail exists per PDB and for a read only database additionally somehow as a binary overflow file. However, the […]

Easy replacement of tnsnames.ora with LDAP Directory Server

The tnsnames.ora is a configuration file for Oracle database respectively Oracle Net Service Names resolution. It contains network service names that are mapped to connection descriptors for the local naming method. With the help of tnsnames.ora Oracle clients respectively the users can easily access Oracle databases. The connection descriptors provides all relevant information like host, […]

A simple Container based Guacamole Setup

Another food blog post? No, of course not. Guacamole in this case does not refer to the avocado-based dip, but to the Apache client less remote desktop gateway. We use this as an alternative access to the OCI based Trivadis LAB environment. We use an automatically configured Guacamole environment with Nginx reverse proxy and Let’s […]

Trivadis LAB: Simple Vagrant Setup of Windows AD Server

One of my biggest problems when I started to look into Kerberos Authentication, Oracle Centrally Managed Users as well Oracle Enterprise User Security was the availability of an Active Directory to setup test cases. It is usually not the core business of an Oracle DBA to configure an Active Directory server. 🙂 Using the productive […]

Reduce PDF size in Mac OS Preview

Once and a while I have to create PDF’s out of my PowerPoint presentations. The same a couple of weeks ago when I finished my presentation on Oracle Transparent Sensitive Data Protection at the SOUG day in Baden-Dättwill. I prefer to do this with a minimal amount of extra tools. So no AcrobatReader, GostScript etc. […]

Install Oracle Unified Directory 12c the smart way

Installing Oracle Unified Directory has always been easy. The installation guide for OUD 11c as well OUD 12 is simple and straight forward. Additionally Oracle does provide a couple of MOS notes for different deployment scenarios. Nevertheless there is always room for improvement 🙂 During my work on OUD to go on Raspberry Pi Zero […]