Friday, November 21. 2014
I'm happy to announce the release of mylvmbackup version 0.16. The source package is now available for download from http://lenzg.net/mylvmbackup/ and https://launchpad.net/mylvmbackup.
Installation packages for a number of platforms can be obtained from the openSUSE Build Service.
Version 0.16 adds support for sending out SNMP traps in case of backup successes or failures. I'd like to thank Alexandre Anriot for contributing this new feature and his patience with me.
Please see the ChangeLog and bzr history for more details.
Tuesday, September 9. 2014
The annual GUUG Frühjahrsfachgespräch 2014 will take place in two weeks from now, from September 23.-26. at the Ruhr-University in Bochum, Germany.
The agenda is packed with interesting sessions covering a wide range of topics relevant to developers and system administrators. In addition to the regular talks, the first two days provide day-long tutorials to get a deep-dive into interesting technologies like OpenStack, Puppet, secure web development or setting up file services.
I'll be speaking about reStructuredText and Sphinx, a very powerful framework for writing technical documentation.
Register now!
Thursday, May 8. 2014
The German Unix User Group (GUUG) will hold their annual conference "Frühjahrsfachgespräch" on September 23-26 this year (I know, not really "Frühjahr" anymore, but this is how it is).
The Call for Presentations is still open until May 31st. Talks can be proposed in German and English, and there are slots for longer tutorials as well.
The range of possible topics is broad, so if you think you have anything interesting to share with a very passionate and technical audience of sysadmins and developers, here are some suggestions:
- Operating Systems/Applications: architectures, privilege concepts, new developments, administration, mobile systems
- Relevant new OS Kernel features: new developments in Linux-, BSD- or other Spen Source OS kernels
- Networking: protocols, technologies
- Virtualisation/High Availability: OS, networks, cluster, SAN, file services (high-) avialability, OS/storage virtualisation and cloud
- File systems: distributed file systems, cluster file systems, special purpose file systems
- Middleware: databases, application servers, etc.
- IT Security: organisational and technical aspects
- Data Center Infrastructure: climate control, energy efficiency and monitoring
- Operations: monitoring, backup/recovery
- Non-technical Topics: work organisation, legal aspects, licensing and patents, education and training
This year, I'm honoured to be part of the reviewing committee and we've received a number of interesting proposals already. But we'd like to see more!
So please don't hesitate and submit your proposal now!
Thank you.
Wednesday, November 13. 2013
This year's conference season is coming to an end for me soon – I have three more events to go before I can enjoy the Christmas holidays:
On 2013-11-20, I'll be at the DOAG Konferenz in Nuremberg (Germany), where I will talk about the following topics (in German):
I've also submitted a proposal for an "Unconference" (or BOF) about Oracle Linux - this will take place on the same day, at 12:00-13:00.
From Nuremberg I will travel directly to Munich, where I will speak about Oracle Linux at a Private Cloud mit Oracle Linux und Oracle VM Seminar on Thursday, 2013-11-21. If you would like to learn more about how to set up and manage your private cloud infrastructure using Oracle Linux, Oracle VM and Oracle Enterprise Manager, this event gives you an opportunity to talk to customers who share their experiences and experts that can provide additional background information. This is a free event, registration via the event web site is required.
Early in December (2013-12-02/2013-12-03), I'll be attending the UKOUG Tech Conference in Manchester (UK) speaking about the following topic:
Here's a short recap of some past events I attended earlier this year:
On 2013-08-24/2013-08-25 I attended FrOSCon 8 in St. Augustin (Germany). Oracle was a silver sponsor and exhibitor — I was there to represent Oracle Linux at our booth. It was really nice to meet many people that I had not seen for quite a while. FrOSCon was well organized (as usual), the only bummer was that the weather did not cooperate and the social event could not take place outside.
2013-09-22/2013-09-25 - Oracle OpenWorld 2013 - San Francisco (US). In addition to attending numerous meetings with customers, I also contributed to the event with the following sessions:
Wednesday, August 7. 2013
I just published the second part of a blog post series about Linux Containers on the OTN Garage blog (where a lot of my recent blogging takes place nowadays) — check it out if you would like to get an introduction and some quick examples on how to get started with this technology on Oracle Linux (and other Linux distributions that support Linux Containers, of course):
German versions of these articles are also available from the OLIVI_DE - Oracle LInux und VIrtualisierung blog:
We also recorded a short whiteboard session about this topic a while ago — the video is available from the Oracle Linux YouTube channel: Linux Containers Explained
Monday, June 24. 2013
It's my great pleasure to announce the release of mylvmbackup version 0.14.
This release includes a large number of improvements, code cleanups, and new functionality.
I would like to thank Ask Bjørn Hansen, Ben Bonnel, Norbert Tretkowski, Neil Wilson, Klaus Ethgen and Alexandre Anriot for their feedback and contributions to this release.
The release is available as a source tarball and generic RPM package. Packages for other distributions are available from the openSUSE Build Service.
Some notable highlights from the ChangeLog (please check the bzr commit log for a more detailed history of changes):
- Improved error handling: send out an email if mail_report_on has been set to "errors" and a log message with log level LOG_ERR was logged.
- Abort and clean up if the snapshot volume could not be mounted
- Abort and clean up if the backup creation failed
- Exit with a non-zero return code if errorstate was set
- Enabled timestr() formatting sequences for snapshot volume names, to create snapshot names which contain a dynamic date value. This can be useful when thin provisioned snapshots are used as the actual backup by enabling the keep_snapshot option
- Added "thin" option to mylvmbackup.conf (default=0), to enable thin provisioned LVM snapshots
- Added new configuration option "recoveryopts" that allows to modify the command line options that are passed to the MySQL instance that performs the InnoDB recovery (BUG#544295 and BUG#1091950). The current default options are "--skip-networking --skip-grant --bootstrap --skip-syslog --skip-slave-start" (which better accommodates MySQL 5.1)
- Merged patches from Alexandre Anriot to provide a mail reporting method which sends the log output via email and a new "purge" action that allows to only keep a defined number of backups in the backup directory
- Applied patch contributed by Klaus Ethgen that removes the annoying LVM warnings about a leaked file descriptor (DBD:mysql does not add FD_CLOEXEC on the MySQL socket)
- BUG#1086313: mvlvmbackup lacks support for 'thin' LVM snapshots (Thanks to Neil Wilson for the patch)
- BUG#787063: Ensure to clean up temporary .pos files when the snapshot mount is kept, too
- Applied small patch from Norbert Tretkowski: change umask to 077 before creating the tarball backup files to prevent them from being readable by everyone
- BUG#593220: Fixed the compressarg option for cat (removed the comment)
- Applied patch contributed by Ben Bonnel to add a new configuration option "rsnaprsyncarg" that allows one to pass special options to the rsync process when using the rsnap backend.
- Applied patch provided by Ask Bjørn Hansen to allow targets not to have a timestamp (e.g. for rsync targets)
Tuesday, October 30. 2012
I feel like I just got back home from Oracle OpenWorld (check out my pictures) and some vacation, but I'll be on the road again next week to attend LinuxCon Europe in Barcelona. I'll be there from Monday (Nov. 5th) until Wednesday evening. Oracle is sponsoring the event and we'll have a booth at the exhibition area (booth #19), handing out free Oracle Linux and Oracle VM DVDs. I'll be at the booth every now and then and plan to give a short introduction and live demo of Ksplice rebootless updates on Monday evening (6:00pm).
Two colleagues and myself will also give some presentations:
I look forward to meeting many people I still know from the SuSE days and to learn more about what's new in Linux - the schedule looks very promising and it will be a tough challenge to pick the right talks. And if you happen to be in Barcelona these days, I'd like to recommend two related events:
- On Monday evening (Nov. 5th, 8:00pm), there will be a "Cluster / Storage / HA Geek Dinner" which I plan to attend. Please get in touch with Florian Haas directly for an invite to the Google+ Event. Thanks to Florian and Lars Marowsky-Brée for setting this up!
- A week later, on Tuesday (Nov. 13th, 7:00pm), there will be a MySQL community event "State of the art in MySQL high availability and replication", including a presentation on the topic by Robert Hodges and Giuseppe Maxia from Continuent, followed by a networking event including beer and snacks.
I wish I could attend that second one as well, but I'll hopefully be back at home by then again...
UPDATE 2012-10-30: The direct link to Google+ Event did not work - Sorry for the inconvenience. Updated the RSVP instructions accordingly.
Tuesday, September 18. 2012
It's that time of the year again — the summer holidays are over and the conference season starts!
I'm very excited to be at Oracle Open World in San Francisco again, where I will pretty busy. On Saturday and Sunday I will attend MySQL Connect, primarily to man the Oracle Linux booth in the exhibition area. But I hope to catch some of the talks as well (I shared my favourite sessions with Keith Larson from the MySQL team in this interview). During Open World, I will help out manning the Oracle Linux demo pods in the exhibition grounds in Moscone South, where we will showcase Oracle Linux with Ksplice and related technologies. I also have a joint presentation with two of our customers about "Top Technical Tips for Automatic and Secure Oracle Linux Deployments" and I've prepared two hands-on lab sessions "Oracle Linux Storage Management with LVM and Device-Mapper" and "Oracle Linux Package Management: Configuring and Enabling Services". Both hands-on lab sessions will actually be run twice. The lab sessions were quite popular last year, I look forward to moderating these again.
In November, I'll be at the DOAG Conference in Nuremberg, to give a joint presentation with my colleague Manuel Hossfeld about "Oracle Linux - best practices and benefits" (in German). We also plan to request a slot for a BOF/Unconference about Linux, I'm curious about the feedback and discussions that will arise during these sessions.
If you happen to be around these conferences and would like to meet, please get in touch!
Thursday, January 5. 2012
Reposting of what I wrote on the Oracle Linux Blog:
Just a friendly reminder: this year too, we'll continue this series of free one-day events.
OTN Sys Admin Days are like OTN's Developer Days, but we focus on the Sys Admin with two parallel, hands-on Oracle Solaris and Oracle Linux tracks. These are live classroom events and you'll need to bring your own laptop to follow the practical exercises that we will go through in a VirtualBox environment.
The Linux track will cover topics like package management with RPM and yum, storage management with LVM2 and Linux RAID as well as learning the basics of managing the Btrfs file system. The Solaris track will cover the ZFS file system, Solaris containers and security (roles, SMF).
The next OTN Sys Admin Day will take place in Salt Lake City (UT), on January 18th, 8:00am-4:00pm.
Attendance is free, but a registration is required – reserve your spot now by following this link! We look forward to your participation.
Friday, November 11. 2011
It's conference time again – next week I'll be attending the DOAG Conference in Nuremberg, to speak about Oracle Linux and the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel on Tuesday, 12:00 and the OCFS2 cluster file system on Thursday, 13:00.
In addition to that, me and my colleague Manuel Hossfeld will host an Unconference Session about Oracle Linux and the UEK. The rest of the time I'll be manning a demo pod at our booth and try to attend some sessions myself – the conference program looks very promising!
Wednesday, September 14. 2011
Last week we concluded our first Oracle Technology Network Sys Admin Day in Sacramento (CA). Well, it was actually the second Sys Admin Day, but the first one that had two parallel tracks of sessions about both Oracle Linux and Oracle Solaris.
I helped preparing for the event by creating the Linux lab handbook as well as the VirtualBox appliance of Oracle Linux 6.1 that was used for the exercises. Unfortunately I could not be there in person, but it would have been pointless for me to go on an intercontinental flight just for one day.
From the feedback we've received so far, the attendees really enjoyed the event and were positively surprised about the depth and quality of the practical hands-on lab sessions.
If you've missed the first one and happen to live somewhere in the Seattle area, you have another chance to attend OTN sysadmin day: we'll be hosting another one on Thursday, September 22nd at The Westin Seattle (1900 5th Ave., Seattle, WA 98101). Again, attendance is free, all you need to bring is your own laptop with VirtualBox installed. We'll provide the rest. Space is limited — you can review the agenda and register here!
Friday, September 2. 2011
In my last post, I provided a short review of what I have been working on in the past few months since I joined the Oracle Linux team. Now it's time for a summary of upcoming events! Looking forward, I already have a few more things lined up:
I'll attend and speak at the Oracle OpenWorld 2011 conference in San Francisco in October. I have a joint session with Chris Mason titled Overview: New Features in Oracle Linux 6 where we'll cover the latest developments. I have another joint presentation with my colleague Rob Young from the MySQL product management team titled Using MySQL with Other Oracle Products - this one will give an overview how MySQL has been integrated with the other products in the Oracle portfolio.
At OpenWorld, I'll also do some booth duty (find me at the Oracle Linux demo pods) and I'll also give a number of hands-on lab sessions:
For these labs, I created an Oracle Linux 6.1 VirtualBox appliance and wrote a 70+ page lab manual. I'll be around, aiding the attendees through these exercises.
By the way, a sneak preview of these hands-on labs will be available prior to OpenWorld as well: they are part of an upcoming series of the OTN sysadmin days, free one-day events that will provide practical workshops on both Oracle Solaris and Oracle Linux. We have three days scheduled so far - the first one of these will come up faily soon:
On November 15-17, I'll be at the DOAG 2011 Konferenz + Ausstellung in Nuremberg, Germany. I'll give two presentations (in German):
I'll also hold an "Unconference" (or BOF) about Oracle Linux and the UEK together with Manuel Hossfeld, one of our Linux/OVM consultants.
And finally, I'll be giving a talk about "Oracle Linux and the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel: Status Update and Overview" at the UK Oracle User Group Conference 2011 in Birmingham (UK) on December 6.
If you happen to be at any of these events, please let me know if you'd like to meet!
Despite my best intentions, I haven't posted on this blog for a while, which is a shame! I've become busy writing on so many other places since I moved into my new role in the Oracle Linux product management team in April. I've learned a lot and I am feeling quite at home here! The team is excellent and very nice to work with — I am slowly getting the "Big Picture".
But even though I've been neglecting this blog, there are a lot of things that are publicly visible and document some of my activites:
I've created two podcasts for the Oracle Linux podcasts:
In addition to working the @ORCL_Linux Twitter account and FaceBook page, I've been blogging on the Oracle Linux blog:
From time to time, I'm a guest blogger on the OTN Garage blog:
I also created new content and updated pages on the main Oracle web site and the Oracle Technology Network (OTN):
I've been traveling a bit as well and attended a few conferences where I spoke about Oracle Linux (and MySQL):
I probably forgot a few things in my reflection of the past few months, but these were some of the highlights.
Check out my followup blog post on what I'm up to in the coming weeks and months!
Thursday, June 16. 2011
 fisl12 is likely the largest free and open source software event in Latin America. This year, it takes place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from June 29th to July 2nd. Oracle is a gold sponsor of the event and I will attend it as a speaker. I feel honoured and excited to be there – for me it will be the first visit to the South American continent.
They already have over 3000 registered attendees, so this definitely is going to be a great conference. There is quite a number of well-known names on the speaker roster and I look forward to meeting a lot of familar faces there.
The agenda is still under development but quite impressive already – too bad I don't speak Portuguese...
I will be giving an introduction and status update to Oracle Linux and as our virtualization technologies Oracle VM and Oracle VM VirtualBox. Other Oracle speakers at fisl12 include:
- Davi Arnaut - MySQL Engineering
- Roger Brinkley - Java Evangelists and the Community Leader for the Mobile & Embedded Community
- John Ceccarelli - Middleware Engineering
- Anil Gaur - VP of Java Platform, Enterprise Edition, and GlassFish Server in the Fusion Middleware Group
- Arun Gupta - Java EE and GlassFish evangelist
- Luke Kowalski - VP in the corporate architecture group
- Henrique Leandro - MySQL Support Engineer
- Simon Ritter - Java Technology Evangelist
- Dave Stokes - MySQL Community Manager
- Dalibor Topic - Java F/OSS Ambassador
It's been a while since my last post on this blog; I definitely need to get back into the habit! One of the reasons for my radio silence was that I switched roles here at Oracle. After having been with the MySQL team for 9 years, I felt it was time for a change. Fortunately I did not have to look far – I'm now a member of the Oracle Linux product management team and I am having a lot of fun there.
However, I realized that while I was an active Linux user on the desktop, quite a lot has happened on the enterprise and data center side of things. Linux has really come a long way and I am glad to be back in this field, drinking from the firehose and learning a lot about recent developments and technologies. For me, this is kind of going "back to my roots", as I have been deeply involved with Linux at SuSE before I joined MySQL in 2002.
Anyway, I'm still alive and you can expect to hear more about Linux and less about MySQL from me on this blog in the future. I also started writing for the official Oracle Linux Blog as well as the OTN Garage blog – watch these spaces for future posts from me, too.
In addition to that, my travel schedule is also filling up again: at the end of this month I'll be speaking at the fisl12 conference in Brasil and Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco later this year. I also submitted talk proposals to the DOAG conference and the UKOUG conference. Looking forward to it!
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