Michael Mikhailidi

Oracle Fusion Middleware

Security Scans: Hide and Seek

Oracle recently made a gift to all middleware engineers who operate in "security-first" environments. Government contractors should love it as much as I do, especially if you are adopting or already have continuous ATO.

OCI

OCI: Secure Load Balancer

It started as a routine wildcard certificate renewal and updating on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. It usually takes about 20 minutes, but not today when the certbot offered me a private key update.

Database

Database: It's Hard to Explain

When you are enough time in the business, you learn the universal rule of IT: "Computers don't make mistakes, people do." It is especially true for database performance tuning.

Bash

A Shell Tricks: Session Color Coding

The best way to understand what server you deal with is color-coded command line prompts. Different Shell interpreters and different terminals offer different commands and capabilities, but modern server-side world is extremely Linux centric, where the BASH dominates the market.

OHS

Maintaining Oracle HTTP instances

The Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) is essential to any large Oracle Fusion Middleware environment. And despite the most common description for that product being "Apache HTTP server with custom modules," it's not as simple as it sounds. Let's walk around and take a look at how it's made.

Bash

A Shell Tricks: Forwarding X session

I use MobaXterm as my primary terminal client. Besides some excellent features, it has a selling point - the built-in X server. Yet you may still be in a position where you can't just forward your X windows to your local machine and have to make some extra steps.

Happy New Year!

I want to say thank you for reading our blog. I wish you and your families all the best in the new 2023!! How cool it would be to rollback

OCI

Oracle OCI: It has queues!

Oracle OCI and Amazon AWS are similar and different at the same time. Yes, at the very basic, they offer you the same services - cloud infrastructure to run your workload, but AWS always dominated by the broad set of tools, features, and capabilities if you compare them by dozens.

AWS

AWS API Gateway: Stage Variables

AWS API Gateway allows you to deploy the same API for different stages. It separates deployments of the same code for different environments, enabling "code once" principles. But you already see where the trap is.

Bash

A Shell Tricks: Search and Replace

It's easy to use VS Code to search and replace text entries. Yet, mass file renaming is a fairly common task, especially when you move Ansible inventories or other artifacts across environments.

Linux

A Shell Tricks: Dash-Minus Fuss

All *nix systems are similar to ogres and onions - they all have layers. System layer, user layer, core commands with the neanderthal accessory lines. It adds to neverending fun. Command-line warriors should memorize all kid of argument notations and formats for the most common tools.

Ansible

Ansible: Date and Time

Anyone who works with Ansible knows how to access the current date and time. But have you ever dealt with something a bit more advanced? There are a few tips you may find helpful.

Database

Ghost + MySQL Upgrade

I have delayed the blog upgrade as much as possible due to a mandatory upgrade to MySQL8. However, I had my decent share of database upgrades in the past, and I'm not happy to get back into this boat.

AWS

When specialty beats functionality

While back I wrote a short piece about Pandoc. My excitement about it stands true, yet it's a last-century utility you don't want or can't use in cloud-native applications. Well, I found a new one - WKHTMLTOx

Conda

Conda: Environment configuration

With a high probability, you own a powerful computing device that could be used as a standalone system for developing, debugging, and testing applications. And it would be a good idea - to use virtual environments to limit cross-project dependencies and keep your OS package list under control.

JSON

JQ is a new GREP

If you are a cloud system administrator, security analyst, or data scientist, you already use jq (JSON Query), and if you don't, you should.

development

Game of Words

I felt for Wordle [https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html] the day I read about it, and now my morning starts with a fresh cup of coffee and

No Technology Today

For the second day in a row, I can't get my thoughts together to write another technological post. The horror in Ukraine and the grim prospect of Russian citizens condemned

OCI

OCI: Firewall on Ubuntu 20.04

If you have created a load balancer and can't reach your backend servers, check a target firewall configuration, especially if you run Ubuntu.

Documentation

Pandoc: My Missing Tool

With the "everything as a code" approach, it's natural to treat documentation as a code and use the same source code management and delivery techniques. I know how to create and deliver documents. And now I found my missing link, static content generator - pandoc.

Oracle HTTP Server

Standalone Oracle HTTP Server: Deployment Options

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned multiple Oracle HTTP server deployment options. Let me do a small "show & tell" to explain how I pick the configuration.

Oracle HTTP Server

Mysterious TLS in Oracle HTTP

A little "forget-me-not" from a recent Oracle HTTP server troubleshooting, but it could happen to Apache HTTPD as well. To set up a stage: a work installation of the Oracle HTTP Server, stop presenting certificates on the secured port.

Database

Flashback: The Lesson I Learned

This piece is not about features or products. It's about lessons that we learn or not. The one I learned some twenty-three years ago was: "Don't ask for troubles and do one thing at a time."

Containers

Docker: Logn Errors

Recently, I spent some time trying to find why I can not push my just-from-the-own image into the GitLab project registry. The message "illegal base64 data at input" is a bit confusing, but the solution is simple.

Ansible

Ansible: Dynamic Inventory

I know that Ansible could use as inventory virtually anything, including scripts. However, all inventories on my day job are static, and we keep them in a source repository, and until now, I haven't had a chance to create or use one.