ORA-28047 "database is not a member of any enterprise domain in OID"

Amazing... Two-and-a-half-thousand hits and no answer. Metalink: two hits and no answer. Why me?
OK; here's what is happening, and how to resolve the issue. I have not figured out what causes the problem - it seems intermittent.

Update: might have something to do with settings (stickyness?) on the loadbalancer.

Symptoms

You will be confronted with this error while trying Enterprise Security:

sqlplus s/s@<missing_alias>
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production on Fri Jun 11 10:26:49 2010
Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All Rights Reserved.

ERROR:
ORA-28047: database is not a member of any enterprise domain in OID

Enter user-name:

You have registered the database, and all seems well. No errors were shown during the process, none to be found in the logs, and your database can be found, using LDAP name resolving.
It can also be found in your default Realm (LDAP root in Oracle slang) using:

ldapsearch -h <OID_hostname> cn=<missing_alias>

What causes ORA-28047

Exactly what is says: your database is not known in any Enterprise Domain.
You may check it, using this query:

ldapsearch -h <OID_hostname> -D cn=orcladmin -w <your_password> cn=OracleDefaultDomain uniquemember|findstr <missing_alias>

Change findstr to grep if you're on Unix or Linux; I was resolving this issue with a client that uses MS Windows workstations.
Change OracleDefaultDomain to something else, if you use multiple security domains (I doubt if any)

How to resolve

Well, that's obvious now: add a member to the OracleDefaultDomain. For some reason, Oracle's Directory Manager does not allow you to do that, but other tools do. If all else fails, you can still do it from the commandline, using ldapmodify:

ldapmodify <OID_hostname> -D cn=orcladmin -w <your_password> -f ora28047.ldif

The contents of the file ORA28047.ldif is:

dn: cn=OracleDefaultDomain,cn=OracleDBSecurity,cn=Products,cn=OracleContext,dc=<your_realm_here>
changetype: modify
add: uniquemember
uniquemember:cn=<missing_alias>,cn=oraclecontext,dc=<your_realm_here>

Mind the formatting... lines cannot be broken (as blogger formatting does)

ORA-28273

That should be the sign that all works: plus connects to the database, the database knows it needs to go to the OID, it cannot find the specified user ("s") in the OID:

sqlplus s/s@<missing_alias>
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production on Fri Jun 11 10:26:49 2010
Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All Rights Reserved.

ERROR:
ORA-28273: No mapping for user nickname to LDAP distinguished name exists.

Taking it one step further: ORA-28274

If you use an actual OID-known account, you should get ORA-28274: No ORACLE password attribute corresponding to user nickname exists:

sqlplus bortel/s@<missing_alias>
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production on Fri Jun 11 10:26:49 2010
Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All Rights Reserved.

ERROR:
ORA-28274: No ORACLE password attribute corresponding to user nickname exists.

Getting runInstaller to accept your version

Of course, you can start with the "-ignoreSysPrereqs" switch, but if you just want to see if all is OK, fool the installer by tweaking oraparam.ini (in the install subdirectory) by adding the correct version.

I am running CentOS 5.5 (Final), which is indicated by the contents of the file /etc/redhat-release:

[oracle@oracleas install]$ cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS release 5.5 (Final)

The oraparam.ini file looks like:

[Certified Versions]
Linux=redhat-Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4,redhat-2.1,redhat-3,SuSE-9,UnitedLinux-1.0

[Linux-redhat-Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4-optional]

Change that to:(mind you: two places, although the second one is not very omportant)

[Certified Versions]
Linux=redhat-CentOS release 5.5 (Final),redhat-3,SuSE-9,UnitedLinux-1.0

[Linux-redhat--CentOS release 5.5 (Final)-optional]

and you have managed to trick the installer into believing this was the correct and supported version to start with:

[oracle@oracleas install]$ ./runInstaller -paramFile /home/oracle/oraparam.ini
Starting Oracle Universal Installer...

Checking installer requirements...

Checking operating system version: must be redhat-CentOS release 5.5 (Final), redhat-3, SuSE-9 or UnitedLinux-1.0
Passed


All installer requirements met.

Clone your Machine (VirtualBox)

It seemed so easy, but it turned out not to be. After using Export/Import once, your disk image gets the internal UUID from the original. You cannot clone your baseline once more, as the UUID is already being used.
You will have to fall back to the CLI, and issue

vboxmanage clonevdi

That will clone your virtual disk. You still have to create a new Virtual Machine (VM), and attach this disk to it. The cloning part takes some time, the rest is peanuts.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Oracle under VirtualBox

Versions

I'm running Sun VirtualBox V3.1.6 r59338. Got it installed via Synaptic, not the Ubuntu Software Center. The latter does offer VirtualBox, but there seems something wrong with the networking components: I could not get a bridged network working: horrible errors at boot time about missing stuff.

Guest Additions

In order to get the Guest Additions installed correctly, I needed

yum install binutils gcc make patch libgomp glibc-headers glibc-devel kernel-headers kernel-devel

Edit: in order to get the installer (of iAS 10.1.40 to work, I needed xorg-x11-deprecated-libs:

yum install xorg-x11-deprecated-libs

/Edit
After telling VirtualBox to load the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso in the "CD Player", I could mount and install:

mount /dev/cdrom /media
cd /media
./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

From here on, I basically followed these installation instructions.

[root@db10 ~]# groupadd dba10
[root@db10 ~]# groupadd oinstall
[root@db10 ~]# useradd oracle -g oinstall -G dba10 -c "Oracle Software Owner"
[root@db10 ~]# uname -r
2.6.18-164.15.1.el5
[root@db10 ~]# umount /media
[root@db10 ~]# mount -t vboxsf shared /media

Here, I created a permanently Machine Share Folder called "shared", which points to /home/frank/Public. This is where Oracle Installation software resides (via an NFS mount, but that's another story:

sudo mount cubestation:/volume1/Public /home/frank/Public)

I did, however, still need to install openmotif

[root@db10 ~]# yum install openmotif

and add the following lines tot /etc/sysctl.conf:

net.core.rmem_default=262144
net.core.wmem_default=262144
net.core.rmem_max=262144
net.core.wmem_max=262144

Install fest

In order to prevent "Can't connect to X window", just issue the following:

frank@frank-cs03:~$ ssh -X oracle@192.168.1.230
oracle@192.168.1.230's password:
Warning: No xauth data; using fake authentication data for X11 forwarding.
/usr/bin/xauth: creating new authority file /home/oracle/.Xauthority
[oracle@db10 ~]$ cd /media/Oracle/10GR2_Linux/10201_database_linux32/database/
[oracle@db10 database]$ ./runInstaller

After a while of installing there is another point in time to take s snapshot, and declare this a baseline. This is the result:

[oracle@db10 ~]$ sqlplus system

SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.5.0 - Production on Sat May 8 17:53:06 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle. All Rights Reserved.

Enter password:

Connected to:
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.5.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, Oracle Label Security, OLAP, Data Mining
and Real Application Testing options

SQL>

And yes, patch 4 (10.2.0.5) is out!

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is here... and Oracle?

And I'm somewhat disappointed.

Install woes

I tried installing on a separate disk, a 300GiB Samsung 321KJ.
The first installation attempt failed in the cleaning up phase, at 89%.
The second attempt failed with a read error, and the advice to clean my CD lens or move to a colder area.
Fourth attempt, after checking the installation CD for errors: ditto.
Fifth attempt, other disk (same brand, model and age): ditto.

Most annoying is the lack of feedback on the install proces, and even CTRL-[Funtion keys 1-4] will not display a text box with your error (or standard) output.

Alas...and an alternative install

Gave up on installing 10.04 off a CD. Installed 9.10 (which took about 30 minutes, and went OK), logged on, and allowed the system to update to 10.04 LTS. That took about one-and-a-half hour. Configuring NOT to play that hideous sound on startup, use colors I do NOT dislike, install Thunderbird and VirtualBox and remove IM, Chat and Evolution: another 5 minutes.

Oracle on Ubuntu

I gave up. I did not even try to install any Oracle product on 10.04. Oh, they probably will run, with some tweaking and stuff; after all I managed to get 10G database and Application Server running on 9.10.

But Oracle usually runs on stable versions; once released it looks like it's already falling behind. Therefor I abandoned the idea running Oracle directly under Ubuntu, but use CentOS/RHES instead in virtual machine environments. Ubuntu simply is too much "cuttin' edge" to my liking.
So - now I have a CentOS 5.4 basic Server install with XWindows and that's about it.

Installing CentOS 5.4

I used a net based install. CentOS 5.4 supports FTP and HTTP based installations using a special, only 8.9MB (yup - MegaByte!) bootable install ISO. I discarded about all options, apart from the Server install (no GUI) and XWindows (OUI needs XWindows, although using Ubuntu as Xserver would be possible, too).
Choose a non-expanding virtual disk, as the database and expanding volumes do not mix-and-match. 32GB should do the trick.

Clone your Box

Unfortunately, there's no 'Duplicate' option in VB, so you'll have to do it by hand, which is surprisingly simple: run Export Appliance, followed by Import Applicance. Change the name of the Virtual machine, so you won't end up with two machines with the same name.

Meet db10 - my 10GRel2 database server

Fire it (the cloned machine, not the baseline!) up, change ip-address (/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0, I used 192.168.1.230) and hostname (/etc/hosts, /etc/sysconfig/network, sysctl kernel.hostname=db10) and Bob's your uncle.

Firefox no longer does WNA with OSSO

No, I'm not in some secret service, using all the acronyms. Firefox no longer does MS Windows Native Authentication in combination with Oracle Single Sign On. Somewhere between Firefox V1.5 and V2.0.11, they decided to change it's agent settings.
Result is that there is not an enhancement request with Oracle: "BUG:6803891 ORACLE SSO WNA SOULD BE ENHANCED TO SUPPORT FIREFOX BROWSER".

Please support that request.

Something similar seems to be the case for Vista and IE 7, by the way (bug 6795150)

Workaround.

Change the configuration; this works on the latest Firefox:

• Get to the configuration screen; type 'about:config' in the address bar
• Enter 'useragent' in the Filter box
• Change general.useragent.extra.firefox to:
  Firefox/3.6.2 (compatible; MSIE 6.0;)
  
  (I had Firefox/3.6.2) - the last semi colon is needed!
  

Bottom line is the fact the kerberos authentication module searches for "Windows NT" and then for version >= "5". Next it looks for "MSIE", which is no longer (FF V2 and up) there.
You can take it from there, see this entry.

End of an era - Ed Roberts died

The DIY PC era, that is - Henry Edward Roberts, the designer of worlds' first Personal Computer, the Altair 8800, died yesterday.