Linux X11 Forwarding with SU Switch User

Over the years access is often granted to one of the administrative users and then once we are on the server we have to switch user to another account to do the technical services work. This creates a problem with X11 Forwarding and so this is one work around to the problem. X authentication is based on cookies. So the secondary account needs to have access to the same cookies as the original login user.

Here is a nice easy way to do this.  This was done on an AIX 7.1 server:

Before you issue the su or sudo, request the xauth cookies and look for the current DISPLAY that’s connecting to your X server:

$ xauth list
You’ll get something like

somehost.somedomain:10 mit-magic-cookie-1 4d22408a71a55b41ccd1657d377923ae

Then, execute a switch user (su) and add the cookie to that user:

$ xauth add somehost.somedomain:10 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 4d22408a71a55b41ccd1657d377923ae

(just copy’n-paste the output of the above ‘xauth list’ onto ‘xauth add’) That’s it. Now, you _should_ be able to start any X application.

Panda + Community March to June 2017

Curling, Bowling, Dancing, Conferences, Running, Biking, Cooking, Field Trips, the question may be what haven’t we done over the past couple of months.

This July will find the Panda out Riding to End MS again for the 3rd time with Team Butt Ugly. We have almost 50 riders on the team and we are on a mission to be at the top of the fundraising board this year. Please Support The Ride! I plan to get some video blogs out soon so keep an eye for that. However, any support you can offer is greatly appreciated.

As for March to June well, we went out and Curled for Kids with Big Brothers, then we helped out at the Big Brothers annual BBQ cooking up hundreds of hotdogs and sausages, and then turned around and Bowled for Kids. Big Brothers Big Sisters is a fantastic organization and we are thrilled to be associated with them, because we believe that everybody should have a mentor in their life, personally or professionally or both. Mentors make a huge difference. The Smart Panda has many mentors and literally all the success that we have had has come through their advice, experience, and motivation. To each and every one of them, we tip our hat!

In Rotary we have been busy as well, as we formed a group in the club to “officially” run more, so I believe we are 12 members strong now and we run regularly, and just last week we did a run to Port Stanley in which the short run distance was 5km and the top runners clocked 18kms. I was able to gut out 8, but it was just awesome to be part of the group. On the Rotary side, I have gone and got trained to be President for the 2016-2017 year, we have planned and now we get to execute starting next week. Combine that with the District 6330 conference which had almost 400 Rotarians, saw some fantastic speakers, and engaged people from 5 to 95 learning and even dancing (to the YMCA) and even topped off with a well choreographed Viennese waltz (Done by our Rotary Dance Club).  Early this month a group of us from the Club went to Atlanta for the Rotary International Conference in which 40,000+ Rotarians showed up.  Talk about impressive. However, they really did a good job in focussing on a really serious issue with “Human Trafficking”. I don’t think that is a best term for it, because this is a very serious topic and if you think it doesn’t exist or it doesn’t affect you – YOU’D BE WRONG. I am really excited to help lead our club in some new projects to help to try to scratch the surface of this issue.

Check back next month for pictures from the MS Ride – Grandbend to London (Donate NOW)! Till next month……

PeopleSoft – Performance Monitor (Setup)

Setting up Performance Monitor is one of those once every couple of years quests that I get tasked with. There is no need to re-invite the wheel on this as Oracle provides a great Red-Paper on setting this up.

My Oracle Support:
PeopleSoft Performance Monitor Red Paper (Doc ID 747510.1)

The easiest way to start with the install is to actually do a PeopleTools System Database install. Using the PeopleSoft PeopleTools Install Guide for your Tools version follow the instructions to create a database manually.  There is a delivered install for PeopleTools System Database right in the PeopleTools home.  You create it just like you create a Financials or HCM application database. Use the ptddl.sql delivered script to setup the PeopleTools tablespaces.

One thing that is unique about the PeopleTools Database, the core user is not VP1 or PS as in the other applications, it is: PSADMIN. PTWEBSERVER is still the web profile user by default.

Another odd issue I ran into with my last install was not being able to log in, and that was resolved by verifying that the correct license code was present on the PSOPTIONS table.

Smart Panda – PeopleSoft – Performance Monitor Red Paper (April 2013 – most current I can find as of March 2017)

PeopleSoft – Authorization Error – Contact Your System Administrator

Last week I was on a call with a client who had Oracle in doing a “free” assessment, which in my opinion was a giant sales pitch. Interestingly there was many nuggets of gold to be had if you were listening which I will share in other posts.  However, one item that was brought forth was that they should have performance monitor installed because it is just awesome!  In all the years of doing PeopleSoft have not had many opportunities to work with PPM or PerfMon or Performance Monitor depending on how you want to reference it.

It is not terribly difficult to setup, however, it is literally a separate application, so it has its own database, application server, process scheduler and web service. So this turns into more maintenance and most organizations don’t require the tool for the cost and understanding of getting PerfMon in place.

When doing the install you need a database that has PeopleTools framework, so the easiest way to get that is to install a PeopleTools System database. When doing the install, you should not that the core user is “PSADMIN” not VP1 or PS. When doing the install everything was fine, except when I tried to login I got the Authorization Error message with NOTHING else. I checked the logs and looked at security and did not see much of anything wrong.  So it was time for the secret weapon:  my oracle support, and searching we go.  Since this is a highly generic message it is difficult to determine what the cause was, all the usual suspects did not seem right.  At the bottom of one of the case notes it suggested to make sure you had the correct license code.

This install was doing using a PeopleTools Home that we did not originally install, we inherited the mess from somebody else, so when I looked, sure enough it had he strangest looking license code I have seen yet in my PeopleSoft career.  So I popped out to the PeopleSoft License Page and I got the correct license code and inserted that into the PSOPTIONS table.  After a quick restart of the application server – eureka!

Oracle Database 12c: Installation Guide

I was working on a new server the other day and I wanted to make sure that all the correct repositories were in place, this install guide was excellent.

>> Install Guide <<<

I was doing this in AWS, and found a nice guide to setting up an OEL 7 Image: >>> Install AWS Image Guide <<<

The primary element that I was looking for was the Repositories for Oracle Enterprise Linux 7:

binutils-2.23.52.0.1-12.el7.x86_64 
compat-libcap1-1.10-3.el7.x86_64 
compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-71.el7.i686
compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-71.el7.x86_64
gcc-4.8.2-3.el7.x86_64 
gcc-c++-4.8.2-3.el7.x86_64 
glibc-2.17-36.el7.i686 
glibc-2.17-36.el7.x86_64 
glibc-devel-2.17-36.el7.i686 
glibc-devel-2.17-36.el7.x86_64 
ksh
libaio-0.3.109-9.el7.i686 
libaio-0.3.109-9.el7.x86_64 
libaio-devel-0.3.109-9.el7.i686 
libaio-devel-0.3.109-9.el7.x86_64 
libgcc-4.8.2-3.el7.i686 
libgcc-4.8.2-3.el7.x86_64 
libstdc++-4.8.2-3.el7.i686 
libstdc++-4.8.2-3.el7.x86_64 
libstdc++-devel-4.8.2-3.el7.i686 
libstdc++-devel-4.8.2-3.el7.x86_64 
libXi-1.7.2-1.el7.i686 
libXi-1.7.2-1.el7.x86_64 
libXtst-1.2.2-1.el7.i686 
libXtst-1.2.2-1.el7.x86_64 
make-3.82-19.el7.x86_64 
sysstat-10.1.5-1.el7.x86_64