GDPR Explained

The Regulation (EU) 2016/679, also known as General Data Protection Regulation and usually shortened to GDPR is very important for EU individuals and organizations that deal with EU citizens personal data.

The following articles explain the adoption of GDPR by the organizations:

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Oracle Table and Database Size

To obtain the table size on an Oracle database, the following script can be used:


SELECT lower(table_name) AS tableName

    ,tablespaceName

    ,totalRows

    ,blocks*8/1024 AS Mbytes

FROM all_tables 

WHERE owner = USER

ORDER BY 1,2;

Performing the sum of the sizes of all tables allow us to get an estimate of the database size:


SELECT sum(blocks*8/1024) AS TotalMbytes

FROM all_tables 

WHERE owner = USER;

The previous script may not be accurate because it actually gets the sum of the size of the tables, which can be simply viewed as the data size, since a database is more than just data on tables.

Install Oracle Database in Linux

This is a guide that will show how to install Oracle Database (version 12c at this time) in Linux (Oracle Linux 7 is used).
The following is assumed:

Oracle Linux (or any Oracle Database approved Linux distribution) is installed with a minimum working set, i. e. working from the command line, as it is accessible via SSH.
A desktop running a Linux distribution with a window manager is used and the connections are performed to the server via SSH.

To simplify things, let’s say Oracle Linux is installed using the default “Minimal Install” option.

Setting up Linux

First thing to do is to update the system using

sudo yum update -y

Then add necessary software

sudo yum install -y binutils.x86_64 compat-libcap1.x86_64 gcc.x86_64 gcc-c++.x86_64 glibc.i686 glibc.x86_64 glibc-devel.i686 glibc-devel.x86_64 ksh compat-libstdc++-33 libaio.i686 libaio.x86_64 libaio-devel.i686 libaio-devel.x86_64 libgcc.i686 libgcc.x86_64 libstdc++.i686 libstdc++.x86_64 libstdc++-devel.i686 libstdc++-devel.x86_64 libXi.i686 libXi.x86_64 libXtst.i686 libXtst.x86_64 make.x86_64 sysstat.x86_64 zip unzip openssh-server

Getting GUI on Server

The Oracle Database installer is graphical a Java desktop application, and thus a window manager is required. If your server already has a graphical window manager, you can skip this

yum grouplist

Will show the available options. The easiest is just

sudo yum groupinstall "Server with GUI"

Though you may only require

sudo yum groupinstall "X Window System"

Or even a more lightweight option

sudo yum install -y xorg-x11-xauth xorg-x11-apps

Additional packages installation may be required depending.

Setting up Remote Display

The next step is to prepare to server to run the graphical applications in the desktop.

Server

In the server perform the following:

If you use the C shell, type:
```
setenv DISPLAY desktop-ip:n.n
```
If you use the Bourne shell, type:
```
DISPLAY=desktop-ip:n.n
export DISPLAY
```
If you use the Korn shell, type:
```
export DISPLAY=desktop-ip:n.n
```

Replace desktop-ip with the desktop IP address and n.n with the desktop display number.screen number (usually 0:0)

If the server and the desktop are all on the same network, usually setting DISPLAY to localhost:10.0 is good enough.

Desktop

In the desktop perform the following:

xhost +
ssh -X user@server

Where server is the server IP, user is your server username and login using your credentials.

If you get a warning or error message about xauth, don’t worry about it. If you logout and login again the same way, it should have disappeared since thew first login should have fixed it.

To check if everything is working properly, after authenticated in the server from the desktop with using ssh -X, do

xclock

and the clock application should appear in the desktop screen.

Running Oracle Database Installer

The Oracle Database installer comes in a zip file, e.g. linuxx64_12201_database.zip, confirm the version and architecture is the correct one. Assuming the Oracle Database installer is ready for install, i.e. the zip file is already on the server (sftp may help on transferring the file from the desktop to the server), uncompress the file

unzip linuxx64_12201_database.zip

and then run the installer

cd database
./runInstaller

A precondition checkup is performed by the installer and you may need to do some additional things, such as install extra software packages. It is highly recommended that you do not ignore the dependencies (maybe except the swap) as it may have prevent the database to execute correctly.
During the installation, you will be required to run some scripts manually with administration privileges.

Finishing It

After the installation you may think that opening up a browser and pointing it to “https://server-ip:5500/” may be enough, but that may not be the case.

Setting up Database Administrator User

To add a databse administrator, from the server command line, run

sqlplus /as sysdba

create user admin identified by pass;
grant dba to admin; 
conn admin/pass;

Where “admin” is the username for the administration and “pass” is the correspondent password.

Firewall

Oracle database works on specific ports, thus it is mandatory that the firewall allows them to carry traffic:

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=1521/tcp --add-port=5500/tcp --add-port=5520/tcp --add-port=3938/tcp --permanent
firewall-cmd --reload

Environment Settings

Edit your .bash_profile and set the following

TMPDIR=$TMP; export TMPDIR
ORACLE_BASE=/<INSTALL_DIR>/app/oracle; export ORACLE_BASE
ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/product/12.1.0/dbhome_1; export ORACLE_HOME
ORACLE_SID=<ORA_SID>; export ORACLE_SID
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH; export PATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:/lib:/usr/lib:/usr/lib64; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
CLASSPATH=$ORACLE_HOME/jlib:$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/jlib; export CLASSPATH

Where <INSTALL_DIR> is the Oracle installation directory (you can check the installation log “oracle/oraInventory/logs“) and <ORA_SID> is the Oracle SID (usually “oracle”).

Ready

Now try https://server-ip:5500/em/ where server-ip is the server IP address. It is necessary to accept the certificate and the to have Flash installed, since Enterprise Manager is a Flash application that is served under HTTPS.
If the application does not execute properly, try using Internet Explorer from Microsoft Windows to see if it is working.

Debugging email on Django application development

One of the common functionalities in Django applications is to send emails, such as for user password resets.

Python SMTP

Since Python comes with it’s own SMTP, it’s easy to redirect the emails from the local Django application being developed to this dummy mail server and see the emails on the console.
Here’s how to do it:

Run Python SMTP with this command line:
python -m smtpd -n -c DebuggingServer localhost:1025
Define Django email server as:
EMAIL_HOST = 'localhost'
EMAIL_PORT = 1025

And that’s it. All emails sent will be seen on the console where you’r running the Python SMTP.
This technique is actually quite useful since you can use this for any application you are developing locally.

Redirect to Console

There’s another way to see the emails on the console with no dependencies.
To do so, just configure the email to use the console email backend.

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend'

This will actually redirect all emails to the standard output, which usually is the console.

Redirect to File

Another approach is to redirect the emails into a local file for prior usage.
To do so, just configure the email to use the file email backend.

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.filebased.EmailBackend'
EMAIL_FILE_PATH = '/tmp/app-messages' # change this to a proper location

This will write all emails into separate files located in

/tmp/app-messages

and you can analyze them latter.

Install and Configure PostgreSQL

Here’s how to correctly install and configure PostgreSQL.

Install

First update the system

sudo apt-get update

Then install the packages:

sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib

Create Database and User

Now let’s create a PostgreSQL roles and databases.

PostgreSQL uses the concept of roles to distinguish the variety of users that can connect to a database. After a fresh install, the default PostgreSQL user is actual named “postgres”.

sudo su postgres

and add a user

createuser -e -P USERNAME

set the password for the specified USERNAME.

Now create a database and assign the user to it

createdb -O USERNAME DATABASENAME

Connect to the database using

psql -d DATABASENAME -U USERNAME

And that’s it.

Correctly Uninstall PostgreSQL

Uninstalling PostgreSQL may leave some undesired files. Here’s how to purge it:

First, uninstall all packages from PostgreSQL from the system using

sudo apt-get --purge remove postgresql\*

Then remove all the configuration and library stuff

sudo rm -r /etc/postgresql/
sudo rm -r /etc/postgresql-common/
sudo rm -r /var/lib/postgresql/

And finally, remove the user and group

sudo userdel -r postgres
sudo groupdel postgres

Upgrade PostgreSQL from 9.1 to 9.3 on Kubuntu

This seven steps will perform the upgrade of PostgreSQL from version 9.1 to version 9.3.
This also works in Ubuntu and it can also be used to upgrade between any version numbers.

To upgrade between any versions, just changed the 9.1 for the legacy version number and the 9.3 for the new version number.

First install the necessary dependencies

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install python-software-properties

Second, add the PostgreSQL repository

wget --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Third, setup the repository

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ precise-pgdg main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/postgresql.list'

Fourth, install PostgreSQL 9.3.

sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.3 postgresql-server-dev-9.3 postgresql-contrib-9.3

Fifth, perform the upgrade process.
The upgrade process is performed by having both servers running at the same time. Note that the new 9.3 version will run on a different port, 5433 as specified in the script bellow, and it will be set to the default port latter when the legacy version is uninstalled and the default port becomes available.

sudo su -l postgres

psql -d template1 -p 5433
CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS hstore;
CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS "uuid-ossp";
\q #logout from database

service postgresql stop
/usr/lib/postgresql/9.3/bin/pg_upgrade -b /usr/lib/postgresql/9.1/bin -B /usr/lib/postgresql/9.3/bin -d /var/lib/postgresql/9.1/main/ -D /var/lib/postgresql/9.3/main/ -O " -c config_file=/etc/postgresql/9.3/main/postgresql.conf" -o "-c config_file=/etc/postgresql/9.1/main/postgresql.conf"
exit # logout postgresql back to previous user

Sixth, remove the 9.1 version.

sudo apt-get remove postgresql-9.1

Seventh, set the new version server port back to the default value and restart the service.

sudo vim /etc/postgresql/9.3/main/postgresql.conf # find old port of 5433 and change it to 5432
sudo service postgresql restart

Change Keyboard Layout on Ubuntu Server Permanently

When working on Ubuntu Servers, sometimes the defined keyboard layout is not aligned with the physical keyboard one’s using.

In order to permanently change it, just execute the following two commands.

First, configure the keyboard:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

Test the keyboard, in particular the characters like slash, asterisk, etc.. If things are not ok, just configure it again with different options.

Next, configure the console:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

And that’s it.

If you want to configure the size of your TTY, i. e. the text console resolution, check ChangeTTYResolution.

Testing for Internet Explorer

While developing for the web, one has to take into account the various browsers that people use.
Depending on the kind of project and target users, this may range from an easy option focused on a single browser up to the dawnting task of supporting the most used browsers world wide.

To help in this task, Microsoft has provided a set of combinations of Windows and Internet Explorer versions in ready to use virtual machines available to all major operating systems.
You can get them here in the Modern.IE web site in the virtual tools section.

Setting Drupal File Permissions and Ownership

To correctly secure a Drupal installation in Linux, just follow these simple steps:

[root@localhost]cd /path_to_drupal_installation
[root@localhost]chown -R vsftpd:www-data .
[root@localhost]find . -type d -exec chmod u=rwx,g=rx,o= '{}' \;
[root@localhost]find . -type f -exec chmod u=rw,g=r,o= '{}' \;

Change the vsftpd by your own user name, ftp deamon user or what evere user you need.

[root@localhost]cd /path_to_drupal_installation/sites
[root@localhost]find . -type d -name files -exec chmod ug=rwx,o= '{}' \;
[root@localhost]for d in ./*/files
do
find $d -type d -exec chmod ug=rwx,o= '{}' \;
find $d -type f -exec chmod ug=rw,o= '{}' \;
done

Full article and explanation from Securing file permissions and ownership.