SQLPlus stopped working - database

Windows 7 64-bit.
OracleXE installed since February.
Oracle instantclient 11.2 installed as well, so I have both c:\oracle\ and c:\oraclexe.
I use SQLPlus every day.
It's location is C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\11.2.0\server\bin\sqlplus.exe
I have not changed my environment variables during this 6 month period.
Yet, suddenly, SQLPlus stopped working. Permanently. Even after reboots:
Error 6 initializing SQL*Plus
SP2-0667: Message file sp1<lang>.msb not found
SP2-0750: You may need to set ORACLE_HOME to your Oracle software directory
Now there are TONS AND TONS of pages of people discussing this exact problem. Every single solution involves setting ORACLE_HOME. None of these fix my problems. In fact, ORACLE_HOME was not an environment variable at any point between February and today!
These pages are all repeats of each other, and I've satisfied every solution condition on every one of those pages to no avail. And they are almost wholly about people who JUST installed Oracle.
But what about me? My install was perfect for 6 months, and just rotted away one day without me changing anything.
1) I've done the set ORACLE_HOME=c:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\11.2.0\server\ to no avail. I've also taken about 10 shots in the dark with setting it to different levels in that path (like c:\oraclexe), but everything I've read suggestions it should point to the server folder.
2) I know it's not a path problem because I have no problem running SQLPlus. The error is generated by SQLPlus.
3) I've tried set LANG=us {even though I didn't need this at any point in the past}
4) I've even tried set NLS_LANG=American_America.we8iso8859p15 to no avail.
5) Yes, sp1us.msb is indeed at: C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\11.2.0\server\sqlplus\mesg\sp1us.msb
6) I've even used Sysinternals Procmon to see where SQLPlus.exe is looking. It's a lot of output to wade through and I'm not too familiar with the tool, but it seems to indicate that SQLPlus is looking for the file... Right where it is! So why can't it find it?
7) I don't think it's file permissions. Ran fine for 6 months. I've ensured that I own the files via takeown and icalcs -- but only after the problems started.
8) It's not antivirus.
Twice I've mucked around and managed to get it run correctly, and both times it only ran once and stopped working correctly. So I could never verify a step that consistently got it to work. It makes no sense to me that it would run once, but not twice - It's almost as if SQLPlus itself is changing the environment to prevent SQLPlus from working.

I found the problem!
I was setting an environment varaible SQLPLUS in my own script.
I was using it for non-Oracle-specific purposes.
I guess I collided with a variable they wanted to use.
Strangely, I've been using this script (a sqlplus.bat that forks to different sqlplus behavior) for 2 years, and my choice in temporary environment variable only presented a problem this week.
Very odd!

Related

'clarinet integrate' quickly fails and nothing is logged to console?

Following https://docs.hiro.so/smart-contracts/devnet I can't get the command clarinet integrate to work. I have installed Docker on my mac and am running version 0.28.0 of clarinet. Running command within 'my-react-app/clarinet' where all clarity related files live (contracts, settings, tests, and Clarinet.toml).
My guess is it could be an issue with Docker?
The issue was that I downloaded my Devnet.toml file from a repo that was configured incorrectly. The configuration I needed was:
[network]
name = "devnet"
I increased the CPU and Memory in Docker as well.
There is an issue when the command attempts to spin up the stacks explorer, but I was informed that there are several existing issues with the stacks explorer from clarinet integrate at the moment.
Depending on how the last devnet was terminated, you could have some containers running. This issue should be fixed in the next incoming release, meanwhile, you'd need to terminate this stale containers manually.
Apart from Ludo's suggestions, I'd also look into your Docker resources. The default CPU/memory allocation should allow you to get started with Clarinet, but just in case, you could alter it to see if that makes a difference. Here's my settings for your reference:
Alternatively, to tease things out, you could reuse one of the samples (eg: hirosystems/stacks-billboard) instead of running your project. See if the sample comes up as expected; if it does, there could be something missing in your project.

Change SQL Command Timeout threshold without access to code

I have a bad situation I'm trying to work through and would appreciate your help. We have a legacy .NET application that initiates a stored procedure call that is exceeding the default command timeout threshold. I know how to change the command timeout threshold in code (that's easy) - the problem is that we don't have the source code for this legacy application (trust me, no one's more upset about this than I).
We're working on optimizing the Stored Procedure, but we're facing some blockers. Namely, the database which the Stored Procedure runs against is a vendor database and they've said they can't add some indexes that would help. We're also facing an issue where the vendor's database has grown dramatically over the last few years and the size appears to be contributing to the problem.
Previous to our optimization efforts, the stored procedure was taking minutes to complete. We've now got it down to about 36 seconds, but we're not sure if we can get it below the default command timeout of 30 seconds.
I've read that there's no way to change the command timeout in the connection string, but I was wondering if any of you fabulous people had any ideas on how to change the command timeout outside of code.
Thanks!
You can use ildasm to alter what will get executed directly in the .net dll. e.g. see top answer in:
dotnet dll decompile and change the code
There's a bit of a learning curve, but it is possible.
Or could try something like DnSpy https://github.com/dnSpy/dnSpy , which looks promising.
Some discussion of DnSpy at:
Modify Compiled .Net Exe

Problem reinstalling Advanced Rest Client

today I saw 2 different versions of ARC in my "Programs and features" Windows 10 list, so I choosed to uninstall the older one because I needed a bit of space. At the end of the uninstall, both of them where disappeared!
So, I downloaded the new version from https://install.advancedrestclient.com/, run as Admin and approved changes to S.O., the program started the installation but stucked at 1/3 of it. I waited for a few minutes, then closed it. Every time I try launching it, it stucks at about 1/3 of the installation.
I've tried searching for registry keys, and simply restarting the PC, with no luck.
Please help me if you can, because I really need that prog.
Thanks in advance
Had the same problem. Uninstall from program files didn't work for me either. I used ccleaner to remove then reinstall. Ccleaner will find appropriate registries.
In addition to using CCleaner, as suggested by Ray above, I had to do the following:
1) In the classic "Programs and Features" list (Control Panel style) of Windows 10, I chose Uninstall, upon which Windows 10 said it cannot find the program and asked if I want to remove the program from the list. I answered Yes.
2) Manually delete the folders "Advanced Rest Client" and "advanced-rest-client" (I had both) from %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming and from %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local (had only one of them).
After that, a fresh installation with the newest arc-setup.exe (version 15.0.5) worked.

Conemu problems with vi, top and clear

The cygwin bash console only resets the cursor to the top of the screen, it does not clear the screen. vi does funny things with the cursor - hard to explain, but the cursor seems double wide when in vi. top output is mostly double-spaced, but sometimes single spaces.
When I use mintty I have none of these issues.
I've tried all kinds of settings in the last several hours, too many to list. Seems like I'm going backwards. I've got conemu working great on another computer, and I've tried replicating the setup but there must be something I'm missing.
What information can I provide to help solve these issues?
I've someone else runs into this issue: you probably need to set TERM=cygwin in your .bashrc.
Turns out the problem machine had an old version of Cygwin. Mintty received a major upgrade in July 2015. Numerous other packages have been upgraded also in the 2 years since I installed Cygwin in that machine. After upgrading Cygwin, the problems went away.

Make netbeans use virtual box guest installation of phpunit

We use netbean's phpunit / unit testing plugins for all our testing. We used to use xampp and point netbeans at our our .bat file from the xampp installation. We recently started using vagrant and are now running our dev environment in virtual box. I would like to make netbeans use the installation of phpunit within the virtual machine. This would save us from having to have both installed. Is this even possible? Netbeans seems to want a file location and I am stumped as to how I can go about doing this.
[EDIT] I've created a custom batch file that uses vbox guestconrols to forward the commands to the VMs installation of phpunit. I am going to then point netbeans at my custom .bat file. My problem is, now, that guestcontrols doesn't seem to be forwarding --bootstrap. It seems to be trying to take it and use it, rather than forward it along. The docs say that all the additional arguments will just be passed on, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Here is what I am using in my my_phpunit.bat :
[my_phpunit.bat]
#echo off
if "%VBoxManage%" == "" set VBoxManage=C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe
"%VBoxManage%" "--nologo" "guestcontrol" "<my_vm_name>" "execute" "--image" "/usr/bin/php5" "/usr/bin/phpunit" "--verbose" "--username" "<user>" "--password" "<pass>" "--wait-stdout" "--wait-stderr" "CustomNetbeansTestSuite" "<path/to/test/suite>" "--bootstrap" "<path/to/bootstrap>" %7
I am almost there, as running the bat file without the bootstrap option at the end takes me to the unit test. I am getting exceptions because of some autoloader issues(no bootstrap), but if I can figure out a better way to forward these command line arguments to
[EDIT 2]
I think I've finally solved this, but I need to get some issues with my guest OS in order. Once I've been able to test it a bit more, I'll post the final solution. I solved the Vbox guest control issue by adding "--" before I actually sent the parameters that should be forwarded. It said to do so in the docs, but it wasn't entirely clear to me at first.
I just wanted to update that I never actually got the .bat file to work. I think I got pretty close, but I was hung up on some linux CLI output that I couldn't suppress. The .bat file that I ended up with was:
# .bat example
https://pastebin.com/BX1xnL3q
I ended up moving to PhpStorm and everything worked out of the box. So, if you're still using netbeans, you can try and give that a shot. Maybe someone with more unix / linux experience can fix the issues I was having. I feel I was like 99% there with it.

Resources