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AWS using Ansible? Yes, it's possible!

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  Although, I've used Ansible extensively for a lot of automation and orchestration tasks, using Ansible for AWS was indeed, a new territory for me.  This turned out to be a blessing, since along with using Ansible for AWS tasks, I also learnt how to use WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) on a Windows machine. Though WSL's been around for some time, I still hadn't come around to using it since I was mostly using my Macbook pro. Not anymore, though!  Anyway, I have listed below the steps to: Install WSL on Windows 11 23H2 patch Install AWS CLI on Ubuntu 22.04 (Exact version - 22.04.3 LTS) Install Ansible and the amazon.aws collection Use AWS CLI to get the list of  VPCs in the region - us-east-1 (or a region of your choice) Create a python file/script to get the list of VPCs in the region - us-east-1 (or a region of your choice) Create an Ansible playbook to get the list of VPCs in the region - us-east-1 (or a region of your choice.   You may download the comple...
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Formatting code for blogger

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CODE Copy the below code snippet: ------------------------- COPY FROM BELOW ------------------------- <pre style="background-color: #eeeeee; border: 1px dashed rgb(153, 153, 153); color: black; font-family: Andale Mono, Lucida Console, Monaco, fixed, monospace; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14px; overflow: auto; padding: 5px; width: 100%; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <code style="color: black; overflow-wrap: normal; word-wrap: normal;"> INPUT YOUR CODE HERE (SHELL, PYTHON, JAVA etc.,) </code></pre> ------------------------- END OF COPY ------------------------- Shell Command (bash) example: $ sendEmail -t "&lt;TO_EMAIL&gt;" -f "&lt;FROM&gt;" -u "&lt;SUBJECT&gt;" [-cc "&lt;EMAIL_IN_CC&gt;" -bcc "&lt;EMAIL_IN_BCC&gt;"] -o message-content-type=html -o message-file="&lt;INPUT_FILE_NAME&gt;" -a "&lt;FILE_TO_BE_ATTACHED&gt;...
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SendEmail - the best option for emails on Linux

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After any automation or scripting task is complete, I am sure some of them would need to email the output or alert to your mailbox. Linux does provide a few basic tools/utilities to cater to that requirement such as mailx or sendmail. However, their capabilities are limited to sending emails in text. But the need of the hour, if I may say so, is to have formatted emails with tables, highlighting and underlining words, attachments, the whole shebang! In other words, emails should be sent in HTML format which can have all these features and much more.  Though there are methods available to send emails using sendmail or mailx (using uuencode etc.,) they are quite cumbersome and convoluted. That's where "sendemail" utility comes in. It can send html emails so easily and with attachments as well. The software is described as "a lightweight tool written in Perl for sending SMTP email from the console". Some flavours of Linux provide it as a package (like Ubuntu, Kali ...
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Ansible - run_once, set_fact and include_tasks - The pitfalls

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Ansible does provide a wonderful option to execute a module or command in only one host called run_once but the results and facts are applied to all the hosts involved in the play. See definition and working :     This blog has good information on how it can be used to in various scenarios.  However, I don't want to talk about how it can be used and how its working (well, the blog calls it magic 😄) is quite useful. Rather, I want to share an interesting anomaly of run_once, when used in conjunction with either include_roles or include_tasks.   My scenario is quite simple: set_fact with run_once: My playbook: $ cat run_once_set_fact.yml --- - hosts: all gather_facts: False tasks: - name: Set fact fact1 set_fact: fact1: "DUMMY" run_once: True - debug: msg: "fact1: {{ fact1 }}" Output: PLAY [all] *******************************************************************************************...
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Check if UTL_FILE and FND_FILE are working fine

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Yesterday, while troubleshooting a vexing ORA-29280 error, I came across 2 useful PL/SQL anonymous blocks that can be used to test FND_FILE and UTL_FILE to find out whether they are indeed working fine. UTL_FILE set serveroutput on DECLARE file_location VARCHAR2(256) := '<first entry on utl_file_dir>'; file_name VARCHAR2(256) := 'utlfile1.lst'; file_text VARCHAR2(256) := 'THIS IS A TEST'; file_id UTL_FILE.file_type; BEGIN file_id := UTL_FILE.fopen(file_Location, file_name, 'W'); UTL_FILE.put_line(file_id, file_text); UTL_FILE.fclose(file_id); EXCEPTION WHEN UTL_FILE.INVALID_PATH THEN dbms_output.put_line('Invalid path ' || SQLERRM); WHEN OTHERS THEN dbms_output.put_line('Others '|| SQLCODE || ' ' || SQLERRM); END; / References: Metalink (MOS) Note ID: 261693.1 FND_FILE set serveroutput on exec FND_FILE.PUT_LINE(FND_FILE.LOG, 'THIS IS A TEST'); HTH....
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Modify retention period of workflow queues

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Yesterday, there was a requirement to increase the retention period of WF_DEFERRED and WF_BPEL_Q so that the developers could troubleshoot issues involving business events. This can be done this way: 1. Check the retention period of existing workqueues. SQL> SELECT owner, name, retention FROM all_queues WHERE name LIKE 'WF%'; OWNER           NAME                                                RETENTION --------------- --------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ APPS                 WF_BPEL_Q                                                0 APPLSYS         WF_INBOUND_QUEUE              ...
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Clone database home (clone.pl) deprecated in Oracle 19c

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Back to blogging, at last. Well, this time it's about clone.pl. Background about clone.pl The easiest way to install a patched and up-to-date Oracle home is to physically copy it from a source server (that is already patched and up-to-date) and use clone.pl on the target server so that the binaries are linked to the target server's OS binaries (like gcc, libstdc++ etc.,), registered with the Oracle Inventory etc. The alternative to clone.pl is to: Install Oracle binaries using GUI or command line Apply the latest patchset (PSU/CPU patches) As you can see now, clone.pl is really useful in order to cut down time to build a database in a new server. More about clone.pl here and here (12c), here (18c). However, in Oracle 19c, Oracle has officially said - " Starting from oracle database 19c ,the clone.pl script is deprecated  and can be removed in a future release. Hence, Oracle recommends that you use the software-only installation option, available in the database installe...
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