I find that keeping my finger on the blogosphere pulse is a good way to ascertain the adoption rate of new Oracle features such as Oracle Database 11g Database File System (DBFS). I see that Tim Hall has posted DBFS content in his typically excellent style!
I have a few posts on the topic of DBFS. Amongst the following list is a post (“Hidden Content?”) that will direct you to a webcast I delivered to IOUG Exadata Special Interest Group. The webcast is very informative because I introduce the concept of “injecting” files into the file system. Injecting? Yes, imagine transferring files into an Ext3 file system on a remote host without that file system even being mounted, anywhere! Cool technology and very efficient.
- Staging Data For ETL/ELT? Flat Files Appear Magically! No, Load Time Starts With Transfer Time.
- Something to Ponder? What Sort of Powerful Offering Could a Filesystem in Userspace Be?
- Oracle Database File System (DBFS). It’s Not An “Exadata Feature.” – Part I.
- Oracle Database File System (DBFS) on Exadata Storage Server. Hidden Content?
Google Search Terms
Another web aspect I monitor when it comes to new Oracle features is what search engine terms are being thrown at Google. For example, the following DBFS-related searches are likely search terms for folks that are testing the water with DBFS and/or suffering any problems getting it to work:
| Search Term | Hits |
| dbfs_client | 370 |
| dbfs_client +allow_root | 8 |
| dbfs_client +allow_other | 9 |
| DBFS +fusermount +oracle | 1100 |
| DBFS +direct_io | 246 |
| DBFS +exadata | 14,700 |
| –pass-through-fuse-options | 0 |
| “Transport endpoint is not connected” +DBFS | 0 |
| “fail to connect to database server” | 4 |
| “fail to connect to database server” +DBFS | 0 |
| dbfs_client +”fuse: failed to exec fusermount: Permission denied” | 0 |
| DBFS +”fuse: failed to exec fusermount: Permission denied” | 0 |
I aim to post a few blog entries with troubleshooting tips for some of the more common DBFS-related problems that customers might hit. The first entry I’ll make will cover the more common “Transport endpoint is not connected” error string that is returned under certain situations when trying to access DBFS mounts.
So, yes, the title of this post was a come-on. Oracle Database 11g Database File System is a new feature. It takes time for the blogosphere to catch up. But, as I’ve pointed out, there are good, trustworthy, bloggers posting content…like Tim Hall.
Kevin Closson's Blog: Platforms, Databases and Storage 
When Oracle has released 11gR2 i’ve examined the new features and i’ve found DBFS very interesting. I’ve made some tests with a XEN virtualized machines, with OEL 5.3 (this was at the end of September 2009) and i’ve encountered some problems. For example i’ve created a little dbfs (of about 2GB) with supplied procedures, i’ve mounted the filesystem and then copied a big file into this new dbfs, but after deleting the file i’ve not been able to copy other files into because it resulted still full. This anomaly made me think that there were some bugs.
All software has bugs, Cristian. May I ask which of the two DBFS file system create scripts you used (e.g., dbfs_create_filesystem_advanced.sql dbfs_create_filesystem.sql ) ?
Yes i know. It was only a test to see this feature in action. I’m not sure at 100% because i’ve dismissed test environment but i think to have used dbfs_create_filesystem.sql script.
Hi Kevin
> “Transport endpoint is not connected”
I can confirm that this is a common error 🙂 The last time I hit it was last week while demostrating DBFS during our 11gR2 seminar. Fortunately, it took only few minutes to fix it… Anyway, it would be very nice to know what the (real) cause is.
Thank in advance,
Chris
Thanks for stopping by, Christian. I’ll get that post out ASAP.