Installation of Oracle Linux 5.8 on Virtual Box 4.1 with Guest Additions

Today I wanted to install
Oracle Linux on virtual box, which I need for some testing systems. Since the
installation and especially the setup of the guest additions were not as smooth
as I expected, I decided to share the information.

There are many occasions in which we could need an installation of virtual box. I was investigating a high-availability configuration of some fusion middleware elements and needed to span a Weblogic cluster across two machines. Once we have installed and configured one machine in virtual box, we can easily multiply it by cloning.
In this workshop we show how to install Oracle Linux 5.8 on Virtual Box 4.1.16 running on a 64-bit Windows 7 Host machine. We will start from the download of the media and go through the installation process. We will also install the guest additions and configure shared folder.

Read the full Article as PDF: InstallingOracleLinux58.pdf (1,5 MB)

WS-Security unveiled

One of the more
complex examples that ship with WLS is a WS-Trust based authentication of a web
service using SAML assertions. This example is quite easy to setup and run and
the example’s documentation gives a basic understanding of what is going on.
But we want to look deeper and shed light on the complexity that is hidden
behind SSL, WS-Trust and SAML authentication. In a first step we separate the
scenario from the example server and integrate it into eclipse, to create an
isolated laboratory environment for further investigation. We will use
Wireshark to analyze the actual flow of messages on the wire. We even look
inside the SSL streams to identify the WS-Trust tokens and SAML assertions as
they are passed between the participants.

The WS-Trust specification, which is part of the WS-* stack of specifications for web services, was approved as OASIS standard in March 2007. Meanwhile it is generally accepted as an industry standard for implementing secure, trusted, and federated message exchange between service providers and consumers. So now is a good time to have a closer look at this technology. Despite the complexity of this topic, it is fairly easy to set up running examples of WS-Trust based java implementations using the examples that ship with Weblogic Server. We want to have a closer look at one of these examples: “Using SAML 1.1 Bearer Assertion for Authentication Case”

Read the full article as PDF: WS-Security_unveiled.pdf (1,6 MB)

Links to Files used in the Project:

Text file containing the output from building and running the project: saml_bearer11ssl.output.txt
WLS example documentation as PDF: WLS_Example_SAML_Bearer11ssl.pdf (177 KB)
Eclipse project file: saml_bearer11ssl.zip (160 KB)

Toolbox: The Mini-ID

This part of the
toolbox series introduces the Mini-IDE project. It is designed to instantly
setup a weblogic server together with a small sample application. It provides everything
to setup and run the example in less than five minutes. Despite its simplicity,
it contains everything to build and deploy a Java EE web application, relying
on not more than a WLS installation. It can easily be modified and used in
analysis situations or as a starting point for proof of concepts. In environments
where access is restricted to shell usage, we provide a distribution method
based on copy and paste via the clipboard.

Read the full article as PDF: Mini_IDE.pdf (1,3 MB)

File from the Project: transfer_archive.txt (17 KB)