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Category: Linux

Powershell All The Things

Published 2016-08-19 by Kevin Feasel

Max Trinidad reports that Microsoft is making Powershell a cross-platform language:

This is PowerShell Core only, Alpha Version 6.0.0.9 and there’s a lot of work to do. Bugs and feedback are been submitted as the community are contributing for it success.

This version is also available for Windows 10 / Server 2016 and Windows 8.1 / Server 2012 R2. You can have it side-by-side with the current version of PowerShell.

Max has notes on how to install it on Ubuntu.  Given that Microsoft is bringing Bash to Windows and Powershell to Linux, these are interesting times.

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Powershell + Bash

Published 2016-04-26 by Kevin Feasel

Max Trinidad shows how to integrate Powershell with Bash in Windows 10:

If it worth knowing that in order to get Bash, it’s a feature you need to installed it first. The following is the series of steps I use to enabled and install Bash on my desktop. And, after enabling Bash, I started using it under the PowerShell Console.

Apropos of this, I read a very interesting article by Alex Clemmer yesterday on how terrible the Windows command line is.  Powershell and Bash are way, way better for pretty much any purpose, other than perhaps experiencing masochism.

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Installing ODBC Drivers

Published 2016-04-21 by Kevin Feasel

Steph Locke shows how to install the SQL Server ODBC drivers in Ubuntu:

Did you know you can now get SQL Server ODBC drivers for Ubuntu? Yes, no, maybe? It’s ok even if you haven’t since it’s pretty new! Anyway, this presents me with an ideal opportunity to standardise my SQL Server ODBC connections across the operating systems I use R on i.e. Windows and Ubuntu. My first trial was to get it working on Travis-CI since that’s where all my training magic happens and if it can’t work on a clean build like Travis, then where can it work?

Now I can create R functionality that can reliably depend on SQL Server without having to fallback to JDBC. A definite woohoo moment!

Thanks to Steph for putting together this script.

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Joining Ubuntu To AD

Published 2016-04-13 by Kevin Feasel

Chrissy LeMaire shows us how to connect to AD from Ubuntu:

Since 2009, it seems that a couple things have changed in the client realm. In particular, winbindfell out of favor to Likewise Open (which I used to <3) which was bought by BeyondTrust and turned into PowerBroker Open. But that’s since fallen out of favor to the SSSD or “System Security Services Daemon“. SSSD seems pretty cool but everyone hates its name and assume that its name is keeping it from greater adoption.

Sometimes when researching SSSD, you’ll come across a few mentions of FreeIPA which is similar to Active Directory, OpenLDAP, and ApacheDS. Oh, and I recently found out thatSamba4 allows Linux servers to join Active Directory as Domain Controllers (!!) but I can’t tell if it can be a forest of its own (reddit review here).

There are other players I’m leaving out but after a bit of casual research, no others seem to stand out. Ultimately, while there are a number of ways to setup AD/Linux authentication with Ubuntu, it appears that SSSD is the current way to go. Let’s go ahead and set that up.

Cf Ryan Adams and LeMaire’s separate posts back in March on the topic.  As Microsoft gets serious about Linux integration, I would love to see them simplify this process significantly, either by updating an existing open-source project (my preference) or creating their own open-source project.

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SQL Server JDBC Driver Update

Published 2016-04-11 by Kevin Feasel

Microsoft is releasing a preview of their JDBC driver:

We are committed to continuously updating the JDBC driver to bring more feature support for connecting to SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, and Azure SQL DW. Please stay tuned for upcoming releases that will have additional feature support. This applies to our wide range of client drivers including PHP 7.0, Node.js, ODBC, and ADO.NET which are already available.

Don’t forget Hadoop integration (e.g., via Sqoop) while you’re at it…

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Windows Authentication On Linux

Published 2016-03-15 by Kevin Feasel

Ryan Adams shows us how to get Active Directory authentication on Linux using Samba and PAM:

Back to our question at hand.  Since the preview just got released I have not had a chance to test this out with SQL Server.  However, you can use Active Directory accounts with Linux and Unix by using Samba and PAM.  I see no reason why this implementation would not also work with SQL Server on Linux, but again I have not yet had a chance to test this out.  Since I already have some written installation instructions, that’s what I am providing here.

Chrissy LeMaire, in the comments, shows how to do it in OpenSUSE.  She also has a brand new blog post on the topic.

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SQL Server On Linux Preview

Published 2016-03-09 by Kevin Feasel

James Anderson shows us where to sign up for the SQL Server on Linux preview:

Couple of thoughts on the sign up form:

  1. Red Hat is mentioned in the announcment but this form tells us that only Ubuntu or Docker images are currently available. Will it be available to all Linux distributions? What about OS X?

  2. As for Docker, does it ever make sense to have RDBMSs in containers? Containers are generally immutable.

Done.  I’m also excited about the continued Microsoft-Red Hat collaboration, not just because I live in Red Hat territory.

In the meantime, Denny Cherry and Joey D’Antoni give their thoughts.  Here’s one of Joey’s:

My favorite part of SQL Server on Linux? My Bash scripts for automation work again.

 

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SQL Server On Linux

Published 2016-03-08 by Kevin Feasel

It’s coming:

Today I’m excited to announce our plans to bring SQL Server to Linux as well. This will enable SQL Server to deliver a consistent data platform across Windows Server and Linux, as well as on-premises and cloud. We are bringing the core relational database capabilities to preview today, and are targeting availability in mid-2017.

SQL Server on Linux will provide customers with even more flexibility in their data solution. One with mission-critical performance, industry-leading TCO, best-in-class security, and hybrid cloud innovations – like Stretch Database which lets customers access their data on-premises and in the cloud whenever they want at low cost – all built in.

I want Management Studio on Linux.  That’s the biggest thing keeping me tethered to Windows.

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Connecting To SQL Server From Linux

Published 2015-11-26 by Kevin Feasel

Erland Sommarskog has an article on ways in which you can connect to SQL Server from a Linux (or UNIX) box:

TDS — Tabular Data Stream — is the protocol that SQL Server talks with its clients. This is a proprietary protocol, owned by Microsoft (and Sybase, who have their version). Nevertheless there is exists FreeTDS which originally was a reverse-engineering effort of TDS. Now when Microsoft has published the TDS specification, they should be able to repair any cracks they may have. Check out the FreeTDS home page for further details. There appears to be a DBD::FreeTDS that goes along with it.

I used FreeTDS to connect to SQL Server from RStudio, so I endorse that method.

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Microsoft & Red Hat Sittin’ In A Tree

Published 2015-11-07 by Kevin Feasel

Microsoft and Red Hat have joined together to support Linux in Azure.

Customers can already run Linux on Azure, but the new partnership will expand support for running so-called “hybrid clouds,” in which applications may exist in both private data centers and on public cloud services. More significantly, Microsoft and Red Hat support teams will work together from the same facilities to support Red Hat customers using Azure. Microsoft vice president of cloud and enterprise Scott Guthrie said during a webcast today that this is the first time that he knows of that Microsoft has “co-located” support teams with another company.

The deal is the latest example of Microsoft playing nice with a former rival. “When we started [Red Hat Enterprise Linux] I never would have thought we’d do this,” Red Hat president of product and technology Paul Cormier said during the webcast.

Free speculation with no evidence:  at some point, Microsoft will offer SQL Server on Linux.  My guess is 3-5 years from now, but other co-speculators have suggested maybe even as soon as 18 months.  Whatever the case, I’ll be a happy man when I can run SSMS in Linux.

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