Oracle Instant Client on Linux and ldconfig

So one of my OL7.4 x86-64 VMs running EM13 and other Oraclishness started swapping heavily, and I was generously granted more RAM (and CPU!). But the VM never came back up on reboot, complaining of "Failed to start Login Service", among other things. I eventually tracked it down to a file in /etc/ld.so.conf.d containing "/opt/oracle/12.2.0/lib".  Once I removed that file and did an "ldconfig" (in rescue mode), the server was able to start normally.

While this particular system change was not explicitly documented (by a particular solo DBA who shall remain nameless), I suspect it's from something similar to the instructions on https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/instant-client/linux-x86-64-downloads.html (but for v12.2, obviously).

I am hoping to find time to experiment with VirtualBox to duplicate this issue. But as we're planning on moving all of our Production to OL7 soon, has anyone run into this before? Can that change co-exist with dbus or whoever is preventing system startup?

Thanks,
Rich

p.s. I've used LD_LIBRARY_PATH in the past on AIX, and hope to also test that on OL7.

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