Oracle, please recall 8i for Linux. Too many bugs

From: Atif <atif55_at_my-deja.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 1999 03:47:51 GMT
Message-ID: <7ob1h5$he5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

I have been trying to work with this product for several days but have found nothing but bugs everywhere. Its extremely extremely frustrating. I have been working with Oracle products for years and this product is the only one I product I know that deserves the title I earlier used.

I have tried to list a few of the numerous problems with this product. I also copied message from technet.oracle.com discussion board for Linux.

Given the lack of seriousness on Oracle's part to support Linux, I strongly urge Linux users to look at DB2 and Informix as their database of choice. Specially DB2 as IBM is bending over backwards to assure support of Linux.

Well, without much further ado, here is a copy of my earlier post with some details on what is wrong with this product:

I have been trying to get Oracle 8i on Linux working and I feel that I must
share my thoughts on the new Oracle installer with everybody.

I *hate* the new installer. I used to run the installer from home over my
128Kbps ISDN connection while I was connected to the office machines, because it
was a simple text based installer. And Oracle 8i has changed all that!

I have nothing against GUI based installers, only when they have a little too
many animated images that eat up bandwidth. I had to drive all the way to
the office because I did not have sufficient bandwidth to display the darn
ringing bell animated image. This is strictly the mentality of Windows users
who like to work on the console of servers.

And check this out:

line 118 in my install log file at :
/usr/local/oracle/u01/app/oracle/oraInventory/logs/installActions.log
says :
platGroup = WINDOWS

And this is on Linux!!! Maybe the Oracle folks are forgetting that Linux
users are a little too sensitive to these kind of mistakes. :)

This also supports my theory that the new installer is a gift from Windows
programmers. Who are not too familiar with the idea of being able to send
their video display to any computer around the world and work from there.
A feature every Linux user takes for granted

There are numerous other bugs in the installer and other routines of Oracle
8i for Linux. Some of them I will list here:

2. The installation types screen list 3 options: Typical, Minimal and Custom.
Somehow Minimal takes more disk space (642 MB) compared to Typical (585 MB).
Well that is what the installation screen says. I have not tried to install
using the minimal install.

3. The installation cant figure out how much free space is available on the /
partition. Is it that hard? Its gives warnings about how I may not have
enough space.

4. dbassist cant find the cdrom if you try to install the default database
from CDROM. It says cannot find CDROM even if you have all your stuff under
/mnt/cdrom. Do you really really have to have the CDROM under /cdrom?
Why
not give the user an option to specify where to look?

5. The docs talk about software mount points and data mount points /u01
/u02
/u03 and /u04 that I created, but I could not find anywhere to specify
them
like I was able to, with the last release.

6. "Oracle Protocol Support" section during the install shows no options at
all. What happened to good ole Net8?

7. Many files have 0 length. Specially many library files.

8. Some executables in the $ORACLE_HOME/bin directory do not have execute

permissions.

And many others. This product is a joke.

And I am not the only one who feels the same way:

From: John Smiley (guest)
Email: john_smiley_at_ibm.net
Date: Wed Aug 04 12:47 CDT 1999

My sentiments exactly. There are so many bugs in the installation of this release that I have just about given up. And I haven't even started testing the new features yet!

I've tried the install on RedHat 6.0 straight out of the box (no patches or updates applied) and followed the OIG and release notes to the letter. Clearly, no one at Oracle did the same, because there are many problems during install. I finally got a simple database running, but there are some real gotcha's along the way.

Here are just a few of the bugs I've encountered:

Zero length library file $ORACLE_HOME/lib/libnjni8.so. Netasst doesn't work without it. Someone said they posted the source code to the comp.databases.oracle.server newsgroup, but I can't find it.
Database Creation Assistant thinks dbmssql.sql is called dbmssml.sql.
Building the Intelligent Agent with TCL 7.5 causes a cascade of undefined references when running gmake -f ins_oemagent.mk agent
Database Creation Assistant doesn't understand OFA. It wants to put all of the database files /u01/app/oracle/oradata/<sid> !
Database Creation Assistant will sometimes prevent editing the data file names to put them in OFA compliant directories.

I am appreciative of the free developer licenses for so many Oracle products, but this is the worst Oracle install I've had in 12 years.

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Share what you know. Learn what you don't. Received on Wed Aug 04 1999 - 22:47:51 CDT