Oracle 8.1.6 on Linux Mandrake 8 (SMP)

From: Reade <rjohnson_at_NOSPAMryddle.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 23:07:04 GMT
Message-ID: <suPZ6.128419$q51.1084142@news1.gvcl1.bc.home.com>

Heya,

Ok, after a weird bit of hell trying to install the bleedin' thing, I'm writing this out as I'm going through the tail end of all the linking in the installation.

I was having quite a bit of problems loading 816 on LM 7.2 (I had one installation go in sweetly, but 2 hooped the system). I thought I would give a stab at 816 on Mandrake 8. btw, this is an uncertified config but hey... who cares? I've done this over a couple of days so hopefully I will not miss any steps... but here it goes.

Oh by the way, please read ALL the instructions before you start doing stuff...

Install the compat glibc rpm. My glibc versions are:

glibc-devel-2.2.2-5mdk
compat-glibc-7.2-2.1.3.3mdk
glibc-2.2.2-5mdk
glibc-profile-2.2.2-5mdk

You can always check http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/ for versions of rpms

2) Don't use KDE to run the 'runinstaller'. startup in another gui environment. There are many ways to do this, but i just typed "startx gnome". I actually did that by mistake but it got me out of KDE so I could start Oracle's "runinstaller". Run the installer...

2) Go through the installation/linking of the Oracle RDBMS as you would normally but do not go for the database creation at the end. You will run dbassist at the end of these instructions.

3) Everything will link well using the 2.2 glibc, but it won't work. You have to follow these helpful instructions from several people. I've included most of it (some editing for brevity), but I've blocked out their e-mail addresses so they don't get spammed by a bot. I found this article on Metalink...

    <paste>
    From: John Emmer 07-Mar-01 22:58
    Subject: Re : Oracle Installation on SuSe Linux 7.1

John Smiley () posted January 31, 2001 07:22 AM

I have received so many emails lately that I thought it would help to re-post this under a different topic to make it easier to find.

If you're having trouble with Oracle 8.1.x on any version of Linux that uses glibc version 2.2, try this and see if it solves your problem:

The problem is that Oracle 8.1.x needs glibc 2.1.3. It will link without error with glibc 2.2, but when you try to run dbassist or create a database from scratch, there are problems (dbassist hangs, "End of file on communication channel", etc.)

Here is a step-by-step process for getting Oracle 8.1.6 or 8.1.7 working on systems with glibc 2.2 (don't bother with 8.1.5 if you can help it):

Install the compat-glibc RPM for 2.1.3.x
cd to the directory where compat-glibc installed the files (for me it's /usr/i386-glibc21-linux/lib).
Copy the following files to $ORACLE_HOME/lib:

    libc-2.1.3.so
    libpthread.so
    libdl.so
    ld-linux.so.2

For me, several of these are symbolic links, so you'll need to copy the target of the symbolic link and rename it to the link name when you copy it to $ORACLE_HOME/lib.

For example, if ls -l shows:

    ld-linux.so.2 -> ld-2.1.3.so
    libc-2.1.3.so
    libdl.so -> libdl.so.2
    libpthread.so -> libpthread.so.0

Then you will:

    cp ld-2.1.3.so $ORACLE_HOME/lib/ld-linux.so.2 
    cp libc-2.1.3.so $ORACLE_HOME/lib 
    cp libdl.so.2 $ORACLE_HOME/lib/libdl.so

cp libpthread.so.0 $ORACLE_HOME/lib/libpthread.so

4. Create a file in $ORACLE_HOME/lib called libc.so with the following contents (as a single line):

GROUP ( <OH>/lib/libc-2.1.3.so <OH>/lib/ld-linux.so.2 <CL>/libc_nonshared.a )

Substitute the value of $ORACLE_HOME for <OH> and the location of the compat-glibc directory for <CL>. For example:

My $ORACLE_HOME is:
/u01/app/oracle/product/8.1.7

(Notice the use of the OFA standard? Do yourself and others a favor - follow the standard. If you don't know what OFA is, please see the Oracle Administrator's Guide for UNIX.)

and my compat-glibc directory is:

/usr/i386-glibc21-linux/lib

so the GROUP line looks like this for me:

GROUP (/u01/app/oracle/product/8.1.7/lib/libc-2.1.3.so
/u01/app/oracle/product/8.1.7/lib/ld-linux.so.2
/usr/i386-glibc21-linux/lib/libc_nonshared.a)

This is all one line.

5. cd $ORACLE_HOME/bin

6. Run the following command from the UNIX prompt:

relink all

All of the Oracle software, including the assitants, will work fine now.

I have used this technique for RedHat 7.0 with the 2.2.16 kernel, as well as the 2.4.0 and 2.4.1-pre11 kernels.

Thanks to Richard Rankin for this simple and reliable method (there are others, but they are not as clean).

    John Smiley
    Sr. Oracle DBA
    Lucent Technologies, Inc.

<snip>

From: Jizhong Wang 15-Jun-01 19:43
Subject: Re : Oracle Installation on SuSe Linux 7.1

Johe Smiley's solution works very well in my case (RedHat 7.1, Oracle 8.1.7), except I have to cp one more file (libm.so).

</paste>

4) Please take careful note of the last item in the pasted portion. I as well had to do the copying for the libm.so file.

5) All ran sweetly on the relinking

6) set your oracle home (. oraenv)

7) run 'dbassit' I went for the vanilla/dummy db and all went well.

8) That's it. btw, since I've done many things with the system between base Mandrake 8 installation and these steps, I may have missed an item. I don't think so, but caveat installator.

Cheers,

-Reade Received on Mon Jun 25 2001 - 18:07:04 CDT