Legacy media search

Hello, folks.

We have a legacy application at work that is limping along as best I can keep the equipment running. It is an ancient legacy application using SQL*Net V1 to connect to an Oracle 7.2.2.3.0 server. (It was a 7.2.2.4.0 server until we lost a hard drive last year and discovered we didn't have the media for that patch. That's a long story, but it's the situation.) The application server and this database are running on HP-UX 9.X with the date rolled back to 1993.

Unfortunately, these servers, an 832 and an H50, are quite old. The database server is dropping communication with the external disk enclosure where the database data files reside. No errors in logs or dmesg. Just console messages stating it can't access the various disks in the enclosure. System hangs as a result and only way to get it back up is to cycle power. Right now, this server is my main concern to get stable again.

Until I find a better solution facilitated by fulfillment of my request below, I'm moving the database to a decommissioned HP 735 so I can keep the OS and database at the same revision they are on the current server. At six years old, this system isn't any spring chicken either. We just lost a hard drive in another 735 this summer and I decommissioned it so my faith in the reliability of the system I'm moving to isn't the greatest.

My ideal solution (barring replacement of the application, which has been an ongoing battle for over two years) is to move this database to a D320 that I decommissioned earlier this year when we abandoned another application. That will at least get the database portion of the equation on a four-year-old server that will be a heck of a lot easier to support. This is where my problem arises.

I can only load HP-UX 10.20 on this server since that's the earliest version of HP-UX for a D-class server for which we have media. My problem with this is that Oracle 7.2.2.3.0 won't work on this platform according to Oracle. (7.2.2.4.0 would, but, as mentioned before, we don't have that media anywhere.) The last version of Oracle RDBMS that supported SQL*Net V1 was 7.2.3 so I can't migrate to 7.3.4 like our other two servers run either.

So, that's the situation in which I find myself. My query to the world is this:

Does anyone happen to have Oracle 7.2.2.4.0 Patch or Oracle 7.2.3 media for HP-UX buried in their drawers or cabinets that they really don't need any longer (or at least could make a copy)? I've already tried going through my own support structure within my company (what little is left) and came up empty. Since they aren't supported versions any longer, it's like they never existed in the first place.

-- 
Jeff Traigle
traigle_at_si.umich.edu
http://www-personal.si.umich.edu/~traigle/