Re: Recommended hardware for 9i on Linux, at home

From: Howard J. Rogers <howardjr2000_at_yahoo.com.au>
Date: Fri, 03 Oct 2003 19:40:31 +1000
Message-Id: <3f7d44cc$0$7066$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au>

Norman Dunbar wrote:

> On Thu, 02 Oct 2003 11:14:04 -0700, Joel Garry wrote:
>

>> All:
>> 
>> Wondering if there are any updates to last April's version of this
>> thread.
>> 
>> I'm interested in what would be a decent processor or complete box for
>> running a cheap or free linux.
>> 
>> This would be for playing around with 20-100G OLTP db's.  I don't want
>> to pay a grand for a free OS.
>> 

>
> I'm running a dual boot systsem (win2k pro and Mandrake 9.1) on a Dan PC,
> 400 Mhz Pentium 2, 60 Gb IDE drive, 640 Mb RAM and Oracle 9i release 2 on
> both sides which runs oodles faster (apparently !) on Linux. (I only
> installed it under Windows so my wife could learn it !).
>
> If you do decide to go down the Mandrake route beware, I think there may
> be a problem installing 9iR2 under MDK 9.1. Mine was installed when I was
> running 9.0 and I upgraded afterwards to 9.1. I know Howard (on this NG)
> has had problems installing under MDK 9.1.

This is what is known as 'good timing', Norman!

9i R2 installs quite nicely on Mandrake 9.1 now (just spent two days sorting it out). In fact, I can't think why on Earth I made it sound so difficult, because it's actually rather easier than on Red Hat 9 -no downgrading of glibc needed, and no threads=native issues, either.

You still get the ins_ctx.mk error at the 84% mark of the linking phase, but the fix for that is well-documented, and easy.

Only slight bummer I'm having is that dbca throws a SIGSERV error when it actually tries to create a database, but since it will happily create the database creation scripts for you, and no errors arise when you subsequently run those scripts, it's not a major problem. Odd, though, that emca (which, if you let it, creates an OEMREP database for you, by invoking dbca) has no problems at all.

The only other problem is netca. It will create the sqlnet.ora for you, and it's quite happy creating a tnsnames.ora, but it will not allow you to create a listener, bombing out with a SIGSERV error once again. So that one, I had to hand-craft.

Course, it's early days yet, and it might be that I just don't know how to configure things properly, and some of these issues might go away when I've experimented enough. But nevertheless, it's all running perfectly happily in n-tier mode just now.

There'll be a document written about the issues on Tuesday next week (my first official day of freedom!).

;-)
HJR
>
> As for backups, I just do mine to disc. I have a spare 6 Gb disc which I'd
> like to use for this very purpose, but I don't have a spare IDE slot for
> it until I lose one of the CD Burner, DVD or Zip drive - all of which are
> needed. I occasionally burn a cold backup to CD though. (Not that that
> will be much use for a 100 GB database in your case.
>
> I suspect with a better processor and more RAM you can make it work.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Norm.
>
Received on Fri Oct 03 2003 - 04:40:31 CDT