Re: Linker concerns while installing and distributing to other machines - patching later

On 20 Jul 2004 15:04:39 -0700, Jason Buchanan said something similar to:
: I'm trying to determine what level of concern there is for installing
: Oracle database on one machine and then copying the installed files to
: another server. Specifically, one machine is a Solaris 2.8 machine
: whose last recommended patch bundle was applied about 2 years ago
: (yeah, I know but I was overridden on that)... another machine is a
: Solaris 2.8 machine whose last recommended patch bundle was applied
: about 6 months ago but was also jumpstarted from a later Solaris
: release.

Nitpick: There's no such thing as "Solaris 2.8". I suspect you mean Solaris 8.

: Now, my concern is that when the installer is doing the linking
: process (unsure what this does exactly) that tar'ing up what is
: installed on the older OS and plopping it in the same place on the
: newer OS is asking for trouble.
:
: I'm told that it makes no difference but to me it seems like it is not
: wise to do so because a machine whose kernel sits at 108528-12 will
: have old libraries, etc. and bringing across the Oracle install to a
: machine at 108528-29 will introduce the same problems that the
: 108528-12 machine has.

If that were true, you'd never be able to apply patches to any system without re-installing Oracle (or for that matter, run any pre-linked app on any patchlevel other than that present on the vendor's build systems when the release was built). It also contradicts Sun's guarantee that any application that uses only published, supported interfaces built on one release/patchlevel of Solaris will run on any later release.

Downgrading the OS to an earlier version than what Oracle was built/linked against is an entirely different matter.

That said, while I've used the "install on one system, tar up and unpack on others" approach for installing Oracle on non-production lab systems, I wouldn't recommend it for use on production machines, same patchlevel or no. There's a difference between what will work and what is supported (and supportable). Received on Wed Jul 21 2004 - 17:46:19 CDT