Upgrading 8i to 10g drama

Hi all!

This have happened:

I have a box with RH6.2 running Ora 8i. Now I want to upgrade to 10g. Since it seems a hassel to install 10g on RH6.2 and the disc space isn't enough I want to move the database to a new box. So I installed Fedora Core 2 (I'm aware that it's not supported) and Oracle 10g on another box. Oracle runs and behaves as expected with a "default" database. I have Enterprise Manager up as well. Everything looks nice.

Then on the 8i-box I did a shutdown immediate and tarballed all files for the database and moved them to 10g-box. The (cooked) files are now in the same exact position on the filesystem of the new box as they were on the old. $ORACLE_HOME is pointing to the 10g home. I then did a startup upgrade on the "imported" database. It failed because it couldn't find a passwordfile. Copied the password file from the 8i home and startup works.

The database is registered with the listner as "restricted".

I run dbua, but it didn't show the imported database, only the native 10g database. Exited dbua and added a line in /etc/oratab for the imported one. The added line was copied from the 8i install so it points to 8i home. Tried dbua which now complains that it can't find sqlplus. Copied $ORACLE_HOME/bin to 8i home (what I mean by 8i home, is the path on the new box that $ORACLE_HOME points to on the old machine. hope that is possible to understand...).

Now dbua seems happy and fires of a popup window claiming that it is "investigating the database" or similar (I am at home now, and forgot my notes at my desc :-( After a little bit more than an hour nothing more have happened. top shows no activity from dbua. I canceled the upgrade.

I then copied the $ORACLE_HOME/bin from the 8i box to new box, to the 8i home. dbua is not happy.

So I opt for manual upgrade. I created the aux tablespace and then in sqlplus (of 10g) I did:
SQL> spool upgrade.log
SQL> @/path/to/10goraclehome/admin(i think)/u080107.sql

It writes lots to screen and then seem to hang. upgrade.log is created but is empty. I let it alone for an hour or so and then canceled with ctrl-c.

I have not been able to find good docs on how to upgrade, so I'm merly guessing my way through this. Someone who knows where the docs are?

Do I _have_ to have 8i installed in order to upgrade a database to 10g?

May Fedora Core 2 be the root of my troubles. Would I be better of with RH9 or Fedora Core 1? (I am about to order RH AS3, but would like to get closer to production date first (money talks)).

Someone who have done something similar and succeeded?

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks for your time,

   ph Received on Mon Nov 29 2004 - 20:19:29 CST