Question about installing instantclient on linux using Oracles instructions

Hi, last week I asked in this newsgroup about getting sqlplus installed so I could connect to an instance of Oracle at home. I didn't want to install several hundred megabytes to just get sqlplus installed. The suggestions were sqldeveloper and instantclient. I got sqldeveloper up and running within 10 minutes. I now wish to look at getting instantclient installed. The Oracle instructions for installation are a bit poor. Can anyone throw light on how to install?

Here is what I have done.

1. Downloaded and unzipped instant client. basic and SQL*Plus as defined here. http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/oci/instantclient/index.html

The directory listing is this.

mark_at_debtest:~/instantclient_10_2$ ls -la total 100016

drwxr-xr-x  2 mark mark     4096 2006-04-23 17:34 .
drwxr-xr-x 24 mark mark     4096 2006-04-23 17:34 ..


-r--r--r--  1 mark mark  1594191 2006-02-05 05:50 classes12.jar

-r--r--r--  1 mark mark     1525 2006-02-05 05:50 glogin.sql

-rwxrwxr-x  1 mark mark 18774535 2006-02-05 05:50 libclntsh.so.10.1

-r-xr-xr-x  1 mark mark  5623929 2006-02-05 05:50 libnnz10.so

-rwxrwxr-x  1 mark mark  1398088 2006-02-05 05:50 libocci.so.10.1

-rwxrwxr-x  1 mark mark 70690282 2006-02-05 05:50 libociei.so

-r-xr-xr-x  1 mark mark   119919 2006-02-05 05:50 libocijdbc10.so

-r-xr-xr-x  1 mark mark  1434235 2006-02-05 05:50 libsqlplusic.so

-r-xr-xr-x  1 mark mark  1053325 2006-02-05 05:50 libsqlplus.so

-r--r--r--  1 mark mark  1540457 2006-02-05 05:50 ojdbc14.jar

-r-xr-xr-x  1 mark mark     8867 2006-02-05 05:50 sqlplus

mark_at_test:~/instantclient_10_2$

The installation "instructions" on the Oracle website, from http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/oci/instantclient/index.html say the following. This has been copied exactly and I haven't removed anything.

Installation Instructions

Installation Steps:

1. Download the appropriate Instant Client packages for your platform. All installations REQUIRE the Basic or Basic Lite package.
2. Unzip the packages into a single directory such as "instantclient".
3. Set the library loading path in your environment to the directory in Step 2 ("instantclient"). On many UNIX platforms, LD_LIBRARY_PATH is the appropriate environment variable. On Windows, PATH should be used.
4. Start your application and enjoy.

I've done the steps 1, 2, and 3. Now what? Start which application? And where do I set the oracle sid and host IP address (and the other details like in tnsnames.ora if I installed the full Oracle client). The 4 step instructions above are, to a novice, a little lacking in detail.

Thanks again to whoever answers this post. Mark Received on Sun Apr 23 2006 - 11:41:16 CDT