Workaround for an Oracle7.x UNIX install problem

From: Oracle71 <oracle71_at_aol.com>
Date: 14 May 1994 12:56:04 -0400
Message-ID: <2r2vr4$lih_at_search01.news.aol.com>


As more and more people are migrating to, or beginning to install the Oracle7 Server product family, I thought I might pass on a tidbit of pseudowisdom
(read: "If you support any product long enough, you're bound to learn
SOMEthing.")

Someone else at our site recently had some trouble with a V7 install onto an NCR (AT&T Global Information Solutions) UNIX box. The install would hang up forever right in the middle; inspection of the logs revealed that ORAINST's last words told us it was starting up the TNS Listener.

Ironically, a day or two later, I had to do a quick reinstall and rebuild of our Oracle 7.1Beta on my AT&TGIS 3550, and guess what? I got hung, too. Opening another UNIX session and ps - ing revealed that a TNS listener had indeed been started, and also we had a tnsctrl process sitting around. Killing the control process (NOT THE LISTENER) let the install perk right up and eventually finish normally.

I have noticed occasional problems with other of the SQL*Net service control utilities such as STARCTL (for AT&T/NCR StarGROUP / OSI) and TCPCTL (for SQL*Net V.1 TCP/IP) in hanging for no reason we could ever figure out. If we're the same UNIX ID that started the demon originally, and all of our appropriate UNIX environmental variables are set properly, and even if all the appropriate ownerships, permissions, and privileges have been set up for the executables, we still get a hang from time to time in the control utility.

(This also means you ought to carefully scrutinize anything you plan to put in
your /etc/rc startup/shutdown script areas; this little quirk has caused some UNIX system's I've worked on to hang forever when starting up and/or shutting down.)

I don't know if anyone else has experienced this sort of thing, but I didn't realize how much I took the fix for granted until this week. I'll put a TAR in on this on Monday.


R. (Scott Hunter)                 internet: shunter_at_cfotax.attmail.com
Database Administrator,      AT&T Tax Systems
AT&T Tax Services, Chief Financial Officer Organization - Financial Services
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   # Received on Sat May 14 1994 - 18:56:04 CEST

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