Re: Oracle's bad business practices

In article <aak2.838616056_at_Isis.MsState.Edu>, aak2_at_Ra.MsState.Edu (Atif Ahmad Khan) wrote:

> I spent 2 weeks trying to install Oracle on Solaris x86 2.5.1. I was
> constantly getting the same error. "Not enough disk space to install
> Oracle". This was driving me crazy as I had more than 3GB "gigabytes"
> of free space available. I re-installed Solaris at least a couple of
> dozen times slightly changing the settings everytime but nothing helped.
> Oracle people kept insisting that I was doing something wrong.
>
> I finally decided to post on this newsgroup to see if someone else had
> the same problem and a nice gentleman told me that it was a bug in the
> install script where it would "Not enough disk space" error if there was
> more than 2GB of free space available where Oracle was to be installed.

Makes sense to me, though it isn't acceptable.

If the Oracle installation routine uses a signed 32-bit integer to determine the amount of available disk space, three gigabytes free would appear (in 32-bit signed) as roughly negative one gigabyte in twos complement form, which is certainly less than you need to install *anything*. :)

Anyone know if this is the case? Just curious...if so, it looks like they will need to use 64 bits in the future, and preferably unsigned. (How can you have negative disk space available?)

-- 
Tim Irvin, HP-UX Miracle Worker and Oracle Guy
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space, Sunnyvale, California
e-mail: irvin_at_lmsc.lockheed.com    voice:  (408) 742-0440
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