Re: Problem with oracle 7.3.4 and NT 4 SP4

In article <36ED4173.CD5F87C1_at_cgi.ca>,
  Daniel Lapointe <daniel.lapointe_at_cgi.ca> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We want to know if anyone use this combinaison and if exist problem with
> that.
> We want to upgrade many server to SP4.
>
> Tank's
>
>

Hi,

I've just installed an Oracle 7.3.4 on an NT4 with SP4 ... for some reason things went wrong with the listener - clients couldn't connect through sqlnet (and yes - listener.ora and tnsnames.ora were correct ) Going back to SP3 resolved the problem - it looks like MS changed their tcp/ip implementation quite a bit ...
This is what I've got as a response from Oracle :

Official policy of Oracle is to certify the products for the platform,

             NT in this case. Certification for patches is not done, on none of the

             platform Oracle is officially supporting.
             The patches have to be certified and acknowledged by the
vendors of the
             OS (in this case Microsoft)

             Oracle will then point out in the release notes and/or readme
files the
             requirements for Oracle on that particular OS, including the
mandatory
             patches (or Service Packs for NT).
             For NT 3.51, it is stated that the SP5 is mandatory for running
Oracle
             on that platform.
             For NT 4, at least service pack 1 is needed, although SP3 is
recommended
             by Oracle.

             Coming back to the main issue: SP4
             Issues so far, as encountered by the various support centres
around the
             globe:

             - New heap manager let programs crash. Happens with both Oracle
and
               non-oracle products.

               Workaround here is to disable the new feature via this
registry
               variable:

                 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
                    SOFTWARE
                       Microsoft
                          Windows NT
                             CurrentVersion
                                Image File Execution Options
                                    "your program"
                                       DisableHeapLookaside   (REG_SZ)  1

             - Visual C routines have changed, meaning that some programs
can give
               errors when using them without recompilation or relinking
with the SP4
               in place.
               The errors in the MSVC DLL's are being adressed by the
individual
               service packs for the Visual C compiler, Visual Basic
compiler and
               Developer Studio releases. Information here will be made
available by
               Microsoft on their website.

             - Switch from WINSOCK to WINSOCK2
               This is also an issue, especially with SQL*Net intensive
programs.
               The situation is made even worse by errors in the NT TCP/IP
layer
               introduced in the SP4.
               Several hot fixes released by Microsoft have only made things
worse.
               Info and new fixes will be made available by Microsoft.

             The problem is that the Service Pack itself is critical, as
this is the
             only patch that has been Y2K certified. This means that every
NT running
             NT 4 with SP3 or lower, will not be Y2K certified!

             Oracle is at this moment generating patches to 'bypass' the
errors
             encountered and looking for 'workarounds' to circumvent the
crashes.
             So far Oracle FailSafe and Enterprise Manager have SP4 patches,
and
             a patch for Webserver is about to be released in the very near
future.
             Other products and product development groups are still working
on
             something to get the software ready for SP4.

             More information, and some repositories for SP4 can be obtained
from
             the following links on-line:

             http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q195/0/08.asp

             http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q195/0/09.asp

             http://www.nthelp.com/nt4sp4.htm

http://y2k.us.oracle.com/solutions/intel/compliance_info/sp4issues.html

Kind Regards,
Kurt V Meerbeeck

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own Received on Thu Apr 01 1999 - 09:28:45 CST