Category Archives: Oracle

Articles based on my experience with Oracle’s products.

Oracle Support Comedy Errors

Don’t get me wrong. Oracle support analysts have a difficult job. Their products are large, complex beasts and you don’t necessarily expect an immediate response. These, however, I did not expect…

  • Having spent over a day with hourly contact with support, they ring back returning a voice-mail message left before managing speaking to a ‘real’ person. Twenty-seven hours apparently wasn’t enough for a correct response, either.
  • Two weeks of problems lead to a call to our sales manager. Obviously concerned, he went away to research the problem. He came back a day or two later. “This problem you’re having with you SCSI CD-ROM…,” he began. Good effort, wrong customer.
  • They asked us to download a patch from their web site, a mere 36Megs. This looked remarkably similar to a patch we’d received the previous week for another problem. Next they insisted that we needed the next version of the SmartClient software. They even sent someone out to install it for us. Naturally, this solution didn’t work. They ummed and arred for a while before declaring it a ‘bug’ and sending it off to the states to be fixed. This is the last I heard of this problem.

Installing Oracle 8i R3

I have recently installed Oracle 8i R3 (8.1.7) on my Celeron 466 machine. I found the installation to be very straight-forward compared with both 8.1.5 and the experiences of many people.

My machine is well below the specification that would be required to do real work on, especially if you have a number of developers. It does work, albeit rather slowly. Creating my initial database, for example, took around eight hours.

It currently runs RedHat 7.2 with a few minor patches (including a more recent kernel). I installed just about everything, including the full development kit and “glibc-compat”.

My secret to success, I believe, were these two commands:

  1. . /usr/i386-glibc21-linux/bin/i386-glibc21-linux-env.sh
  2. export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5

After this, the installation ran exactly to plan.

Installing Oracle on Redhat 7

Introduction

The subject at hand is really much wider than just Redhat 7.x, especially as more recent distributions are following Redhats lead and are now including glibc 2.2 also. I have no reason to believe that this process will not work with newer versions of SuSE, Debian, etc.

The other point to note is that I have not tried the procedure outlined here. I have migrated my box from Debian 2.2 to RedHat 7.2 and can testify that Oracle still works, but I have not actually performed an installation. I have, however, recieved a good number of emails confirming that it works, so don’t worry!

Most of the following material comes from two people, who are the real people you should thank if it works for you. They are John Smiley and Max McClanahan.

The process

The problem is that Oracle 8.1.x needs glibc 2.1.3. It will link without error with glibc 2.2, but when you try to run dbassist or create a database from scratch, there are problems (dbassist hangs, ‘End of file on communication channel’, etc.)

Here is a step-by-step process for getting Oracle 8.1.6 or 8.1.7 working on systems with glibc 2.2 (don’t bother with 8.1.5 if you can help it). Note that 9i requires glibc 2.2 and will not work with earlier versions:

  1. Install the compat-glibc RPM for 2.1.3. The exact filename will vary depending on your version of RedHat or other distribution. Many people (Fernando Boaglio, Peter Whysall, Jose T. Martin Prior amongst others) have noted that Oracle provide a patch (glibc-2.1.3-stubs.tar.gz) that provides the same functionality. I prefer the RPM’s personally, but this will certainly work.
  2. Execute the following command: . /usr/i386-glib21-linux/bin/i386-glibc21-linux-env.sh
  3. Type “export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5”
  4. Type: cd $ORACLE_HOME/bin
  5. Run the following command from the UNIX prompt: relink all

All of the Oracle software, including the assitants, will work fine now.

This technique will work on RedHat 7.0 with the 2.2.16 kernel, as well as the 2.4.0 and 2.4.1-pre11 kernels.

The rest

John Smiley also asked me to point out that Oracle have issues some patches (ftp://205.227.44.220/server/patchsets/unix/LINUX/8161/bug1467074/) that are required in order for them to consider your machine ‘certified’:

Operating System: Intel Based Server LINUX Version:Red Hat 7.0
Oracle Server - Enterprise Edition Version: 8.1.7 (8i)
N/A Version: N/A
Status: Certified
Oracle Server - Enterprise Edition Version: 8.1.7 (8i)
Bug Number: 1467074
REDHAT 7.0/ORA-3113 ISSUE (GLIBC 2.1.94 AND LATER)
Patch for bug 1467074 is mandatory for this certification.

RedHat even have a bug report on this issue, which may be worth a look: Bugzilla report from Redhat.

About Oracle Comedy Errors

Credit where it’s due

I am unable to criticise a suite of products the size and complexity of Oracle on my own. There are a number of people that need to me mentioned. Remind me if I missed you out!

People

Thanks to Anna Brabants who nearly created the term ‘Oracle Comedy Errors’ and certainly did an almost continuous stream of abuse (not all of it at Oracle).

And thanks to the rest of the project team, who invariable love Oracle products as much as I do.

Thanks to the people at Oracle support who no doubt have to put up with a lot, and offer much amusement if only after the event.

Sources

I’ve been on a number of projects that use Oracle, however most of the tales have come from the first two. On these I was a DBA and developer and ended up spending much time on the phone to Oracle support.

The first time, we were implementing Oracle Financials and Human Resources using a Sun UltraEnterprise 1 server and Compaq workstations.

The server was running Solaris 2.5, with Oracle Server 7.1.6, Oracle Applications 10.6.1 and an incredibly large number of patches.

The Compaq P166 clients ran Windows 95, with SmartClient Prod 15. Then Prod 15.1. And then with a number of ineffective patches… You get the idea.

The second time, we were implementing a bespoke client-server application. The Sun Ultra 1 (and later Ultra 2) server was running Solaris 2.5.1 (2.6) with Oracle Workgroup Server 7.3.

The Compaq P133 clients ran Windows NT 4 and connected to Oracle using OLE Objects through Microsoft Visual Basic 5.

Since then I’ve worked mainly as a developer (often doing data-loads) on Oracle 8. Any 8i critiques come from developing my 8i on Linux HOWTO.

Oracle Client Software Comedy Errors

Oracle Data Browser

Oracle Data Browser, part of the Discover 2000 suite, is one of the least amusing applications that Oracle supply. Not because it’s bad, but because it almost works…

  • Windows 95 has a ‘full screen drag’ feature (freely download-able from Microsoft‘s web site). If you load Data Browser you don’t. It suddenly stops working.
  • Now this is supposed to be a feature, but I’m not convinced. The word ‘Browser’ seems to indicate that it’s a read-only product. In fact a version comes with it that isn’t.

Oracle Data Query

Until we started really using SmartClient, we thought that Data Query, half of the Discoverer 2000 suite, was the lemon of the Oracle product library. That’s not to say that it’s good, just that after all that’s happened with Applications we’ve more or less forgotten a lot of the really annoying stuff. Lucky Oracle.

  • Data Query makes Windows 2.0 seem stable. Even in it’s 32-bit version.
  • It often magically moves the input focus to somewhere you don’t want.

Oracle Comedy Errors Home

Welcome to the Oracle Comedy Errors Page!

This page is dedicated to all those frustrating hours that you have to spend fiddling about with Oracle just to get it working as it says it does on the box.

These are just things that have happened to me and the projects that I have been involved in. To make a really complete Oracle Comedy Errors Page we need your input.

For those that have already contributed, there is always this page. It also catalogues the projects and Oracle software that I’ve used to build up this list.

Why is this page here?

There seems to be a great number of people who are only too eager to bash Microsoft, but only a few who seem to hate Oracle. Looking at their products, I thought that there must be at least a few sympathetic souls on the net. A quick search on HotBot and Altavista seems to indicate otherwise.

To rectify this shameless situation, I aim to produce, if not the first, then the definitive list of Oracle cock-ups and anecdotes. Naturally, I can’t do this all on my own; there are others.

I can supply the TAR numbers if you don’t believe me…

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