Oracle 10gR2 on Fedora 7…

I had a quick go at this installation and it worked OK. I had to load a bunch of FC6 packages to get Oracle to install, link and run properly. It looks like lots of the “compat_*” packages have been removed from Fedora 7, which is a problem as Oracle 10g needs them. The “libaio” package is no longer present. I’m sure the functionality is there somewhere, but I couldn’t get the listener to work without loading the old package. Also, the “libXP” package is necessary to get the installer to run. It has also been removed, along with some deprecated X11 packages that were present in FC6.

I’m sure the cleanup makes sense going forward, and 10g is getting a little old in Fedora timescales, but I wonder how many other applications will be broken by this.

Of course, I’m no Linux expert, so maybe I’ve missed something and these extra packages are not really needed.

Cheers

Tim…

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5)…

I’ve been having a play with the beta 2 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5).

Having seen the various Fedora Core versions released since RHEL4, I knew what to expect from RHEL5, but somehow I hoped for a bit more. If just feels like RHEL4 with a different theme.

I can see why Microsoft always add a bunch fancy new gizmos to every Windows release. They need something to differentiate the product, regardless of its usefulness, and people like me fall for it every time… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

FC6 Draft Articles…

I’ve written a couple of draft installation articles for DB10g R2 and AS10g R3 on Fedora Core 6 (Test 2).

I’ll revisit the articles once the final version of FC6 is released. I’m hoping the warning at the start of the articles prevents a repeat of the FC5 incident. 🙂

As expected, FC6 has diverged even further from RHEL4. There are a bunch of packages that either don’t exist or are deprecated. The software seems to work OK, but I’m not sure how many problems are waiting in the wings. It will be interesting to see how Oracle and RHEL5 get on together, especially where RAC is concerned.

Cheers

Tim…

FC5 Update… Again…

Over the last few weeks I’ve received lots of comments relating to the Oracle 10gR2 on FC5 issue. Recently, most of these have been people commenting on the success of the installation. As a result, I revisited the article based on all the comments and made the following changes:

  • There was a typo on my amendment on the gennttab script. It’s now corrected.
  • I originally used the source rather than the binary of the openmotif21 package. I now use the binary.
  • I was originally installing from an early download of 10gR2, the one that extracts to give a “./db/Disk1/runInstaller” structure. I downloaded a later release that extracts to “./database/runInstaller”. I now use this later release.

I ran through the installation again this morning and it worked perfectly. I don’t know which of the three changes made the difference and to be totally frank, I don’t care. So as it stands, the installation works fine and I hope this is the last time I’ll have to use FC5.

Thanks to everyone who helped in the production of the final article. All your comments were appreciated. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

PS. The document has been released, so it is now listed as a new article. You gotta laugh 🙂

10g RAC on Linux…

I spent the Bank Holiday weekend playing with 10g RAC on Linux. I don’t have a FireWire disk, and I didn’t want to destroy my NAS, so I decided to user VMware Server to fake it. That process resulted in this:

Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1) RAC Installation On CentOS 4 Using VMware Server

It’s got about 100 screen shots, so it’s a bit on the large side 🙂

I’ve been using RAC (9i and 10g) on Tru64 for a few years, but until this weekend I had never installed it on any other operating system. Suffice to say, the process is almost identical.

I suppose I should repeat the exercise on Windows 2003, but I’m not sure I can be bothered. Windows is such a drag 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora Core 5 (FC5) Update…

A lot has been said about Fedora Core 5 (FC5) recently, so I thought I would pull together a few things of interest.

Q. Where can you get it from?
A. Try here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/Download

Q. What is it like?
A. I like the review by Howard Rogers.
Q. Can I install Oracle Database 10g Release 2 on it?
A. There has been a lot of hot air produced (mostly by me) this week about this question, but the answer seems to be NO! Here is a draft installation guide I wrote against a beta version of FC5, but so far I’ve had no luck getting this installation to work on the final release of FC5. I’ve decided to leave the article on my site as a testament to my failure 🙂 Please add to the comments if you have any workarounds.

Q. Can I install Oracle AS10g Release 3 on it?
A. Strangely enough, this seems to work fine. I wrote this installation guide against a beta version of FC5 and it works fine against the final release also. Miracles never cease 🙂 Of course, installing and being stable are two very different things!

Q. Can I use FC5 as a VMware Server host or client?
A. Yes you can, but it’s not exactly straight forward and reliable. The VMware forums will help you get it sorted, specifically these threads (host, client).

Q. What do you think about, FC5 Tim? (Asking yourself a question is kinda freaky :))
A. I don’t like it. My main interest is in server software and FC5 seems to break just about everything it touches, so CentOS4 (a Red Hat clone) is the obvious choice for me.

I hope this information will make life a bit quicker and easier for anyone reading.

Cheers

Tim…

New article and a little surprise for me…

Somebody asked me how to install Oracle9i on Red Hat 4.0, so I wrote quick how-to. Personally, I can’t see the point. Why run an old version of Oracle that requires you to make RHEL 4 think it’s RedHat 9? Each to their own I guess.

A number of bloggers have mentioned the new Oracle blogs site, so I thought I’d check it out. I was more than a little surprised when I found my blog listed there. I’m a very “off-topic” blogger and my opinion of Oracle is not always flattering. I guess I slipped through the quality control net…

Now, who do I need to bribe in order to get one of those little ACE images? 😉

Cheers

Tim…