Oracle8i On RedHat 7.x Mini How-To

Question

For those of you still struggling with getting Oracle8i to work on RedHat 7.0/7.1 (or any other glibc 2.2 based Linux), here are some simple steps that should get you up and running:
0. Be sure to follow the instructions in the Installation Guide, particularly those in Chapter 2: Pre-Installation.
1. Before running 'runInstaller', unset the LANG environment variable from the Linux shell prompt (ex. unset LANG).
2. Install Oracle as usual, but do NOT create a database or configure Oracle networking (Net8).
3. When prompted to run the 'root.sh' script during installation, stop and fix the bug before proceeding. The line that reads:
RUID=`/usr/bin/id|$AWK -F\( '{print $2}'|$AWK -F\) '{print $1}`
should read
RUID=`/usr/bin/id|$AWK -F\( '{print $2}'|$AWK -F\) '{print $1}'`
(there is a missing single quote in the next to last character of the line).
Insert the missing single quote and then run 'root.sh' as root. Be sure to have the ORACLE_HOME environment variable set.
4. Download the 'glibc-2.1.3-stubs.tar.gz' patch from Technet or from ftp://oracle-ftp.oracle.com/server/patchsets/unix/LINUX/bug1467074 and install according to the README file.
5. Perform this step if you are planning to install Oracle Parallel Server (OPS). Otherwise, skip this step. There is a missing library in the sysliblist that prevents the Oracle kernel from relinking properly if OPS is installed. Edit the $ORACLE_HOME/lib/sysliblist to include '-lnsl', so that '-ldl -lm -lpthread' becomes '-ldl -lm -lnsl -lpthread'. Then relink the Oracle kernel like this:
cd $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib
make -f ins_rdbms.mk install
6. Now configure networking (using netasst or netca) and the database (using dbassist) as usual. Be sure to 'unset LANG' before running these tools.
That's it. I hope this was useful to you.
John Smiley
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Answer 1

Hi:
I just spent 12 hours trying to install Oracle 8.1.6.1EE on RH Linux 7.1 and finally got it to work. The problem always arose when the UI started linking the executables. RedHat 7.0/t.1 ships with glibc 2.2. but Oracle compiles with glibc 2.1. So what you have to do is install all of the compat-* RPMS that come with the Linux distro and then enter the following in the shell:
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5
./usr/i386-glibc21-linux/bin/i386-glibc21-linux-env.sh
Then run the Installer from the shell prompt. Also make sure you have set the correct environmental variables in the .bash-profile file belonging to the user that owns the oracle installation. Visit http://jordan.fortwayne.com/oracle/817.html for this information. I got this Oracle distro with the book "Oracle 8i for Linux starter kit" by Steve Bobrowski.
RB