Set up Oracle 8.1.7 Client on Redhat 7.3

Question

First of all, I want to thank the people who gave out the hints of downgrading Redhat from 7.x to 6.x.
The problem I had was run into by many people on this forum: the Oracle Universal Installer window just doesn't pop up.
In my case, I took out most of the packages manually in order to have a slim and healthy Linux platform. The Redhat 7.3 installation I have takes less than 250M. There are a X server, fvwm2 desktop, netscape 4, netscape 6, wu-ftp server, sshd, telnetd, gcc, make, autofs, and so on.
My purpose is to run Apache with Tomcat, using an OCI JDBC driver and an Oracle Client, to talk to an Oracle server at the back end. The Oracle 8.1.7 for Linux was downloaded from the OTN site and untarred to the hard drive. The strange thing I saw was, the 'runInstaller' doesn't get me the OUI window but consumed 99% of the CPU.
After a few hours of struggling and research, this is I believe what makes it work:
1. As oracle user using 'bash' shell. Not 'sh'. Put all the needed enviornment variables into '.bash_profile' file, not the '.profile'. Redhat uses 'bash' as default shell. 'sh' in Redhat doesn't seem to behave as perfectly as in other Unix flavors, like Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and so on.
2. Make sure (or install manually) these RPMs:
compat-glibc-6.2-2.1.3.2
compat-libs-6.2-3
compat-egcs-6.2-1.1.2.16
compat-libstdc++-6.2-2.9.0.16
I doubt the last one is even not necessary.
3. Put
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5; export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL
in '.bash_profile'. Either make a new xterm or echo to make sure the value of $LD_ASSUME_KERNEL is '2.2.5'
And that's it! That's all it takes to get the Installer show up and work so nicely.
The reasons behind are: at the time the Oracle 8i rolling out, it's based on Linux kernel 2.2.5, not the 2.4.x in the Redhat 7.3 or SuSe 8.0. The 8i just doesn't run on Redhat 7.3 or SuSe 8.0 by nature, unless there is a backward compatibility smoothly working in between.
Oracle 8.1.7 comes with it's own JRE. On the Linux version of 8.1.7, I don't see a choice exist for the user to toggle between the packaged JRE and the JREs on the OS. In aother word, a backward compatibility (kernel downgrading) is needed to get the whole thing moving. There are no other choices. This JRE thing distracts people from looking for the real issue.
By the way, I did forget about Linux uses its own JDKs and JREs. But now I have jdk1.1.8 from ibm, 1.2.2 from blackdown, 1.3.1 from ... and so on. All these different versions of Java tools and environments are basicly for running some fancy features once 8i gets installed. Their lack doesn't stop 8i Installer from running so perfectly.
There is NOT a character mode for this 8.1.7 Installer.
As to now, I configured 'Net8' and was able to use 'sqlplus' to pull over data from a live server at work.
Thanks again to those who share their experiences and knowledge. Also hope this message will save others a couple of hours of hard trying. :-)
Han Zhang

Answer 1

Hello,
i have a question about your updates: you run a system with glibc 2.2? -> forget it!
i try to install 8.1.7 on RH7 and i get the same error-message, i downgrade to RH6.2 (orginal, without updates) and its work!
Have alook to the topics with RH7 problems or use RH6.2 without updates(glibc)
marcel
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jason Holland ([email protected]):
hey all, i've having some trouble with an Oracle 8.1.7 install on a vanilla rh6.2 server. The rh server has all the latest rpm upgrades installed as recommended by RedHat. When i run the installer script, i get this error message:
SIGFPE received at bfffef9c in /usr/oracle/data/Disk1/stage/Components/oracle.swd.jre/1.1.8/1/DataFiles/Expanded/linux/lib/linux/nat
ive_threads/libawt.so. Processing terminated
any idea what the heck this is caused by? I haven't tried a 8.1.6 install on this box yet, might give that a shot just to see if it works. thanks for any help or pointers.
Jason<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
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