Re: installing Oracle on Debian AMD64
On 10/23/05, Faheem Mitha <faheem@email.unc.edu> wrote:
> I am (unfortunately) trying to install Oracle Database 10g on Debian
> AMD64. I know this is routinely done on i386, but I'm having some
> problems.
I tried that, but gave up pretty soon. The basic problem is that
Oracle is compiled for a hybrid system, that has 32bit libraries in
/lib and 64bit libraries in /lib64. Only a few components are actually
64bit, while most GUI tools (including the installer, IIRC) are in
fact 32bit executables.
Debian is a pure64 system, which has the 64bit libraries in /lib, and
no 32bit libraries by default. You can install 32bit libraries in
different ways, but obviously not in /lib, where they are expected.
And moving libraries to a different places breaks them in subtle ways,
especially localisation and all the known GUI toolkits.
Summary: Oracle wants to run 32bit programs, and this is very very
hard in a pure64 system.
Ubuntu has a more extensive set of 32bit libraries that have been
especially hacked to work from the chosen location. This is the "ugly"
solution, while the correct way would be for Oracle to compile their
product as pure 64bit code.
> I installed the 64 bit versions of Java 1.5 using javapackage.
The sun package? That did not work very well for me, I had lots of
crashes. And it is possible that Oracle needs a 32bit version (in
addition?).
> One significant difference between Ubuntu and Debian is that 64 bit
> Ubuntu, like other commercial distributions, has some 32 bit libraries
> included in it, including the X one. All the discussions I've found
> pertaining to Ubuntu reference the 32 bit X libraries in some way.
Yes, Ubuntu has a more extensive set of 32bit libraries that have been
especially hacked to work from the chosen location. This is the "ugly"
solution, while the correct way would be for Oracle to compile their
product as pure 64bit code.
> I'm not clear what the problem here is. Can anyone clarify, and/or suggest
> a workaround?
>
> This is probably wishful thinking, but is it possible that this error
> arises because I am doing X forwarding from a 64 bit machine to a 32 bit
> machine over ssh, and would go away at the console?
No, I do this a lot, and it causes no problems to me.
> As a fallback position, does anyone know whether installing a 32 version
> of Oracle Database 10g in a chroot in a 64 bit system would be workable?
Yes, that should be possible. Starting the server may be a bit tricky,
but I have to say that I also have problems with that on a 32bit only
system :-)
One more interesting thought: it may be easier to start with a 32bit
version of Debian, and add the 64bit libraries necessary to run the
Oracle server in /lib64. You need at least testing for this to work,
but it should get a lot closer to the hybrid system expected by
Oracle. You can also do this in a chroot.
Thomas
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