DBD and Oracle Instantclient 10

I really appreciate your work here and hope it will be somehow integrated into the main DBD::Oracle in the future, since using the instant-client is much more lightweight and easy to install if you just want simple access to an oracle DB somewhere!

I first had problems getting the instant client to work on my Fedora Core 3 machine. Every time i started sqlplus from the shell, it hung using 100% CPU. This was resolved when i upgraded my system (using yum), which replaced for instance the glibc package and MANY other rpms. I don't know which one of the 450 udated RPMs did the trick, but afterwards it worked fine and DBD::Oracle compiled without any complaints and i can do selects etc from my Perl script. I know my problems isn't really tied to DBD::Oracle, but more of a instant-client problem, but when i tried googling, i found nothing, so i thought i'd share my experience. It also works fine on a FC4 installation that i have.

The only problem i have now is how to specify the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environmentvariable in my CGI-script... i would rather not add this in my apache environment since it will be glob for ALL my cgi-scripts. I made an ugly workaround with a bash shell-script as a wrapper that exports the LD_LIBRARY_PATH and ORACLE_HOME and then calls my perl program. There's got to be a better way of doing this!?

Cheers, Carl

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Posted on Thu Nov 10 17:58:16 2005 by byterock in response to 1298

Re: DBD and Oracle Instantclient 10

Thanks for the feedback Carl.

Unfortunetly I do not have an answer for your problem, but if you do not mind I might use you post in the next readme file for the Makefile.pl
As well you might try posting your problem on the perl.dbi.users forum. Here is the goggle url to it

http://groups.google.ca/group/perl.dbi.users?hl=en

you will most likely get an answer as perl.dbi is a very active forum.

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Posted on Fri Dec 2 11:55:06 2005 by rata in response to 1273

Re: DBD and Oracle Instantclient 10

I have the same configuration (instantClient 10.2.0.1 and DBI), but... when compile DBD i have the error: The ORACLE_HOME environment variable value (/opt/app/oracle/instantclient_10_2) is not valid. In the .profile i have ORACLE_HOME=/opt/app/oracle/instantclient_10_2. I don't understand this error. What's your oracle_home???

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Posted on Fri Dec 2 14:26:07 2005 by byterock in response to 1435

Re: DBD and Oracle Instantclient 10

It all depends which version of the Makefile.PL you are using.
I beleive the one in the current trunk still does not work for the instantclient.
It you use the Makefile.PL from the pythian branch of the tree it should compile. Cheers

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Posted on Mon Dec 12 14:40:13 2005 by wschrabi in response to 1436

Re: DBD and Oracle Instantclient 10

I tried to svn checkout the site but when I compile the Makefile.PL with perl I got the error :

I used the latest verions of the instant client and the DBD from the pythian dir. Could any help? Please email a copy to wschrabi.at.gmx.at Tks a lot. Walter

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Posted on Mon Dec 12 15:04:41 2005 by byterock in response to 1456

Re: DBD and Oracle Instantclient 10

Did you download the entire Instant client suite?
You will need both the basic package as well as the SDK package
Here is the link to it.
http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/oci/instantclient/htdocs/linuxsoft.html
I will have another go at this myself and see it I can recreate you problem

As well the DBD::Oracle module is mainly supported via the dbi-users@perl.org mailing list. You can email to dbi-users@perl.org without subscribing to the list. (You first email may take a day or two to pass the moderator, after that you'll be whitelisted.)

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Posted on Mon Dec 12 18:37:45 2005 by wschrabi in response to 1457

Re: DBD and Oracle Instantclient 10

I have now installed the SDK with the rpm -i *.rpm command. But he search still for the *.mk files. Could you tell me where my bug is? Tks Walter

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Posted on Wed Dec 14 23:06:28 2005 by n8 in response to 1460

Re: DBD and Oracle Instantclient 10

I had that same problem at one point, Walter. I just posted my answers to the dbi-users list, but I'll paste them here too:

After a day of forehead-bashing I got DBD::Oracle to compile with the Instant Client on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 - though I suspect it will work with most other flavors. Here are my notes for the good of the next person (and me next time I go looking):

To simplify/standardize the layout of the files I used the RPMs Oracle provides. They scatter the files into /usr/lib/oracle, /usr/include/oracle, and /usr/share/oracle, so I had to make an adjustment in the Makefile.PL to find the .h files.

I used the pythian branch from the subversion repository (announced at http://www.cpanforum.com/threads/1130). Here's the output of svn diff - I don't have credentials to commit the change (nor do I want them!)

$ svn diff Makefile.PL Index: Makefile.PL =================================================================== --- Makefile.PL (revision 2309) +++ Makefile.PL (working copy) @@ -18,6 +18,12 @@ ## Changes made ## Adding in a few changes suggested by Andy Hassall <andy@andyh.co.uk> ## that will enable the compile to work for Windows version of the IC +## +## Nathan.Vonnahme at banner health dot com +## Dec 14 2005 +## tweak to find Oracle Instant Client 10.2.0.1 on Linux when installed via Oracle's RPMs, +## which scatter the instant client files into /usr/lib/oracle, /usr/include/oracle, and +## /usr/share/oracle # vim: ts=8:sw=4 @@ -382,6 +388,7 @@ $linkwith_msg = "-l$lib."; $opts{LIBS} = [ "-L$OH/$libdir -l$lib $syslibs"]; my $inc = "-I$OH\/sdk/include"; + $inc .= " -I/usr/include/oracle/$client_version_full/client"; # where Oracle's rpms put the .h + files $opts{INC} = "$inc -I$dbi_arch_dir"; }

I also had trouble with the environment variables; this is what finally worked:

ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/10.2.0.1/client/lib LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/oracle/10.2.0.1/client/lib

after those two changes, I could run `perl Makefile.PL` with no args and get a working makefile.

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Posted on Wed Feb 15 19:51:11 2006 by droopy in response to 1484

Re: DBD and Oracle Instantclient 10

using all of the above I've got:

me@machine DBD-Oracle-1.17 $ perl Makefile.PL Using DBI 1.48 (for perl 5.008 on i386-linux-thread-multi) installed in /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/ +5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi/auto/DBI/ Configuring DBD::Oracle for perl 5.008 on linux (i386-linux-thread-multi) Remember to actually *READ* the README file! Especially if you have any problems. Using Oracle in /usr/lib/oracle/10.2.0.1/client/lib Can't find sqlplus. Pity, it would have helped. I'm having trouble finding your Oracle version number... trying harder Oracle version 10.2.0 (10.2) Looks like an Instant Client installation, okay Your LD_LIBRARY_PATH env var is set to '' WARNING: Your LD_LIBRARY_PATH env var doesn't include '/usr/lib/oracle/10.2.0.1/client/lib' but pro +bably needs to. Oracle sysliblist: invalid top directory at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/File/Find.pm line 562.

So I had to install sqlplus package....

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Posted on Wed Feb 15 20:13:09 2006 by byterock in response to 1807

Re: DBD and Oracle Instantclient 10

You should post this on dbi-users@perl.org

As this form is not read by many.

In you case you have not set your LD_LIBRARY_PATH you should run something like this

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME:$ORACLE_HOME/lib

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Posted on Thu Feb 16 01:33:02 2006 by droopy in response to 1808

Re: DBD and Oracle Instantclient 10

I was primarily looking for your attention so now that I've got it ;) - I've got another issue to hammer on. I'm trying to build RPM out of DBD-Oracle for deployment on our machines and what I get is it's persistantly trying to deploy stuff into /usr/lib/.... instead of specified PREFIX=/var/tmp/.../usr here is how I call Makefile.PL:

and here's what I get...

........... Using DBD::Oracle 1.17. Using DBD::Oracle 1.17. Using DBI 1.48 (for perl 5.008 on i386-linux-thread-multi) installed in /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/ +5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi/auto/DBI/ Writing Makefile for DBD::Oracle *** If you have problems... read all the log printed above, and the README and README.help files. (Of course, you have read README by now anyway, haven't you?) Warning: You do not have permissions to install into /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thre +ad-multi at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/ExtUtils/Install.pm line 84. mkdir /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi/auto/DBD: Permission denied at /usr/li +b/perl5/5.8.0/ExtUtils/Install.pm line 137 make: *** [pure_site_install] Error 255

if you're interested we can move it into private email converstation (dmitry athabascau ca).

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Posted on Mon Mar 20 19:05:33 2006 by jonzey in response to 1484

Re: DBD and Oracle Instantclient 10

Just a note to say thanks for posting your notes. I finally got there with the 10.2.0.1 drivers, the ORACLE_HOME and LD_LIBRARY_PATH variables, the Makefile.PL from pythian, patched using your diff. I was trying (and eventually succeded) using Centos-4.2 and perl-5.8.5. Regards, Richard

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Posted on Fri Apr 28 20:42:29 2006 by flexx in response to 1484

Re: DBD and Oracle Instantclient 10

> I also had trouble with the environment variables; this is what finally worked: > ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/10.2.0.1/client/lib > LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/oracle/10.2.0.1/client/lib > after those two changes, I could run `perl Makefile.PL` with no args and get a working makefile.

I got a makefile, using the same trick with Instant Client 10.2.0.2 and DBD::Oracle 1.17 (unaltered from CPAN), on my gentoo linux box, too.

However things didn't work after installation. When I tried to connect to a database (with a script that works fine on other host with a DBI::Oracle compiled against the full client) i get:

ERROR OCIEnvNlsCreate. Check ORACLE_HOME env var, NLS settings, permissions, etc.

It seems that the makefile looks for a directory $ORACLE_HOME/sdk/include which is included in the dirstibution file /usr/portage/distfiles/instantclient-sdk-linux32-10.2.0.2-20060331.zip:

Then we have the basic package of course:

#unzip -l /usr/portage/distfiles/instantclient-basic-linux32-10.2.0.2-20060331.zip Archive: /usr/portage/distfiles/instantclient-basic-linux32-10.2.0.2-20060331.zip Length Date Time Name -------- ---- ---- ---- 1594191 02-05-06 06:50 instantclient_10_2/classes12.jar 18774535 02-05-06 06:50 instantclient_10_2/libclntsh.so.10.1 5623929 02-05-06 06:50 instantclient_10_2/libnnz10.so 1398088 02-05-06 06:50 instantclient_10_2/libocci.so.10.1 70690282 02-05-06 06:50 instantclient_10_2/libociei.so 119919 02-05-06 06:50 instantclient_10_2/libocijdbc10.so 1540457 02-05-06 06:50 instantclient_10_2/ojdbc14.jar -------- ------- 99741401 7 files

On my gentoo linux box the installation resides under /usr/lib/oracle/10.2.0.2/client as follows:

Well, quite a lot has moved:

1. the demo directory from the SDK was omitted (should not be a problem)
2. the ott directory from the SDK was ommitted (should not be a problem)
3. the files of the basic package moved from / to /lib
4. the rest of the SDK moved from /sdk/include to /include

Item 3 probably explains why setting $ORACLE_HOME to ../lib appears to work on gentoo, but also explains why the include files cannot be found during installation:

********************************************************* I can't find the header files I need in your Oracle installation. You probably need to install some more Oracle components. For Instant Client that means the SDK package. I'll keep going, but the compile will probably fail. See README.clients.txt for more information. *********************************************************

I am bit stuck now.

The "correct" ORACLE_HOME for my system is /usr/lib/oracle/10.2.0.2/client, but with that the installation is not recogized correctly in the build process. If I set ORACLE_HOME and LD_LIBRARY_PATH to /usr/lib/oracle/10.2.0.2/client/lib the build finishes, but the build module does not work (probably because at runtime ORACLE_HOME has to point to /usr/lib/oracle/10.2.0.2/client again, unless I want to break lots of other things in my system).

Perhaps the makefile could not look for specific things in specific directories unter $ORACLE_HOME, but rather simply look for the files it needs *anywhere* below $ORACLE_HOME.

I haven't the time to dig in more myself now unfortunately, I was just hoping these observations might be of help to byterock or someone else who *has* the time to dig in... ;)

Cheers,
Flexx

flexx "at" chello.at

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Posted on Fri Apr 28 21:11:15 2006 by flexx in response to 2210

Re: DBD and Oracle Instantclient 10

Well, althought I don't actually have the time I dug in anyway and found the following snipplet in the original makefile:

die qq{ The $ORACLE_ENV environment variable value ($OH) is not valid. It must be set to hold the path to an Oracle installation directory on this machine (or a machine with a compatible architecture). For an Instant Client install, the directory should include an sdk subdirectory. See the README.clients.txt file for more information. ABORTED! } unless (-d $OH and $os eq 'VMS') or -d "$OH/sdk/." # Instant Client with SDK or -d "$OH/lib/." # normal Oracle installation or glob("$OH/libclntsh.$so*") # pre-sdk instant client or rpm or -e "$OH/oci.dll"; # Windows Instant Client print "Using Oracle in $OH\n";

So that explains why setting $ORACLE_HOME to $REAL_ORACLE_HOME/lib works on gentoo, since gentoo copies the actual content from the basic packages' root to .../lib, where Makemaker.PL then indeed finds a libclntsh.so.10.1, thus assuming it has found a pre-sdk instant client, wich is incorrect.

Furthermore, as a $ORACLE_HOME/lib exists in gentoo, if you set $ORACLE_HOME to the "actually correct" directory, the installation is mistakenly assumed to be a normal Oracle installation.

The above snipplet merely checks the existence of a usable installation, and not more, but I guess the comments given by the coder show the assumtions made later in the process:

# --- special case for Oracle 10g instant client (note lack of ../lib/...) elsif (my @libclntsh = glob("$OH/libclntsh.$so*")) { print "Looks like an Instant Client installation, okay\n";

So the problem here is, that a lot of assumtions are made on how your $ORACLE_HOME is structured, and if a distro doesn't follow the default structure (like many) then DBD::Oracle won't build out of the box.

Cheers,
Flexx

flexx "at" chello.at

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