[wplug] Oracle 8.1.7 on RH7.3?

[Mark Dalrymple]

> ya, last time i tried oracle on linux 2.4, it shit the bed with devfs.
> (it thought i had like -65535 space free or something.) i dont think
> they have fixed this bug either.

That particular one sounds like an installer problem they had where
they were using an signed 32 bit int to calculate free space.  If you
had more than 2 gigs of free space, it wrapped around negative.  That
particular one has been fixed.

Oracle is a huge complicated (and old) piece of software that puts
extrordinary demands on the OS.  It's pretty finicky about where it
wants to run.  If you're wanting to deploy it with the least amount of
Pain, it's best to only use the distributions, kernels, JVMs, etc,
that have been ceritified (and long and expensive process for the OS
vendor).  Also there's generally some patches you have to run before
hand to tweak the environment.

I've had great success with SuSE and 8.1.6/7 using SuSE's online
instructions.  SuSE is also the reference platform for 9i, and so
there should be fewer surprises there than with other distributions.

Maybe once life calms down I can run an Oracle 8i install for folks
at an installpest next year if anyone's interested.

Wheeee,
++Mark Dalrymple, markd at badgertronics.com.  http://badgertronics.com
  "It is my firm belief that there is no belief so asinine, no course of
   action so bizarre, that it can not have a half dozen web sites
   strongly devoted to its practice.  If their maintainers ever learned
   to check their spelling, we might be in real trouble."
      -- Jeff Vogel