Oracle 9i on RedHat?

Post #7,716 by admin 9/5/01 9:43:56 AM Reply	Oracle 9i on RedHat? I was browsing around the Oracle site the other day; 9i runs on Linux... certified on SuSE 7.1 only, however. WTF? Why would Oracle certify on one of the least-used (by commercial enterprises, at least) distros? Do they want people to actually use this or what? Anyway, have any of you gotten 9i to run on RedHat 7.1, before I try? I'd like to know if it's pointless before I get into it. Regards, -scott anderson
Post #7,769 by broomberg 9/5/01 9:30:43 PM Reply	I bet it's a matter of perceived influence Oracle doesn't want to give RH any more power than they aleady have. They'd rather 'bless' a lower visibility distro, and hold out on RH until RH give them something. And also, let me know if you use it. I'd currently using 8i on a few RH 6.x boxen. Once thing that would be GREAT would be if Oracle got together with SGI. I'm running XFS based RH 7.1 and it is very solid. SGI has an Asynch IO patch that DB2 uses, which allows a 30% performance boost. I'm sure Oracle could also use it since they prefer to do Asynch IO on ther systems, bu they need to 'enable' it.
Post #10,835 by gdaustin 9/28/01 5:33:14 PM Reply	It's a JDK / 2.4 kernel issue, probably. We had a fun time getting Oracle 8i to run on RH 7.1 back in June, when we were evaluating products. It really doesn't have much to do with Oracle, more to do with JDK 1.3.1 and the Linux 2.4 kernel in RH 7.1. You see JDK 1.3.1 was built on Kernel 2.2.5 and expects that level of compatibility. By loading the egcs/C++/glibc compatibility libraries and running ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5, you solve the problem. If you need the specifics, email me at gdaustin@aol.com. I'll bet that SuSe 7.1 isn't on the 2.4 kernel and thus doesn't have the problem. It's funny because we got it all to work, simply by running in 2.2.5 compatibility mode. According to my Linux guru friend, the 2.4 kernel was supposed to solve a bunch of performance problems, particularly with multiple processors and when you run out of real memory. (Would you rather thrash (2.4) or just die (2.2.5)?) I'll bet that the people certifying Oracle 9i are truly clueless, don't read any newsgroups and haven't figured out these issues. Either that, or Oracle is waiting for JDK 1.3.x and the 2.4 kernel to "get along". This is really a Sun/Java problem, not an Oracle problem. And I'll bet Sun isn't in a big hurry to fix JDK 1.3.1, because everyone who can't get Oracle 8i/9i running on a Linux box is probably likely to start looking at Sun Blade 100's or Ultra 5/10 for their test database. It's good to be the "standards bearer". The JDK 1.3.1 / 2.4 kernel compatibility problems also bit us on WebLogic 6.1, and IBM DB2 7.1 and 7.2. We moved over to an HP 9000 K260 (PA-8000) and funny thing, we haven't had any kernel compatibility problems. HP provides both the JDK and the kernel and they are compatible. Oracle, DB2, and WebLogic all run fine. The real problem is that Blackdown gave JDK development for Linux back to Sun, who really has no interest in solving JDK/kernel "compatibility" problems. Funny behind every "compatibility" problem, there really is a story... Glen Austin Senior Staff Engineer OmniSYS, Inc. Glen Austin Senior Staff Engineer OmniSYS, Inc.
Post #10,844 by admin 9/28/01 6:45:44 PM Reply	Not an issue here anymore... Since I just went ahead and got SuSE instead. Much nicer than Redhat IMO anyway, to tell the truth. I'm glad I tried it. But thanks for the rundown -- I'll know what to look for in case I do try it on Redhat. Regards, -scott anderson

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