Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Installing Standard Edition

I installed 10.2.0.1 Enterprise Edition on RHEL 4 a couple weeks ago and got it working with a couple small tweaks to the OS. Yes, I know 10gR2 is not supported on RHEL 4 yet, but by the time I got to production it will be.

A couple days later I got a new project that will require 10.2.0.1 Standard Edition on RHEL 4. Not thinking about it, I used the installer that I downloaded from OTN to install. I chose the custom install (like I always do), de-selected the "Enterprise Options" and click,click,click, I was done.

Once I started the database things got interesting. My banner said:

sqlplus "/ as sysdba"
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production on Tue Jul 26 20:31:32 2005
Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle. All rights reserved.
Connected to:
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production
With the Partitioning and Data Mining options

OK, that's not cool. I de-install and re-install thinking maybe I screwed something up. Nope, same thing.

"Surely, someone has run into this problem before", I think to myself. I searched metalink for a while and noticed some bugs with the install so I created a TAR.

Me: I installed SE and came out with this banner. I did this, this, and this. I am seeing this, this, and this, which I think is incorrect.
TAR: Did you install from part # XYZ? There have been issues with that set of disks.
Me: No, I downloade from OTN.
TAR: Oh, install from CD.
Me: Isn't it the same software?
TAR: You downloaded from one of the first OTN downloads. There might have been a problem.
Me: But, I don't have the CD. I was told in TAR ### that CD's aren't ready for shipment.
TAR: create another TAR and tell them you need CDs because you're working on TAR ###.
Me: OK.


I create another TAR and get the CDs shipped to me. I copy from the CD to my local box and install from there. Same thing.

Me: OK, I installed from CD and got the same thing.
TAR: Ship us the installActions log and these other logs.
Me: Here they are.


Wait 3 days.

TAR: The log shows you installed EE. Install SE.
Me: No, I chose "Custom", unchecked the EE options, and installed.
TAR: Install SE.
Me: But that's the way I've done it before with no problems.
TAR: Install SE.
Me: But I don't want OEM, Apache, or any of the other stuff installed.
TAR: That's the way it's been done since Oracle7. That other stuff won't hurt, just install it.
Me: That's not true, but OK.


I saw this was going nowhere, so I closed the TAR. A few minutes later I get an email from Oracle Support saying my TAR has been updated.

TAR: Yeah, you're right. But the way you get around it is install everything for SE and then de-install the options you don't want.

4 comments:

Noons said...

It is trully sad and a sign of the appaling state of Oracle's stability that for a simple install like this you have to go through Metalink!

Says it all in a nutshell...

Tim... said...

I guess you could install EE and write post-it note saying,

"I promise not to use any of the EE features, but this is the only way I can get SE to work properly!"

The stick this on the front of the server an wait for Larry to come calling :)

Cheers

Tim...

Yasin Baskan said...

I saw this was going nowhere, so I closed the TAR
I do not remember how many tars i have closed because of the same reason.Conversations that can go on forever.

David Aldridge said...

Living about 5 miles from Oracle Support in Colorado Springs I've even offered to go to their offices to talk about problems face-to-face, and with a whiteboard handy. Funnily enough they never took me up on it.