Monday, March 27, 2006

Comparison of MySQL and Oracle Client install

In my environment, I like to install the server software on the server and install a client version of the software in a common area. If you need to link to certain libraries or use programs to connect to the database, I'll put them in /usr/local for everybody to use. My authentication is in the database, so I don't care if you can run a program but not connect to the database.

It's no secret that I'm a MySQL newbie and I've had my share of issues installing the MySQL client. That was kind of a special case since I wasn't using a mainstream compiler, but even so, I was able to get the problem fixed in relatively short order.

One of my tasks lately has been to upgrade the Oracle client to version 10.2. I've installed the client software a couple dozen times and the server software maybe 100 times if I want to be conservative. So when I fired up the installer, I wasn't expecting many surprises.

As expected, I installed the base 10.2.0.1 release in about 20 minutes. I then applied the 10.2.0.2 patch on top of it in another 10 minutes. I ran sqlplus as oracle and was able to connect to a database, so I pushed it out to a group of test users.

Two seconds later: "Ah, sqlplus doesn't work."

"I just ran it, your environment variables must not be setup correctly."

"Ah, sqlplus still doesn't work."

So I logout as oracle and try it from my workstation:
sqlplus system@foo.bar
ld.so.1: sqlplus: fatal: /usr/local/oracle/lib/libsqlplus.so: Permission denied
Killed

sonofa...WTF can be wrong?

Sure enough, I didn't have permission on the library. I logged in as oracle, and I had permission on the file, but world didn't have any permissions.

Hmm, That never happened before. I must have screwed something up.

I re-installed and had the same problem.

I logged a TAR to Oracle support and seems like it's a known bug (4516865).

Another great example of why you get so much more value with Oracle than MySQL. Sigh.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like more of another sad case of a broken down quality assurance system in oracle software delivery.

Jeff Hunter said...

I guess maybe I should have used my [sarcasm][/sarcasm] flags.

I definitely agree with you, Ronald. In a packaged software application like Oracle, I kind of expect that I push a button and the software installs itself. Because MySQL is compiled from source I expect that might get errors because my compiler isn't the correct version, or my LD_LIBRARY_PATH or something is off.

I'm not knocking Oracle Support (in this post, anyway). They identified my problem quickly and gave me direction on how to fix it.

Anonymous said...

Why are you compiling MySQL from source? It's generally a bad idea because of the delicate nature of build environments.
Just use a build from mysql.com whenever possible.