Monday, July 18

Oracle oratab location bug

Ok, so I finally got around to confirm my suspicion of a tiny bug in Oracle on Linux.
Tested and confirmed on the default 10.1.0.3 installation and I'm pretty sure I've seen it on at least 9.2.0.4.

Problem description
If the directory /var/opt/oracle exists during the Oracle installation the dbhome script will have the parameter ORATAB set to "/var/opt/oracle/oratab" instead of "/etc/oratab". The normal DBCA process during a default installation will still add the instance entry to /etc/oratab.

This causes the oraenv script to fail finding the ORACLE_HOME and will prompt the user. oraenv calls dbhome to determine the ORACLE_HOME for the instance selected.

Workaround
Modify the dbhome script(s) in your "common" path (usually /usr/local/bin) and in $ORACLE_HOME/bin.
Change line 47 from
ORATAB=/var/opt/oracle/oratab
to
ORATAB=/etc/oratab

I'll submit the TAR to Oracle and see what they say about it. Tiny bug, I'm quite sure that not many people create /var/opt/oracle on Linux.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So the questions is did Oracle ever response to your question about oratab?