From: John Smiley (pro_oracle@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Sep 02 2003 - 18:46:23 CEST
Message-ID: <20030902164623.12055.qmail@web13203.mail.yahoo.com> Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2003 09:46:23 -0700 (PDT) From: John Smiley <pro_oracle@yahoo.com> Subject: [suse-oracle] UnitedLinux 1.0-Developer and Oracle9iR2 RAC
Both UnitedLinux and Oracle's OTN web site offer a
free developer download of UnitedLinux 1.0. UL 1.0 is
the foundation of SLES-8 and other Oracle certified
platforms from several other vendors.
I'm planning to install Oracle9iR2 RAC (9.2.0.4) for
experimentation and learning purposes and thought that
UL 1.0 would be the best learning platform since it is
certified by Oracle. However, I found that in order
to be a certified environment, I must have at least
SP1 for UL 1.0. Unfortunately, service packs are not
available for the developer edition. In order to get
them, you must pay the regular license fee for the
product, which is much more than I can afford.
I had thought that since UL 1.0 is distributed under
the GPL, that I would be able to find sources for the
service pack packages, but these are not available on
any of the web/FTP sites of the four vendors that
distribute products based on UL 1.0. (Doesn't the GPL
require all vendors to make source code available for
any distributed package, including patches?)
After reading this forum, I'm not sure that I really
need any of the service packs. The information is
confusing:
1. Oracle's MetaLink certification web site says that
UL 1.0 SP1 is required.
2. The SuSE support matrix says that "To get an
Oracle certified system you need at least the
following kernel version (or higher!):
k_smp-2.4.19-196.i586.rpm - SMP kernel", but says
nothing about requireing a service pack.
3. In a reply on this forum, Michael Hasenstein
states that "All that Oracle cares about is the kernel
and glibc. " and "All other packages: Doesn't matter".
4. Michael also says in another reply on this forum
that it is much better to use SP2a than SP1.0 but does
not state why this is.
If it's true that all Oracle cares about is the kernel
and glibc and the other packages don't matter, then do
I really need any of the service packs? The latest
service pack is SP2a and the hotfix kernel that is
included in SP2a is available on the SuSE FTP site.
If I install that kernel (k_smp-2.4.19-xxx-304), do I
get all of the benefits of SP2a as far as RAC is
concerned?
I also tried installing RAC on a SuSE 8.2 system but
could not find a version of ocfs for the 2.4.20
kernel. I downloaded the source for version 1.0.9 and
tried to compile it with gcc 2.95 (the compile fails
miserably if you try gcc 3.3), but it complained about
non-existent struct items (kiobuf->kio_blocks,
file->f_iobuf, and file->f_iobuf_lock) in ocfsmain.c.
I compared the 2.4.20 source to the 2.4.19 source and
found that kiobuf->kio_blocks exists in 2.4.19, but
not in 2.4.20 (it's just called kiobuf->blocks in
2.4.20). I also found that file->f_iobuf and
f_iobuf_lock exist in the 2.4.19 fs.h source, but not
in the 2.4.20 source.
I was wondering if I'd be better off just installing
the 2.4.19-xxx-304 kernel on SuSE 8.2 and installing
RAC and ocfs in this environment rather thant UL 1.0.
At least I'd be able to get updates/fixes. It just
doesn't make sense that Oracle would encourage people
to download UL 1.0 but not provide the necessary
service packs to make it work.
John Smiley
Database Architect
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