I was asked to install Oracle 10gR2 on one of the clients new machines. Of course I had trouble installing it, since the OS was CentOS and not one of the certified Oracle platforms. The trouble with installing Oracle x64 on non-supported systems is the relinking process. You always run into libraries that cannot be found, or some other shit that’s still looking for 32-bit software/libraries. In my opinion x64 should be the default and all server software should be backported to x86, but that’s just my opinion.

Thanks to this post I was able get Oracle to install properly, basically because the list of prerequisite packages in Oracle’s installation guide is to short. This list (at least on CentOS 5.4) should do the trick:

binutils-2.17.50.0.6-2.el5
compat-gcc-34-3.4.6-4
compat-gcc-34-c++-3.4.6-4
compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-61
compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-61(i386)
control-center-2.16.0-14.el5
gcc-4.1.1-52.el5
gcc-c++-4.1.1-52.el5
gdbm-1.8.0-26.2.1
glibc-2.5-12
glibc-common-2.5-12
glibc-devel-2.5-12
glibc-devel-2.5-12(i386)
libgcc-4.1.1-52.el5(i386)
libgcc-4.1.1-52.el5(x86_64)
libgnome-2.16.0-6.el5
libstdc++-devel-3.4.3-22.1
libXp-1.0.0-8.i386
libXp-1.0.0-8.x64
make-3.81-1.1
sysstat-7.0.0-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
util-linux-2.13-0.44.e15.x86_64

You don’t need the exact versions. Just do a “yum install compat-gcc-34″ for instance, and if the installed version is higher, you’re safe.

When using an x64 OS, like Windows 7 x64, you undoubtedly found that most software is still 32-bits. If your computer has a lot of memory, you will find that you run out of memory quickly, since 32-bits software only uses the first 4GBytes. For some reason x64 binaries are still hard to find.
Today I stumbled upon this weblog. It’s a great source for x64 software and info, so check it out.

There is a new (labs) version of Flash Player 9, but still….no x64 support. What a shame for such a big company. It’s a fucking LABS release, so give us the x64 version and WE will play with it for you. Hey, we might even call it testing in the field and give you back some feedback.

The idiots themselves test on a Pentium4 system running at 2.33GHz with 128MB (yep, megabytes) of RAM and 64MB VRAM. To play HD content. Are they braindead? Why in the world would you want to play HD content on a crippled system? If you have a HD TV, you should as well be able to pay for the right hardware to drive it. Or else you buy a normal tabletop player, not a PC.

Adobe is so not of this world. Their money did Macromedia not much good, that’s for sure.

Great. Lightning (Mozilla Thunderbird calendar support) version 0.7 was released. For Windows, Linux and Mac. Windows 32 bits and Linux 32 bits. No sources available, so even for the advanced user (that knows how to compile the Mozilla stuff) no 64-bits support. Guys….this SUCKS. BIG TIME.

It think it’s time to ditch the whole Mozilla crap and look for something else. It started out great, but lately Mozilla’s (lack of) organization is having a very negative effect on the products.

If you try to install Oracle on Solaris 10 (x86-x64 version) and you run into the following error when you start the installer:

ld.so.1: java: fatal relocation error...

then you probably have your locale defined as “en_US.UTF-8″, the default. This is a bug in Java on Solaris. Workaround is to set it (temporary) to something else (e.g. en_US.ISO8859-15). This will not affect how you install the software, but only how the installer itself runs.

I ran into this on Solaris 10 Developer Edition 09/07 on AMD64, with Oracle 10g 64-bits for Solaris.

Well, not all of it, but I have your attention now, do I? I intalled Oracle database 10g 64-bits edition on my Ubuntu AMD64 (Feisty). Works like a charm. You need to install a ton of packages, but after that, it works without a glitch.
To get Oracles HTTP server to work (not to be mistaken by the real application server, which is a completely different beast) one needs to install the companion CD. There is a companion CD in a 64 bits version for Linux. Yeah. Don’t you think that it contains a recompiled version of Apache, since it does not.The Apache server on the companion CD is the normal 32-bits version.
Oracle likes spending its money buying all sorts of companies, instead of supporting their customers and developers. Mind you, I’m trying to install the thing on Ubuntu, which is not supported by Oracle at all. But judging by the number of forum messages and blog posts about Oracle on 64-bits OS-es, I can only conclude Oracle doesn’t care about 64-bits at all.

Their 11g database is available for Linux now. The specs demand a very recent PC or server, but it’s only available as … a 32-bits version.

Why is that? Hardware manufacturers are pushing 64-bits systems like crazy, but the software (and OS-es) is way behind. Why? AMD64 has been around quite some time. Intel has a lot of 64-bits processors. What are they all waiting for?

Sofar, I’m disappointed by the 64-bits experience. For starters, Solaris 10 would not even boot the DVD. Not the normal Solaris 10 DVD, nor the Solaris Express (latest build). The Express version got a little farther in the boot process, but gave up with some error too.

Ubuntu amd64 works. But that’s about it. I installed it on a different partition (duh!) but had to manually add it to the grub config of my 32-bit installation. If the install is recognizing my 32-bit installation and offers me to import my settings (which it did brilliantly) why not add the boot image to grub?
Firefox and Thunderbird2 are NOT in the Feisty AMD64 repositories. Getting them compiled from the sources is not for the faint of heart. It’s not a matter of “./configure;make“. You need to install many development libraries, create config-files (for which there are no examples in the tarball). Eventually I got the Gutsy (Ubuntu 7.10) sources working (not the standard tarball). For Firefox I installed Swiftweasel (the Epiphany browser does not even show its address and buttonbar), an optimized unbranded version of Firefox.

The soundcard on my motherboard (7.1 C-Media) is not supported (well). At best I get sound without the ability to control the volume. So I disabled the onboard soundcard and plugged my old Sound Blaster Live!1024 back in. It goes without saying that this card is properly supported.

More and more consumer PC’s and laptops have AMD Athlon64 X2 or Intel Core 2 Duo processor, both of which are 64-bits. If the 64-bits support will remain on this (Ubuntu) level, I can see a lot of happy Linux users switching BACK to a Microsoft OS. Don’t worry, I will not, but Vista has proper 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

So tell me, If Ubuntu amd64 is not the way, which Linux distro is?

BTW Very NOT disappointing is the performance of Ubuntu64. Things run just a little smoother than the 32-bits version. But it can be that 32-bit applications runs slower on a 64-bits processor. And of course the big version recognizes all of the 4GB of memory instead of only 3.5.