Re: Virtualizing RedHat 6.1

[Michael Tokarev <mjt@tls.msk.ru>]

Davide Bologna wrote:
[]
>> That all to say: there's no need to run Oracle8i on old (and buggy) system, current
>> linux works.
> 
> I am glad if you can point me to instruction for installing it on Lenny.

I don't have instructions per se.  I don't even remember how I installed it in
the first place.  At least installer required some option to omit host OS check,
it's in the `runInstaller -help' output somewhere, and there was something about
gcc version (it needs gcc-3.4 at max if memory serves me right, or even 2.95).
Also first 8i release does not work, it fails at relink stage, which can safely
be ignored and done later when 8.1.7.4 patchset is installed.

But once installed (you may even do it on real rh-6.x) you can just copy it to
another machine (together with a few user/group definitions and a few files in
/etc) or upgrade your current one.  That's basically what I always did.

What I tried to say really is -- if you want to run it on 64bit system you need
a special program I wrote to set up linux personality properly.  While 64bit
kernel is able to run 32bit executables just fine, oracle8i is buggy and assumes
3g/1g memory split, while on 64bit kernel it's more like 4g/0g (it gives almost
all 4g memory to userspace), and oracle crashes at startup.  But only on 64bit
system and without ADDR_LIMIT_3GB personality flag.

 > Maybe better off-list as is not kvm related.

Sure it's not kvm-related, but you're not first to have this idea.  There are 8i
installs still (8i is not supported anymore by Oracle).  Lacking better place,
let's make it archived and findable here... ;)

/mjt