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Fedora SQL*Developer

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After you download SQL Developer 18 on Fedora 27, you can install it with the yum utility, like

yum install -y sqldeveloper-18.2.0.183.1748-1.noarch.rpm

The installation should generate the following log file:

Last metadata expiration check: 2:26:23 ago on Sat 25 Aug 2018 07:10:16 PM MDT.
Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================================
 Package               Arch            Version                      Repository             Size
================================================================================================
Installing:
 sqldeveloper          noarch          18.2.0.183.1748-1            @commandline          338 M
 
Transaction Summary
================================================================================================
Install  1 Package
 
Total size: 338 M
Installed size: 420 M
Downloading Packages:
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
  Preparing        :                                                                        1/1 
  Installing       : sqldeveloper-18.2.0.183.1748-1.noarch                                  1/1 
  Running scriptlet: sqldeveloper-18.2.0.183.1748-1.noarch                                  1/1 
  Verifying        : sqldeveloper-18.2.0.183.1748-1.noarch                                  1/1 
 
Installed:
  sqldeveloper.noarch 18.2.0.183.1748-1                                                         
 
Complete!

After you install SQL Developer, you won’t be able to launch it. Attempts to launch it won’t raise an error message either. The problem is that there is a post-installation step, which requires you to configure the product.conf file.

You can see the error by navigating to the /opt/sqldeveloper directory. You will find the sqldeveloper.sh file in that directory. You will see the error when you run the command as the root user from the command-line interface (CLI), as follows:

/opt/sqldeveloper/sqldeveloper.sh

 Oracle SQL Developer
 Copyright (c) 2005, 2018, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
 
Type the full pathname of a JDK installation (or Ctrl-C to quit), the path
 will be stored in /root/.sqldeveloper/18.2.0/product.conf

You can find the Oracle home by searching for the rt.jar file as the root user. You use the following find command syntax from the / topmost directory.

find . -name rt.jar

On Fedora 27, you should see the following absolute file name:

./usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.171-1.b10.fc27.x86_64/jre/lib/rt.jar

You discard the /jre/lib portion of the directory path and the rt.jar file name to get the Java home’s fully qualified path. This should update the product.conf file but if you have to change it manually you should edit the following file:

/root/.sqldeveloper/18.2.0/product.conf

You need to configure the SetJavaHome parameter value in the product.conf file. The SetJavaHome parameter needs to point to the Java home directory on your Fedora instance. It should look like this:

#
# By default, the product launcher will search for a JDK to use, and if none
# can be found, it will ask for the location of a JDK and store its location
# in this file. If a particular JDK should be used instead, uncomment the
# line below and set the path to your preferred JDK.
#
SetJavaHome /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.8.0-openjdk-1.8.0.171-1.b10.fc27.x86_64

It’s possible that an attempt to launch SQL Developer by another user may have copied the product.conf file into a local directory. You should change those manually by editing their respective product.conf files. Assuming you attempted to launch SQL Developer by a student user before you changed the root user’s copy of the SQL Developer’s product.conf file.

Written by maclochlainn

August 25th, 2018 at 11:51 pm