Oracle Library Missing
It was always aware of a problem with Oracle 11g XE on various Linux platforms from 10 years ago. I knew it was misleading but never found the time to explain the error that occurred during the cloning of the instance.
While it would occur when you were on an unsupported version of Linux, it was easy to fix. For example, after downloading the old compressed oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm.zip file, you uncompress it. Then, you run the file with the following command:
rpm -ivh oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm |
This command will install the packages in verbose syntax and display the following messages:
[sudo] password for mclaughlinm: Preparing packages for installation... oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0 Executing post-install steps... You must run '/etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure' as the root user to configure the database. |
Connect as the root user to another instance of the terminal and run the following command:
/etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure |
You will see the following control output:
Oracle Database 11g Express Edition Configuration ------------------------------------------------- This will configure on-boot properties of Oracle Database 11g Express Edition. The following questions will determine whether the database should be starting upon system boot, the ports it will use, and the passwords that will be used for database accounts. Press <Enter> to accept the defaults. Ctrl-C will abort. Specify the HTTP port that will be used for Oracle Application Express [8080]: Specify a port that will be used for the database listener [1521]: Specify a password to be used for database accounts. Note that the same password will be used for SYS and SYSTEM. Oracle recommends the use of different passwords for each database account. This can be done after initial configuration: Confirm the password: Do you want Oracle Database 11g Express Edition to be started on boot (y/n) [y]:y Starting Oracle Net Listener...Done Configuring database...grep: /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/config/log/*.log: No such file or directory grep: /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/config/log/*.log: No such file or directory Done /bin/chmod: cannot access '/u01/app/oracle/diag': No such file or directory Starting Oracle Database 11g Express Edition instance...Done Installation completed successfully. |
This looks like an unsolvable problem, and for many it was too hard to solve. Most never knew the next step to take to discover the missing library. The failure actually occurs when the configuration tries to launch SQL*Plus. You can test that by creating the following oracle_env.sh parameter script:
# Oracle Settings TMP=/tmp; export TMP TMPDIR=$TMP; export TMPDIR ORACLE_HOSTNAME=localhost.localdomain; export ORACLE_HOSTNAME ORACLE_UNQNAME=DB11G; export ORACLE_UNQNAME ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle; export ORACLE_BASE ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/product/11.2.0/xe; export ORACLE_HOME ORACLE_SID=XE; export ORACLE_SID NLS_LANG=`$ORACLE_HOME/bin/nls_lang.sh`; export NLS_LANG ORACLE_TERM=xterm; export ORACLE_TERM PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH; export PATH PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH; export PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:/lib:/usr/lib; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH CLASSPATH=$ORACLE_HOME/JRE:$ORACLE_HOME/jlib:$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/jlib; export CLASSPATH if [ $USER = "oracle" ]; then if [ $SHELL = "/bin/ksh" ]; then ulimit -p 16384 ulimit -n 65536 else ulimit -u 16384 -n 65536 fi fi |
Then, source the oracle_env.sh file like this:
. ./oracle_env.sh |
As the oracle user, try to connect to the sqlplus executable with this command:
sqlplus / as sysdba |
It’ll raise the following error:
sqlplus: error while loading shared libraries: libnsl.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory |
You won’t find the /usr/lib64/libnsl.so.1 because it’s a symbolic link to the /usr/lib64/libnsl-2.29.so shared library file, which you can find on older Fedora installations. AlmaLinux has libnsl2, which you can download from the pgks.org.
After finding the library and installing it in the /usr/lib64 directory, the balance of the fix is to run the cloning manually. This type of error can occur for newer version of the database but it’s easiest to highlight with the Oracle 11g XE installation.
You also can find it in the libnsl2-devel development libraries on the pkgs.org web site:
You may need to build the libnsl.so.1 symbolic link as the root user with the following command:
ln -s libnsl-2.29.so libnsl.so.1 |
Ensure the file permissions for these files are:
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 218488 Dec 2 01:33 libnsl-2.29.so lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 14 Dec 2 01:39 libnsl.so.1 -> libnsl-2.29.so |
After you create the database, you can provision a student user and database, like so:
Oracle Database 11g (Pre-containerization)
After you create and provision the Oracle Database 11g XE, you create an instance with the following two step process.
- Create a
student
Oracle user account with the following command:CREATE USER student IDENTIFIED BY student DEFAULT TABLESPACE users QUOTA 200M ON users TEMPORARY TABLESPACE temp;
- Grant necessary privileges to the newly created
student
user:GRANT CREATE CLUSTER, CREATE INDEXTYPE, CREATE OPERATOR , CREATE PROCEDURE, CREATE SEQUENCE, CREATE SESSION , CREATE TABLE, CREATE TRIGGER, CREATE TYPE , CREATE VIEW TO student;
Oracle Database 21c (Post-containerization)
After you create and provision the Oracle Database 21c Express Edition (XE), you can create a c##student container user with the following two step process.
- Create a c##student Oracle user account with the following command:
CREATE USER c##student IDENTIFIED BY student DEFAULT TABLESPACE users QUOTA 200M ON users TEMPORARY TABLESPACE temp;
- Grant necessary privileges to the newly created c##student user:
GRANT CREATE CLUSTER, CREATE INDEXTYPE, CREATE OPERATOR , CREATE PROCEDURE, CREATE SEQUENCE, CREATE SESSION , CREATE TABLE, CREATE TRIGGER, CREATE TYPE , CREATE VIEW TO c##student;
As always, it should help you solve new problems.