[Gllug] Oracle on Linux

[Ian Northeast]

Tethys wrote:
> Ian Northeast writes:
> 
> 
>>Once you get it installed correctly that is, the new(ish) Java
>>installer is atrocious. The old curses one was far better.
> 
> 
> Indeed. It also worked on our production servers (which being servers,
> don't have X libraries installed). But that's no longer an option in
> Oracle's brave new world. 

I don't see a problem with installing X *libraries* on a server. I 
always do, as a matter of course. Not just for Orrible. On an IBM x 
Series with a ServeRAID card (which are very good) for instance, you 
need the X libraries for the RaidMan utility which controls the hardware 
RAID. Now this may be considered to be a fault with the IBM software, 
but it's a small price for a good hardware RAID. Other things need them 
too, e.g. YaST2 in SuSE, IMO much better than the Curses interface. And 
xterm can be useful.

I never install an X *server* of course. That's an entirely different 
large metal receptacle full of piscine things. And bad for both 
performance and security.

Our servers run SLES, and this combination is easy - select the high 
level option "graphical without KDE" and then when it prompts for X 
server setup, there's an option "No graphical login". Result - X 
libraries, no X server, run level 3. Perfect.

People who do not want to know how horrible Orrible is need read no further.

There is one thing which needs an X server on a server, and, 
surprisingly, it's Orrible again. It's the reports server component of 
iAS. Once upon an idyllic time, the Orrible reports server was a little 
stand alone thing which, er, generated reports. This version never made 
it to Linux. Now, it's a part of iAS. Think of a pyramid, ancient 
Egyption style. There's the cap stone, the very pinnacle. That's the 
reports server. The rest of the pyramid is the dependencies. A database 
or two, an LDAP server, a thing called the "Orrible Internet Directory". 
There's the "Orrible Enterprise Manager" too, but this can, contrary to 
the documentation, be removed. Fortunately. .. There are more, about 9 
of them IIRC. About 9GB of crap and 2 instances of iAS just to get a 
little report server to work. Well FSVO work, when I first put it in it 
contained a killer deadlock bug. Not bad going for something so small. 
But they did manage to fix that. But I digress:)

This thing requires an X server. Not because it needs to actually 
display any picture on any screen. It does not do this. What it really 
needs is a font server. But any attempt to run it in an environment 
where $DISPLAY cannot be opened will fail.

VNC came to the rescue. There's no need to connect any client to the VNC 
server, its presence is sufficient to satisfy the beast. So we have 
several machines running X servers upon which no man's or woman's gaze 
has ever rested.

There's a slightly more bizarre, but easier to fix, one with iFS too. It 
needs $DISPLAY. If it's not set it falls over. The cure is to set 
$DISPLAY to anything. As long as it's there, it's happy. It never uses it.

Regards, Ian




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