install the oracle instant client and DBD::Oracle on Linux Mint 12 ( or any other linux )

if you work with perl and want to connect to oracle you might want to DBD::Oracle. this is a oracle database driver for the perl DBI module.

there is no need to install this on a server which hosts an oracle instance. all you need from an oracle perspective is the oracle instant client.

to prepare the installation download the following files ( for your architecture ) from the above link:

• instantclient-basic-linux.x64-11.2.0.3.0.zip
• instantclient-sqlplus-linux.x64-11.2.0.3.0.zip
• instantclient-sdk-linux.x64-11.2.0.3.0.zip

as I did a default mint install I additionally had to install the “Linux kernel AIO access library” package which is required for the instant client to work:

sudo apt-get install libaio1

all you need to do for getting the instant client to work is to unzip the downloaded files and setup your environment. in may case I unzipped the files to my home directory in a folder called oracle:

ls -la ~/oracle/instantclient_11_2/
total 185012
drwxr-xr-x 3 daniel daniel      4096 Aug 31 06:57 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 daniel daniel      4096 Aug 31 06:51 ..
-rwxrwxr-x 1 daniel daniel     25308 Sep 17  2011 adrci
-rw-rw-r-- 1 daniel daniel       437 Sep 17  2011 BASIC_README
-rwxrwxr-x 1 daniel daniel     46228 Sep 17  2011 genezi
-r--r--r-- 1 daniel daniel       368 Sep 17  2011 glogin.sql
lrwxrwxrwx 1 daniel daniel        56 Aug 31 06:57 libclntsh.so -> /home/daniel/oracle/instantclient_11_2/libclntsh.so.11.1
-rwxrwxr-x 1 daniel daniel  52761218 Sep 17  2011 libclntsh.so.11.1
-r-xr-xr-x 1 daniel daniel   7955322 Sep 17  2011 libnnz11.so
-rwxrwxr-x 1 daniel daniel   1971762 Sep 17  2011 libocci.so.11.1
-rwxrwxr-x 1 daniel daniel 118408281 Sep 17  2011 libociei.so
-r-xr-xr-x 1 daniel daniel    164836 Sep 17  2011 libocijdbc11.so
-r-xr-xr-x 1 daniel daniel   1503303 Sep 17  2011 libsqlplusic.so
-r-xr-xr-x 1 daniel daniel   1477446 Sep 17  2011 libsqlplus.so
-r--r--r-- 1 daniel daniel   2095661 Sep 17  2011 ojdbc5.jar
-r--r--r-- 1 daniel daniel   2714016 Sep 17  2011 ojdbc6.jar
drwxrwxr-x 4 daniel daniel      4096 Sep 17  2011 sdk
-r-xr-xr-x 1 daniel daniel      9352 Sep 17  2011 sqlplus
-rw-rw-r-- 1 daniel daniel       441 Sep 17  2011 SQLPLUS_README
-rwxrwxr-x 1 daniel daniel    191237 Sep 17  2011 uidrvci
-rw-rw-r-- 1 daniel daniel     66779 Sep 17  2011 xstreams.jar

for the environment I created a little file and sourced it:

echo"ORACLE_HOME=/home/daniel/oracle/instantclient_11_2
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME:$PATH
TNS_ADMIN=$ORACLE_HOME/network/admin
export ORACLE_HOME LD_LIBRARY_PATH PATH TNS_ADMIN" > ~/ora_env.sh 
mkdir -p ~/oracle/instantclient_11_2/network/admin
. ./ora_env.sh

before going on you should test if you can execute sqlplus ( if this does not work something is wrong with your environment ):

sqlplus
SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.3.0 Production on Fri Aug 31 07:26:46 2012
Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle.  All rights reserved.
Enter user-name: 

as a final test create a tnsnames.ora file with the connection parameters for your database and check if you can establish a connection:

echo "my_oracle_db=
  (DESCRIPTION=
    (ADDRESS=
      (PROTOCOL=TCP)
      (HOST=192.168.10.39)
      (PORT=1530)
    )
    (CONNECT_DATA=
      (GLOBAL_NAME=dbs300.local)
      (SID=dbs300)
    )
  )" >> ~/oracle/instantclient_11_2/network/admin/tnsnames.ora

let’s see if it works:

sqlplus my_oracle_usr/oracle@my_oracle_db
SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.3.0 Production on Fri Aug 31 07:53:44 2012
Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle.  All rights reserved.
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| This system is for the use of authorized users only.		  |
| Individuals using this computer system without authority, or in |
| excess of their authority, are subject to having all of their   |
| activities on this system monitored and recorded by system	  |
| personnel.							  |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.3.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, Automatic Storage Management, OLAP, Data Mining
and Real Application Testing options

as expected.

so far for the oracle part. because DBD::Oracle is a driver for the DBI package you probably need to install it first. you should have cpan installed along with your perl distribution.

which cpan
/usr/local/bin/cpan

if it’s not there search with your package manager and install it. for ubuntu/debian based distributions:

apt search cpan

for rpm based distributions:

yum search cpan

cpan requires an initial setup, but as this is straight forward I’ll just mention the important questions/answers:

cpan
Would you like to configure as much as possible automatically? [yes] yes
What approach do you want?  (Choose 'local::lib', 'sudo' or 'manual')
 [local::lib] sudo

that’s it. now we are ready to install the DBI module:

cpan
install DBI
quit

for the DBD::Oracle module I decided to just download the source file and to do a manual compilation/installation:

cpan
get DBD::Oracle
quit
cd ~/.cpan/build/DBD-Oracle-1.50*
perl Makefile.PL
make
sudo make install

easy, isn’t it ?

create a little perl script and see if you can execute a test-statement:

echo "#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use DBI;
my @results;
my $db = DBI->connect ( 'dbi:Oracle:host=192.168.10.39;sid=dbs300;port=1530', 'my_oracle_usr/oracle', '' )
         or die "Connection failed: ". DBI->errstr;
my $sql = $db->prepare('SELECT \'connected\' FROM DUAL' )
         or die "Statement preparation failed: ". $db->errstr;
$sql->execute()
      or die "Statement execution failed:".$sql->errstr;
while ( @results = $sql->fetchrow_array() ) {
   print "$results[0] \n";
}
1;" >> oracle_test.pl
chmod u+x oracle_test.pl
./oracle_test.pl 
connected 

time to have fun with perl and oracle :)