I was asked to install Oracle 10gR2 on one of the clients new machines. Of course I had trouble installing it, since the OS was CentOS and not one of the certified Oracle platforms. The trouble with installing Oracle x64 on non-supported systems is the relinking process. You always run into libraries that cannot be found, or some other shit that’s still looking for 32-bit software/libraries. In my opinion x64 should be the default and all server software should be backported to x86, but that’s just my opinion.
Thanks to this post I was able get Oracle to install properly, basically because the list of prerequisite packages in Oracle’s installation guide is to short. This list (at least on CentOS 5.4) should do the trick:
binutils-2.17.50.0.6-2.el5
compat-gcc-34-3.4.6-4
compat-gcc-34-c++-3.4.6-4
compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-61
compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-61(i386)
control-center-2.16.0-14.el5
gcc-4.1.1-52.el5
gcc-c++-4.1.1-52.el5
gdbm-1.8.0-26.2.1
glibc-2.5-12
glibc-common-2.5-12
glibc-devel-2.5-12
glibc-devel-2.5-12(i386)
libgcc-4.1.1-52.el5(i386)
libgcc-4.1.1-52.el5(x86_64)
libgnome-2.16.0-6.el5
libstdc++-devel-3.4.3-22.1
libXp-1.0.0-8.i386
libXp-1.0.0-8.x64
make-3.81-1.1
sysstat-7.0.0-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
util-linux-2.13-0.44.e15.x86_64
You don’t need the exact versions. Just do a “yum install compat-gcc-34” for instance, and if the installed version is higher, you’re safe.