Installing Oracle 10gR2 in Debian Sqeeze

First to note that the Debian version is actually Squeeze/Sid. It is Sid in the pre-release cycle of Squeeze, and the packages in it were up-to date as of Apr 14^th 2010.

An excellent guide for installing Oracle 10gR2 under Debian could be found here: http://linux.togaware.com/survivor/Oracle_10g.html

I've also followed the advices here: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/locutus/install-oracle-10g-on-debian-lenny-27841

Just want to mention several additional things I have faced.

libdb3 is not found in the post Etch Debian releases

So you should take it from Etch repository, or may be from snapshot.debian.net . The togaware guide is probably written for older release of Debian. So if you have other missing packages you might look for them in the previous Debian releases.

Linking problems

I got this:

/var/lib/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/lib//libagtsh.so: undefined reference to `nnfyboot'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [/var/lib/oracle/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/rdbms/lib/tg4pwd] Error 1

The solution is described here: http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=413032&tstart=0 .
It is:

export ORACLE_HOME=/your/oracle/home
cd $ORACLE_HOME/lib
ln -s libclient10.a libagtsh.a
cd $ORACLE_HOME
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib ./bin/genagtsh $ORACLE_HOME/lib/libagtsh.so 1.0

Then click retry in the installer error dialog.

DBCA errors while creating sample database

I've also faced some of these:

BEGIN dbms_olap.validate_dimension('customers_dim','sh',false,true); END;

*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00604: error occurred at recursive SQL level 1
ORA-01578: ORACLE data block corrupted (file # 1, block # 32488)
ORA-01110: data file 1: '/var/lib/oracle/oradata/orcl/system01.dbf'
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_SUMADVISOR", line 1291
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_SUMADVISOR", line 2336
ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_SUMMARY", line 401
ORA-06512: at line 1

no rows selected

Dimension created.

And this repeated for the following statements also:

BEGIN dbms_olap.validate_dimension('products_dim','sh',false,true); END;
BEGIN dbms_olap.validate_dimension('times_dim','sh',false,true); END;
BEGIN dbms_olap.validate_dimension('channels_dim','sh',false,true); END;
BEGIN dbms_olap.validate_dimension('promotions_dim','sh',false,true); END;

I've just clicked ignore for these.

Failed to auto-start Oracle Net Listene using /ade/vikrkuma_new/oracle/bin/tnslsnr

There is a hardcoded path in bin/dbstart. Search for ade/vikrkuma_new there and change the line to:

ORACLE_HOME_LISTNER=$ORACLE_HOME