Help with Oracle client support in PHP

[Moby]

Davis, Jared Scott wrote:
> I’ve been trying to get this to work for awhile, so please bear with me (this is going to be long :).  I need Oracle client support for my PHP installation; the problem is PHP was of course installed as an RPM.  Our server is RHEL4 and I have the following relevant packages installed:
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> httpd-2.0.52-22.ent
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> php-4.3.9-3.15
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> php-devel-4.3.9-3.15
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> oracle-instantclient-basic-10.2.0.1-1
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> oracle-instantclient-devel-10.2.0.1-1
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> One method I was given was to rebuild the PHP source RPM to include Oracle support, which would generate a php-oci8 RPM that could then install.
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>> up2date --get --download --src php
>> rpm -Uvh /var/spool/up2date/php-4.3.9-3.12.src.rpm
>> cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
>> rpmbuild -bb --clean --define with-oci8=1 php.spec
>>     
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> I could never get this method to work (no php-oci8 RPM was ever generated), even with trying different options including: oracle=1, with-oci8=1, with_oci8=1.  No luck.
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> Even if I get this method to work, the problem is that I’ll have to rebuild and update the php-oci8 RPM every time I update PHP, which is a hassle.
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> Another method I was given was the following:
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>> Take a working Oracle installation CD of the standard client, install it
>> Edit /etc/ld.so.conf.d/oracle.conf and add the following line /home/giulix/Oracle/10.2.0.1/client/lib
>> Define ORACLE_HOME and all needed Oracle environment variables (TNS_ADMIN, etc.)
>> Install php, php-pear and php-devel (for phpize)
>> Download & install oci8-1.2.1.tgz, cd to it and run phpize. Then compile with
>> ./configure --with-oci8=shared,$ORACLE_HOME
>> make
>> su
>> make install
>> Edit /etc/php.ini and add the following line to the Dynamic Extensions section: extension=oci8.so
>>     
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> I haven’t actually tried this, but I don’t know what phpize is or how to use it, and where do I get this oci8 file?  Will this work?
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> I’m fairly new to Linux system administration, and this is a production machine, so I was afraid to try to recompile PHP from source because I wasn’t sure about RPM compatibility issues (Apache is an RPM, etc.)
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> There has to be an easier way…Someone help!
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> Thanks,
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> Jared Davis
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I am using PHP on SuSE and connecting to Oracle databases fine via 
unixODBC and installing the unixODBC drivers from Oracle.  Have you 
tried that route?

-- 
--Moby

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