Forum OpenACS Q&A: Oracle unsupported on Debian Linux?

What are the support ramifications of choosing to run a Production Oracle 8.1.7 database on Debian GNU/Linux rather than Red Hat or some other x86 Linux distribution?

I personally strongly prefer Debian over Red Hat (or any other rpm based distribution for that matter), and I know that Oracle will work just fine on Debian. But I also know that sooner or later, I'm going to get some weird Oracle error and have to open a TAR with Oracle for support. (I'm pretty sure that the only usefull way to interpret "Oracle internal error" trace files is to send them to Oracle, and I've seen that before.) So what I'm concerned about, is when I do need to get support from Oracle, is the Linux distribution I'm using going to cause me trouble? Does it make any difference technically? Nontechnically? Does Oracle care?

Oracle's online Certify tool and this recent PDF summary both basically show "certified" status for Red Hat releases through 7.1, and SuSE through 7.2, plus some other random distributions. Debian isn't mentioned at all.

But just what does it mean when Oracle "certifies" a particular Oracle product / OS combination? What ramifications, if any, does it have when you need to go to Oracle for support? I wasn't able to find any hard info on this on Oracle's websites or elsewhere, and am very much interested in your experiences...

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Posted by Talli Somekh on
Hey Andrew!

Since HP recently announced that they've selected Debian as their distro of choice, I imagine that ultimately Oracle will work fine on Debian. At least, if HP wants any server business it will.

You may also want to try the debian list or debian IRC.

talli

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Posted by C. R. Oldham on
For better or worse, wise or stupid, we run our production Oracle server on Debian (now 3.0 with kernel 2.4.19).  My experience with Oracle support is that they are willing to help up until a point.  Generally when I call them lots of their support people don't even ask which distribution.  I just say "Linux 2.4 with glibc 2.whatever".  Sometimes I add "Just like RedHat 7.[whatever version matches kernel and glibc]".

On an unrelated note that the install actually needs a patch to the root.sh file because awk is in /bin on RH and /usr/bin on Debian.

That said, I would LOVE to have Oracle certify on Debian.

Lastly, I've never had Oracle support say "sorry, we won't help you anymore since you are not on RedHat or SuSE"

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Posted by Sebastiano Pilla on
But just what does it mean when Oracle "certifies" a particular Oracle product / OS combination? What ramifications, if any, does it have when you need to go to Oracle for support? I wasn't able to find any hard info on this on Oracle's websites or elsewhere, and am very much interested in your experiences...
I've recently been in talks with Oracle Italy about this "certification" issue, due to some boneheaded decisions taken by execs at my company. It's not that Oracle won't give you support if you, either by choice or by accident, end up with a non-certified configuration, but it's possible that you'll have to pay high fees if they determine that you've gone outside the boundaries of your support contract.

Note that this is what I've been able to get out of these talks, it's possible that in other countries the situation could be different (but not by much, I think).