Download the Oracle Instant Client RPMs from the Oracle website.
Use the alien package to convert and install the RPMs.
sudo alien -i oracle-instantclient11.2-basic-11.2.0.4.0-1.x86_64.rpm
sudo alien -i oracle-instantclient11.2-devel-11.2.0.4.0-1.x86_64.rpm
sudo alien -i oracle-instantclient11.2-sqlplus-11.2.0.4.0-1.x86_64.rpm
Create a network/admin folder inside the installation folder and copy your tnsnames.ora and sqlnet.ora to this directory. My installation folder is /usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client64 .
Set the Oracle environment variables by editing your PATH and adding ORACLE_HOME, OCI_LIB and TNS_ADMIN to your /etc/environment file as follows:
PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client64/bin"
ORACLE_HOME="/usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client64"
OCI_LIB="/usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client64/lib"
TNS_ADMIN="/usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client64/network/admin"
The LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable needs special treatment as per the Ubuntu help page:
echo "/usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client64/lib" | sudo tee /etc/ld.so.conf.d/oracle.conf
sudo ldconfig -v
Install libaio1
sudo apt-get install libaio1
Test client
sqlplus USER@SERVER
That’s it. In a future post I will detail how to install ROracle in Ubuntu 16.04.