Oracle 9.2.0.6 and Oracle 9.2.0.8 on same SG cluster

[Pedro Cirne]

Hi,

I have a 2 nodes cluster with Oracle 9.2.0.6 and Oracle 9.2.0.8 both installed on both nodes under the same user "oracle"...

The cluster has 2 packages, one uses Oracle 9.2.0.6 and the other Oracle 9.2.0.8.

The problem is that package control scripts make a "su - oracle" for starting/stoping/monitoring DB so I have problems with the environment variables like ORACLE_HOME.

What is the best practice for this cenário, having one user for each Oracle version would be the correct approach?

[Luk Vandenbussche · Accepted solution]

Create a separate start/stop/monitor script for each oracle DB
In this script you can specify the oracle variables

fe start_oracle6 / stop_oracle6 / monitor_oracle6
with $ORACLE_HOME=9.2.0.6

start_oracle8 / stop_oracle8 / monitor_oracle8
with $ORACLE_HOME=9.2.0.8

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Best practice is to run one version of Oracle.

If that is impossible, you will have to add code to each oracle environment to point ORACLE_HOME ORACLE_SID and other variables to the correct path for that version of Oracle.

Generally if you include 9.2.0.6 or 9.2.0.8 iin the PATH to ORACLE_HOME the problem is resolved.

You may be able to do this with 1 user, by having different startup scripts. We got around a mixed Oracle 8 & 9 server with variables, but I've seen people have users oracle8 and oracle9. That kind of makes the whole profile file issue simpler.

If the control scripts have a variable set for the ORACLE version, they should work correctly in this context.

Either way you slice it, you will be writing some shell script code.

SEP

[Julio Yamawaki]

Hi,

In fact, you can use as many version of Oracle as you need.
First, use an oracle user for each version, i.e., oracle9206 for Oracle 9.2.0.6, oracle9208 for Oracle 9.2.0.8, oracle10gr2 for Oracle 10.2.0.x....
What you need to know is that, each version of Oracle need to run in a separate package with separate oracle user.
If you use SG Toolkit, the monitor script will isolate your ora_ processes by using sid name.
You must configure listeners with at least different port number.

Regards,

[Rita C Workman]

As others have stated there are work-a-rounds. Each has it's good points.

Here we run alot of oracle databases, and in a MC/SG failover environment. Ours is a bit elaborate for many databases and making it all failover tolerant.

But to make it short and sweet for your 2 database environment - why not just create two unique oracle account names. One for each instance.

Just a thought,
Rita

[rariasn]

Hi Pedro,

Use a profile file.

su - oracle -c '
. /home/oracle/orainstance1/conf/profile_BD1

...

sqlplus /nolog <connect / as sysdba
startup pfile=/oracle1/BD1/initBD1.ora
exit;
EOF
'

For each pakage..

rgs

[Pedro Cirne]

Hi All,

As I use ECMT SG Oracle Scripts to build the packages and I want to keep them "standard", my option will be to create different user accounts for each Oracle version.

Thank you all for the different approaches to solve this issue.

Pedro Cirne