First: Please note - again - that our and Oracle's focus is on the Enterprise Server product line, and that this SuSE Linux 8.0 (Personal/Professional) will not be actively tested, supported or even Oracle-certified.

This is what and we tested:

• Installation of Oracle 8.1.7 EE in a default SuSE Linux 8.0 environment.
  
• "Custom Installation", so that the database is really created at the end of the installation process and not just copied, so that we have a minimal functionality test.
  
• Installation of the development tools (Pro-C/C++) - please note that you can find info about how to configure Pro-C/C++ at the link "small common 8i issues" just above. Compiled and tested some of the demos.
  
• Compiled all OCI demos under $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/demo/ and tested some.
• Check if the Oracle-Apache demo pages work.
  
• Check if the listener works by connecting to the running database through the listener.
  
• Check if the Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM, a Java GUI for administration of Oracle databases) works (do an unset LANG before starting it!)
  

Instructions: Except for choosing "Custom" instead of a "Typical" configuration, which tests more aspects of the installer, we closely followed the document provided for the Installation of Oracle 8.1.7 on the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7. It turned out that this document can be used for SuSE Linux 8.0 without any limitations or additional instructions!

The only thing to report is that the Linux configuration has moved from the file(s) /etc/rc.config(.d/*) to many smaller files in /etc/sysconfig/*, so the package orarun8i.rpm, which was made for prev. SuSE Linux versions, now installs one file into /etc/rc.config.d/rc.config.oracle which according to the new (LSB-standard conform) SuSE Linux 8.0 conventions should be in /etc/sysconfig/oracle. We decided not to prepare an extra orarun-package just for SuSE Linux 8.0, though, because the confusion created by having even more different such packages - we already have one each for Oracle 8i and 9i although except for the default ORACLE_HOME they are really the same - is bigger than the small benefit of having even the last configuration file in its new place.

Very short instructions (not needed if you use the document mentioned above):

Oracle 8i and all Oracle products in the 8i series use glibc 2.1. SuSE Linux 8.0 comes with the next generation glibc 2.2.

The patch for Oracle's glibc 2.1 based products - which is the entire 8i line and iAS 9i - is available on Oracle's OTN download page for Oracle 8i. Please go to http://otn.oracle.com/software/products/oracle8i/htdocs/linuxsoft.html. You may need to provide your (free) OTN login.

SuSE Oracle support package: Download orarun8i.rpm and install it (as user root) with rpm -Uvh orarun8i.rpm. Then read /usr/share/doc/packages/orarun8i/README.

The orarun package

• sets the Oracle environment variables for each user, like ORACLE_HOME and PATH
  
• sets the recommended kernel parameters, e.g. SHMMAX
  
• provides for automated start/stop of Oracle processes at system startup/shutdown
  

Start with a regular installation using runInstaller (after doing the unset LANG).

IBM JRE trouble:
Please have a look at the link above "small issues common to all Oracle 8i versions"!

Bugs in root.sh: Oracle 8.1.7.0.1 (with the OPS option) creates a buggy root.sh:
In the line starting with "RUID=`.... |$AWK '{print... }`" there is one "'" missing just before the very last character, the "`". You can see right here why they missed this... ;-)

Another bug reported to us is that there is a line that exists twice, once correctly formatted and once more with a bug:
 RMF=/bin/rm -f
which should read
 RMF="/bin/rm -f"

While the grey window is up and you have run root.sh, install the glibc-stubs patch Oracle provides:
glibc compat. patch: After ending the installer install the (glibc) patch you downloaded from Oracle. As user oracle, unpack the archive in $ORACLE_HOME using tar xvzf glibc-2.1.3-stubs.tar.gz. This will install a directory $ORACLE_HOME/libs/stubs/, a script $ORACLE/setup_stubs.sh and a file $ORACLE_HOME/README.stub. Read it.

After running root.sh you are done. You may want to exit the installer without waiting for the tools (netasst, dbassist, apache-start) to finish.

Some more small tips:

OPS install: trouble relinking during installation (glibc patch)
Quote from an email from John Smiley (SuSE Linux 7.3/Oracle user):

The problem only occurs if you include the Oracle
Parallel Server option during installation. In
order to get the Oracle kernel to re-link after
installing the glibc patch, you need to add -lnsl
to the $ORACLE_HOME/lib/sysliblist like so:

before: -ldl -lm -lpthread
after : -ldl -lm -lnsl -lpthread

Then relink the oracle kernel:
  cd $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib
  make -f ins_rdbms.mk install
	     
John Smiley

Now that you applied the patch you can continue creating the database.

netasst (Net8 Assistant, Java GUI tool) may not work. It sometimes comes up when called many times, but often does not. If it does not you may want to kill the runaway process it leaves behind (killall -9 jre, this will call ALL jre's). The cause is being investigated at Oracle. It's the IBM JRE's fault, which seems to have problems in the glibc 2.2 environement.
However, the tool netca does work, so you can use that. dbassist also works well.

Mark Dalrymple reports this:
For my setup, if I add "-nojit" to the jre command line in the netasst script, the assistant comes up reliably. Before I was getting "out of memory" errors for both netasst and dbassist.

oidadmin: The Oracle Internet Directory administration tool will not start. Make these changes to file $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oidadmin and it will (note that you also need a Korn shell, SuSE package pdksh):

Change "sparc": change line 12 from
NATIVE_THREAD_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/JRE/bin/sparc/native_threads
to
NATIVE_THREAD_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/JRE/bin/linux/native_threads

Delete "-native" in this line (the last one)
${JAVA_HOME}/bin/$JAVAEXE -native -nojit -ms4m -mx128m -classpath ${CLASSPATH} oracle.ldap.admin.client.NavigatorFrame -AdminRoot:Start -ldap -AdminRoot:End -LDAPRoot:Start -ssl -LDAPRoot:End