Oracle 11g Troubleshooting

Overview of MIT Oracle 11g installer:

The MIT Oracle 11gR2 installer is a silent wrapper which

• Creates a sqlnet.ora file, including a dynamically generated crypto seed,
• Adds ldap.ora and sqlnet.ora to the machine
• Runs the standard Oracle 11gR2 installer, installing the Administrator client.

Troubleshooting Steps

One: Error messages related to TNS Connect Identifier or Service Name

This error message indicates that the Oracle installer has successfully completed, but is unable to connect to the desired database.
"TNS could not resolve connect identifier specified", "...could not resolve service name"

Two: Check whether Oracle client application was installed.

• A successful Oracle 11g install will create C:\oracle\product\11.2.0\client\BIN, as well as
  C:\oracle\product\11.2.0\client\network and more than 50 additional folders.
• If this directory structure was not created or is incomplete, the install was not successful.
• You can also try to establish a connection to the Data Warehouse using SQLPlus. See: Test whether the Oracle client is successfully installed

Three: Download the manual Oracle installer

If the install was not successful, the manual installer can be a helpful troubleshooting tool.

• The MIT Manual Oracle installer is a zip archive, which makes the underlying Oracle installer available. Running the underlying Oracle installer will allow you to see any validation failures which may have prevented the Oracle installer from completing.
• Download the Oracle 11gR2 manual installer.
• IMPORTANT: Right-click on the downloaded zip archive and choose Extract All.
• After extracting, the MIT installer should be located at C:\Oracle_11.2_32_bit_client_installer\install_11.2_32bit_client.exe or C:\Oracle_11.2_32_bit_client_installer\Oracle_11.2_32_bit_client_installer\install_11.2_32bit_client.exe.

Three: Oracle installer requirements

The Oracle installer checks for certain prerequisites before installing, If these prerequisites are not met, the installer will not complete. If the install was not successful, check whether the machine meets the following prerequisites:

• Operating system - Oracle 11g will install only on certified version of Windows 7.
• Length of the Windows PATH environment variable cannot exceed 1023 characters.
  • From the Start button, right-click on Computer, and choose Properties.
  • Select Advanced System Settings.
  • Press Environment Variables.
  • In the System Variables section, highlight Path and select Edit.
  • If the PATH is very long, check for duplicate entries or entries for software that is no longer needed. Remove these entries.
  • Press OK three times to close the Windows properties dialog boxes.
  • Restart the computer.
• 1.02 GB disk space
• 128MB memory

Four: VPN connection is required for Off Campus access

To access applications via Citrix from off-campus locations or from a private subnet, you will need to connect to the MIT VPN (Virtual Private Network) before connecting to Citrix.

See: VPN at MIT

See Also

• Oracle Landing Page