Does Oracle support symbolic links under the RDBMS HOME (symbolic links)?
Reference text:
Does Oracle support Symbolic Links in the RDBMS home? (Doc ID 813116.1)
Suitable for:
Oracle server-enterprise edition-version 9.2.0.1 to 11.2.0.3 [Release 9.2 to 11.2]
Oracle Server-standard edition-version 9.2.0.1 to 11.2.0.3 [Release 9.2 to 11.2]
Information in this document applies to any platform.
Answer:
The symbolic links in Oracle home are very strong discouraged (temporarily don't know what to translate into discouraged), the reason is that there are a lot of problems will happen.
Oui the process of installing ORACLE HOME does not include creating $ORACLE _home filesystem structure to the outside symbolic links. Therefore, the subsequent symbolic link to Oracle home may be the UNIX OS vendor, in which case Oracle will not advise you or solve the problem for you.
If additional symbolic links are found in Oracle home, Oracle Global Customer Support will ask you to remove the symbolic link as a troubleshooting step. Please be aware of the following facts:
Even if a bug is registered with the Oracle Development department, the customer is asked to reproduce the customer's reported problem without additional symbolic links.
Additional symbolic links often lead to various problems and errors, such as OUI,DBCA,NETCA and other GUI tools.
Processes and commands, including the Relink command and the Opatch tool, are also incompatible with symbolic links, and they cannot work in the form of symbolic links created.
Consider this example: Oracle HOME uses an additional symbolic link that points to the outside of the $ORACLE _home filesystem structure.
The system may run correctly before this environment is treated as cloning source (see Note 300062.1, "How to Clone an Existing Server installation Using OUI"). However, in clone's target system, these symbolic links are not valid, and the symbolic links point to files and directories that do not exist in target system.
There is also the possibility that the problem has been lurking on the source system (lie dormant) and has not been found until an event (such as Relink) is initiated on the target system.
Another example: the additional damage caused by symbolic links (collateral damage) is the filesystem structure that installs the RDBMS software to the presence of symbolic links.
The ORACLE Central Inventory (OCI) does not use $oracle_ because the full path file name and nomenclature (nomenclature) are not actually used for $oracle_home. Home full path file name and nomenclature (nomenclature), this frequently leads to subsequent problems when the Opatch utility reports that the OCI D OES not has that Oracle home listed.
This situation will prevent you from playing patch or Patchset in $oracle_home.
Additional Attention:
1.) If you were unsure what a symbolic link was, please see Note 1013357.6 "What is symbolic LINKS?"
2.) One of the more common reasons that Customers mistakenly add symbolic links to an $ORACLE _home filesystem structure is to gain additional effective free space within that structure.
3.) You can list all of the symbolic links within a $ORACLE _home filesystem structure with the following UNIX OS command:
Find $ORACLE _home-type L-print
4.) The few symbolic links that the OUI (aka Runinstaller) places within the $ORACLE _home filesystem structure is to Prov IDE both a generic name and a version=specific name for a library file, such as:
/u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/ctx/lib/libicuuc.so
/u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/ctx/lib/libicuuc.so.26.1
These symbolic links is created by the OUI during the creation of the binaries, and is present because the OUI create D them for the binaries to work correctly. These references is recorded again in the OCI in binary mode and cannot is changed.