[Translated from mos] Does oracle Support Symbolic Links Under rdbms home ?,

[Translated from mos] Does oracle Support Symbolic Links Under rdbms home ?,

Does oracle Support Symbolic Links Under rdbms home?

Reference Original:
Does Oracle support Symbolic Links in the RDBMS home? (Docid 813116.1)

Applicable:
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 (I do not know how to translate discouraged), because there are many problems.

The OUI installation of Oracle Home does not include the creation of $ ORACLE_HOME filesystem structure to Symbolic links outside. Therefore, the symbolic link to oracle home may be obtained by unix OS vendor. In this case, Oracle will not give you any suggestions or solve the problem for you.
If an additional symbolic link is found in oracle home, Oracle Global Customer Support requires you to remove the symbolic link as a troubleshooting step. Please be aware of the following facts:
Even if you register a bug with the oracle Development Department, the customer is asked to reproduce the issues reported by the customer without additional symbolic links.

Additional symbolic links often cause various problems and errors, such as oui, dbca, netca, and other gui tools.
Processes and commands, including the relink command and opatch tool, are also incompatible with symbolic links. They cannot be created as symbolic links.

Consider the following example: oracle home uses an additional symbolic link pointing to the external address of $ ORACLE_HOME filesystem structure.
The system may run normally before the environment is treated as a cloning source (see Note 300062.1, "How To Clone An Existing Server Installation Using OUI. However, in the clone target system, these symbolic links are invalid and point to files and directories that do not exist in the target system.
Another possibility is that the problem remains latent on the source system (lie dormant) and is not found until an event (such as relink) is initiated on the target system.

Another example: the additional damage (collateral damage) caused by symbolic links is to install rdbms software to the filesystem structure where the symbolic link exists.
Because $ ORACLE_HOME does not actually use the full path file name and naming method (nomenclature), the Oracle Central Inventory (OCI) does not use the full path file name and naming method (nomenclature) of $ ORACLE_HOME ), this frequently leads to subsequent problems when the opatch utility reports that the OCI does not have that oracle home listed.
In this case, you are not allowed to create a patch or patchset in $ ORACLE_HOME.

Note:
1) If you are unsure what a symbolic link is, please see Note 1013357.6 "what are symbolic links? "

2.) One of the more common reasons that Customers mistakenly add symbolic links into an $ ORACLE_HOME filesystem structure is to gain additional valid free space within that structure.

3.) You can list all of the symbolic links within an $ 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 are to provide both a generic name and a version = specific name for a library file, such:

/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 are created by the OUI during the creation of the binaries, and are present because the OUI created them for the binaries to work correctly. these references are recorded again in the OCI in binary mode and cannot be changed.