Installing Oracle Instant Client 11_2 on SuSE 11.4

[NeoGraven]

First, make sure you have some essentials. You will need to install the following packages (use zypper or Yast.. it doesnt matter. I will show zypper because you will be in the console anyway to do this). It is possible you may need more than these, so just make sure you have what's below and whatever packages you need to compile modules (such as for ATI or nVidia drivers, or VMWare modules).

zypper install php5-devel php-pear gcc make kernel-devel

Out of habit I put the instant client in /usr/local/lib but you can put it wherever you want.

cd /usr/local/lib

Then, you will need to unzip the instant client and the sdk archives:

unzip /path/to/the/instantclient/archive/instantclient-basic-linux32-11.2.0.2.0.zip

unzip /path/to/the/instantclient/archive/instantclient-sdk-linux32-11.2.0.2.0.zip

Enter the new instant client folder and create a link to the libclntsh library:

cd instantclient_11_2

ln -s libclntsh.so.11.1 libclntsh.so

This should be everything you need to create the OCI8 modules. You will now perform this:

pecl install oci8

You will be prompted for a path, or to 'AUTODETECT'. Just type it in:

instantclient,/usr/local/lib/instantclient_11_2

Once this process is completed, you will have to edit the php.ini files in the /etc/php5/apache2 folder and in the /etc/php5/cli folder and add the following to the end of those files:

extension=oci8.so

We will now have to add some environment variables, so add the following to the end of the /etc/environment file:

# Oracle Instant Client
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib/instantclient_11_2"
TNS_ADMIN="/usr/local/lib/instantclient_11_2"
ORACLE_BASE="/usr/local/lib/instantclient_11_2"
ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE

One last thing to finish up. You will have to add an Oracle environment variable to Apache2, so edit the /etc/sysconfig/apache2 file and add this line to the bottom of the file:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib/instantclient_11_2"


Now, type in

/etc/init.d/apache2 reload

and you should be off and running!