[ILUG] RHEL clones

[Breno Gomes]

> 
> Lars Hecking wrote:
>>  Hi all,
>>
>>  Has anyone ever come across a situation, anecdotical or otherwise, where
>>  commerical software, or software available binary only, that works on RHEL
>>  does not work on a RHEL clone like CentOS with otherwise identical parameters
>>  (OS revision, package list, patch level, hardware etc.).
>>
>>  RHEL and clones are supposed to be fully binary compatible, but where is
>>  the proof?
>>
>>  I'm trying to assess the likelyhood of a software vendor refusing support 
>>  on the grounds that RHEL clones are not on their supported OS list.
> [snip]
> 
> 	Oracle (9i) is one example I've come across of where they refuse (or at 
> least, have refused in the past) support for a non-RHEL solution. I have 
> used it on CentOS, and had to slightly customise the installation 
> scripts so that they were fooled into thinking they were being run on a 
> genuine RHEL box. The checking was mostly string matching, IIRC so it 
> really wasn't a problem - and Oracle worked excellently on CentOS, once 
> it was installed :-)
> 
> 	Hope that helps.
> 
> 	Best regards,
> 	-->Gar

I agree with Gareth. Oracle has very strict dependencies. Editing the 
installation scripts is a safe route. An alternative method is to add or 
edit the package
/etc/redhat-release

This will work for other applications as well.

There is a patch for 10gR1 (10.1.0.3.0) available on Metalink.
Please be aware the support will be limited to the database only, which 
is not an issue if you are not deploying critical production databases.

Please feel free to send me a private message if you need more details.

Breno