Oracle 10gR2 Java installer fails on Ubuntu AMD64

Hello Ubuntu folks,

In the past, I've run 32 bit Oracle on Debian, which worked quite
well, and now that I've just started using Ubuntu (Breezy) on Intel
x86_64, I'd REALLY like to get Oracle working there.

Problem is, out of the box, the Oracle 64 bit 10gR2 (10.2.0.1) Java
installer won't run at all on Ubuntu AMD64.  There's misc. bits of
info on this spread around the net (see links below), but so far I've
not found anyone who's actually made it work.

Who else else here is currently working on and/or interested in
getting Oracle 10gR2 working on Ubuntu AMD64?

So far, I've spent one long day trying to debug this, and (after
making one change just to get this far) I'm still stuck on the classic
error:

  current locale is not supported in X11, locale is set to CX locale
  modifiers are not supported, using defaultException
  java.lang.InternalError: Current locale is not supported occurred..
  java.lang.InternalError: Current locale is not supported
          at sun.awt.motif.MWindowPeer.pSetTitle(Native Method)
          at sun.awt.motif.MWindowPeer.init(Unknown Source)
          [etc.]  

I've recorded my steps and the strace output here:

  http://www.piskorski.com/ora/10g-ubuntu-transcript.txt
  http://www.piskorski.com/ora/strace-1.txt
  http://www.piskorski.com/ora/strace-2-lib32.txt

What seems odd to me, is that unlike other reports of this "current
locale is not supported in X11" error I see on the net, when I run
strace, I do NOT see it trying to open ANY obviously locale-related
shared libraries.  Indeed, I see only these libraries:

  $ unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH
  $ strace /db/cdroms/oracle/database/runInstaller -ignoreSysPrereqs
  $ grep '\.so' ~/misc/strace-1.txt | grep -v ENOENT
  open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY)      = 3
  open("/lib/libncurses.so.5", O_RDONLY)  = 3
  open("/lib/libdl.so.2", O_RDONLY)       = 3
  open("/lib/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY)        = 3

  $ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/lib32:/usr/lib32:/usr/X11R6/lib32:/usr/lib32/i686:/lib:/usr/lib:/lib32/tls"
  $ strace /db/cdroms/oracle/database/runInstaller.atp -ignoreSysPrereqs
  $ grep '\.so' ~/misc/strace-2-lib32.txt | grep -v ENOENT
  open("/lib32/libncurses.so.5", O_RDONLY) = 3
  open("/usr/lib32/libncurses.so.5", O_RDONLY) = 3
  open("/lib/libncurses.so.5", O_RDONLY)  = 3
  open("/lib32/tls/libdl.so.2", O_RDONLY) = 3
  open("/lib32/libdl.so.2", O_RDONLY)     = 3
  open("/lib/libdl.so.2", O_RDONLY)       = 3
  open("/lib32/tls/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY)  = 3
  open("/lib32/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY)      = 3
  open("/lib/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY)        = 3

I'm pretty stumped, and would greatly appreciate suggestions...
Finally, below are a bunch of misc. related links:


32 bit Java appears to be broken (?) on Ubuntu AMD64:

  http://www.adap.org/~edsel/blog/archives/42
  https://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12954

At least out of the box, the Oracle 10gR2 installer definitely doesn't
want to run on Ubuntu AMD64:

  http://groups.google.com/group/linux.debian.ports.x86-64/browse_frm/thread/7368b5e597b68fb/
  http://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=337745

On Metalink, Oracle publishes a Perl script which checks lots of Linux
settings prior to doing the RDBMS install, "Pre-Install checks for
10gR1 RDBMS (10.1.x) - Linux AMD64/EM64T Platforms":

  https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/showdoc?db=NOT&id=296665.1&blackframe=1

Oracle's Quick Installation Guide (Part No. B14402-01, October 2004)
is for 10g Release 1 (10.1.0.3) on Linux x86-64, and thus its lists of
prerequisites, etc. are out of date:

  http://download-east.oracle.com/docs/html/B14402_01/qig_master.htm

Metalink Note:339510.1 "Requirements for Installing Oracle 10gR2 RDBMS
on RHEL 4 on AMD/EM64T" (09-NOV-2005), gives a bunch of newer settings
and pre-requisites:

  https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/ml2_documents.showDocument?p_database_id=NOT&p_id=339510.1

Apparently people are having problems installing 10gR2 on Red Hat EL
4.0 as well, although here there are successfull work arounds:

  31-Oct-05, unable to install oracle 10g R2 (x86_64) on RHEL AS 4 x86_64:
  https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/ml2_documents.showDocument?p_database_id=FOR&p_id=615934.992
  31-Oct-05 10gR2 RHE 4 - Link error on Installation:
  https://metalink.oracle.com/metalink/plsql/ml2_documents.showDocument?p_database_id=FOR&p_id=615191.993

-- 
Andrew Piskorski <atp at piskorski.com>
http://www.piskorski.com/