Question about Oracle and sqlplus

[Martin McCormick]

This question is really meant for the oracle-l list which I
can not get posting privileges to for some sort of technical
reason unknown to me other than the fact I am not in some kind
of trouble.

	I installed the  following files on a ubuntu system:

instant client-basic-linux32-11.1.0.7.zip
instantclient-sqlplus-linux32-11.1.0.7.zip

	and appear to have gotten all the libraries included in
to a place where sqlplus finds them. Strace -e trace=file is
your friend, here. I need to connect to a remote SQL server and
am thoroughly stuck. strace reports that it is looking for
sqlnet.ora which it finds. I also have tnsnames.ora which should
tell sqlplus where the remote server is but strace doesn't even
show that sqlplus wants this file. Instead, it calls for
something referred to as tnsnav.ora which I have not seen in the
hand full of how-to's that are out there in various places.

	I get the impression that sqlplus is working because if
you run it, it wants to connect you to a local sql data base
which is understandable because it doesn't know about the remote
server yet. There is no local DB.

	I really know very little about Oracle but know
something about Unix and have been asked to get this going so we
can query the remote data base, modify some fields and use them
to feed back to yet another remote system so we are doing
back-end processing. It took me some time to even understand
what the instant client did so I am slowly learning. Here is the
sqlnet.ora file followed by a redacted version of tnsnames.ora:

# SQLNET.ORA

NAMES.DEFAULT_DOMAIN = it.okstate.edu
# SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES= (NTS)
NAMES.DIRECTORY_PATH= (HOSTNAME, TNSNAMES)

_______________________________________________________________________________
_
# TNSNAMES.ORA

dbhost.it.okstate.edu =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS_LIST =
      (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = dbhost.it.okstate.edu)(PORT = 1521))
    )
    (CONNECT_DATA =
      (SERVICE_NAME = cartoon_sounds)
    )
  )

_______________________________________________________________________________
_

	Presently, it prompts for a login name, password and
then tells you you have the wrong service name and starts
prompting all over again. If the libraries are not present, it
crashes with the appropriate error message so right now, the
only thing it appears not to be doing is finding the remote
Oracle server because it is not reading tnsnames.ora.

	As for why I can not get permission to post, I have no
clue. Messages to the addresses listed seem to vanish in to thin
air without any response, positive or negative.

	Many thanks for any suggestion that will put sqlplus in
touch with the remote server.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group