How To install PHP5 and OCI8 “oracle client for php” on Debian / Ubuntu Server

This tutorial covers how to compile oci8 lib with php5 on Ubuntu Server.

For this edition it is assumed that you are issuing these commands from the command line.

Open a Terminal “CTRL+ALT+T” and issue a sudo -i

    sudo -i 

Install Apache2

    apt-get install apache2 

Install required PHP5 modules and libraries

    apt-get install php5-common php5 php5-dev libapache2-mod-php5 php5-cli 

Install the build-essential and php-pear packages

    apt-get install build-essential php-pear 

IMPORTANT! Install libaio1 library. This is what I was having serious issues with originally.

    apt-get install libaio1 

Download the new Instantclient and SDK zip files from Oracle.

link

In my case the files are called Basic.zip and Sdk.zip Initially these files will be saved in my home directory under the Documents folder /home/ubuntu/Documents/

create a directory to house the zip files once they are uncompressed

    mkdir /opt/oracle 

move the .zip files in the “Documents” directory to the /opt/oracle directory

    mv /home/ubuntu/Documents/*.zip /opt/oracle 

Change to the /opt/oracle directory

    cd /opt/oracle 

Unzip the files

    unzip \*.zip 

rename instantclient directory

    mv instantclient_11_1 instantclient 

Change directory to instantclient, list the files

    cd instantclient 

Create symbolic links

    ln –s libclntsh.so.11.1 libclntsh.so
    ln –s libocci.so.11.1 libocci.so 

Create a source directory under /opt/oracle . This is where we will house the oci8 libraries.

    mkdir /opt/oracle/src 

Change the directory to /opt/oracle/src and download the oci8 tar using pecl

    cd /opt/oracle/src
    pecl download oci8 

Untar the oci8 libraries

    tar xvf oci8-1.2.4.tgz 

Change to the newly created oci8-1.2.4 directory and issue the following commands

    cd oci8-1.2.4
    phpize 

Set the ORACLE_HOME environment variable

    export ORACLE_HOME=/opt/oracle/instantclient
    echo $ORACLE_HOME 
    cd /opt/oracle/instantclient

Configure oci8 to install with the necessary parameters

    ./configure --with-oci8=share,instantclient,/opt/oracle/instantclient 

run make to compile

    make 

install oci8

    make install 

insert the extension=oci8.so into the php.ini and cli.ini files

    echo extension=oci8.so >> /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
    echo extension=oci8.so >> /etc/php5/cli/php.ini 

restart apache

    /etc/init.d/apache2 restart or service apache2 restart 

create a phpinfo.php file in /var/www

    vi /var/www/phpinfo.php 

Now go to your browser and run the phpinfo file and look for the oci8 module

http://localhost/phpinfo.php

Download my oratest php template file and configure it with the needed settings.

Test the connection

php /home/ubuntu/oratest.php

Connection Succesful

IMPORTANT

add follwing lines to /etc/apache2/envvars

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/oracle/instantclient_11_2 export ORACLE_HOME=/opt/oracle/instantclient_11_2 export TNS_ADMIN=/opt/oracle/tns/