-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: failed: ERROR OCIEnvNlsCreate. Check (everything)
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 16:30:27 -0400
From: Perl Diety <misterp...@gmail.com>
To: Alexander Foken <alexan...@foken.de>
References:
<q2sb914e70a1004060656o63d399f3le68b76b458079...@mail.gmail.com>
<4bbc460f.5050...@easysoft.com> <4bbcf0b3.7010...@foken.de>
<q2lb914e70a1004081009r8c0efbd5ma60d9cba75d67...@mail.gmail.com>
<4bbe2931.9080...@foken.de>
Hi Alexander, thanks for taking time to assist and consider our issue.
I have to leave for the doctor- but I read your reply and wanted to send
a short answer for now.
To give you some more detail about what works and what does- we've run
Perl CGI on this server for years. We access a MYSQL database every day,
and all of that works 100% fine. We access library functions, system
libs, etc again with no issues. The lone problem is ORACLE 10 access. So
I think this is a good indicator that this is specifically related to
Oracle ENV vars, or something to do with the DBD or DBI.
Our system admn did update the DBI and DBD to the latest version and
rebuilt the server.
Also, the script accesses Oracle fine from a command line. Which sort of
suggests that the DBD is OK?
As far as your step-by-step, I did that, and when I add in the CONNECT
is when this error is thrown and it dies. I tried to get more info like
fatalsToBrowser, inspecting $! and ORa Error codes etc.
Im off to the doctor have a great evening A!
MP
On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 3:06 PM, Alexander Foken <alexan...@foken.de
<mailto:alexan...@foken.de>> wrote:
On 08.04.2010 19:09, Perl Diety wrote:
I wrote the script to dump %ENV (in a MUCH more Perlish way than
the apache version!) but yes, you're correct; I filtered out a
lot of unrelated stuff to make the list more friendly.
ok
I don't think a linux apache server cares about *PATH* does it?
Not sure.
Apache itself shouldn't care, but the programs invoked by Apache do.
If $ENV{PATH} is not set, programs either fall back to a (more or
less) sane default, like /bin:/usr/bin, or simply assume it to be
empty. In the first case, only external programs in /bin and
/usr/bin are found, unless the absolute path is passed to the exec
library functions (execvp, execlp, ...). In the latter case, no
external program is found unless its absolute path is passed to the
exec functions. That can make a huge difference for many programs
that don't contain hardcoded paths.
The message seemed to imply PATH was only used for WINDOWS servers?
On Unix, $ENV{PATH} is only used to find executables. On Windows, it
is also used to find DLLs required by executables. So yes, some
tricks with $ENV{PATH} are only required on Windows, to make sure
all DLLs are found. On Unix, you would use $ENV{LD_LIBRARY_PATH} or
something like that, or entries in /etc/ld.so.conf.
I'm *pretty sure* our ENV VARS for the LIBs and server
correctly- because before we set them we were getting a
DIFFERENT error (cant load Oracle.so). Now we're past that error
onto the next one. So I think the ORACLE_HOME and LD paths are
OK now.
Hmmm, try beginning with a simple and stupid script, then start to
extend it.
I would start with something like
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
print "Content-Type: text/plain\r\n\r\nHello World\n";
Then I would add "use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);", and invoke
the script again to see if it has survived the script.
Next, modify print to dump the entire %ENV after the "Hello World"
line, as readable and as precise as possible. Data::Dumper could
help. Try again.
Next, add "use DBI;" and try again.
Then, add "my
$dbh=DBI->connect("dbi:Oracle:whereever","scott","tiger",{
RaiseError => 1 });" before "print", and try again.
Looking at your last postings, this step should fail. However, the
next step would be to add a simple select-and-fetch, like this:
my $sth=$dbh->prepare("select 42 as result from dual");
$sth->execute();
my $data=$sth->fetchrow_hashref();
$sth->finish();
print Dumper($data);
If you get to this point, your problem should be gone. ;-)
Its a preplexing problem with LOTS and LOTS of difffernt
proposed fixes in the forums. I suspect that's because there are
so many possible problems.
Yes. I think Oracle has grown too much.
As a programmer, I'm not dazzled by the error message. I would
never present my users with a message like "it might be A, or
possibly B, or something to do with C, or possibly SOMETHING ELSE"..
Right, I also don't like message like "oops, something went wrong".
At least, I would expect some extension like "... while attempting
to read the configuration file". Perl makes do_something() or die
"Couldn't ...: $!" very easy.
Instead I would CHECK A, report an A error if found,. Check B,
report a B error if found. And so on. Its unreasonable to expect
a user to react to a message that basically says IT COULD BE
ANYTHING!
In this case, some users say check the locale, language
settings, others say check LIB PATH.
DBI connect(...) failed: ERROR OCIEnvNlsCreate. Check ORACLE_HOME
(Linux)
env var or PATH (Windows) and or NLS settings, permissions, etc. at
/cgi-bin/oratest.cgi line 32
Something in your %ENV is so broken that Oracle becomes confused.
What happens when you try to run the CGI script (preferably the one
I just "invented") from your user account, simply by invoking it
from a shell prompt? (When the CGI module is used, some additional
tricks are needed, like passing Query parameters as command line
parameters or $ENV{QUERY_STRING}.)
When it runs without trouble, compare %ENV of the command line and
%ENV from the script running as CGI, and watch for differences. Also
look at the user and group IDs ($<, $>, $(, $) ).
One "new" feature of Apache is the fact that it does not pass its
original environment to its child processes, like it used to do in
ancient versions. The newer apache versions only create a minimal
environment, to which PassEnv and SetEnv add new environment
variables. So, "PassEnv ORACLE_HOME" is often needed.
Others say its a DBI or DBD / Oracle version mismatch.
Did you compile DBI and DBD::Oracle on that machine or did you use
some precompiled stuff (RPMs, some tar copied over from a different
machine)?
If you compiled it yourself and DID NOT update Oracle or Perl later,
everything should be fine.
Mismatching DBI and DBD::Oracle should cause linker errors, and the
same is also true for a mismatch between the Oracle libraries and
DBD::Oracle.
SOme say its an Oracle 10 security issue and I need to run an
Oracle script to un-harden it?
From a very quick google search for OCIEnvNlsCreate, it seems that
the Oracle client library has trouble finding its configuration
files, like TNSNAMES.ORA, or some libraries. And that happens
because it does not know ORACLE_HOME, or because it does not have
sufficient privileges (file permissions -rwxr-x--- and other ugly
stuff, this is the "hardening").
Alexander
I've encountered very few times in my 20 years as a programmer
where ONE error could be caused by so many possibilities. After
like 4 man-weeks, we're still fumbling with it.
Thanks!
MP
On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 4:53 PM, Alexander Foken
<alexan...@foken.de <mailto:alexan...@foken.de>
<mailto:alexan...@foken.de <mailto:alexan...@foken.de>>> wrote:
On 07.04.2010 10:45, Martin Evans wrote:
Perl Diety wrote:
ENV VARS
DOCUMENT_ROOT = /var2/www/html
GATEWAY_INTERFACE = CGI/1.1
HTTP_ACCEPT = */*
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING = gzip, deflate
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE = en-us
HTTP_HOST = ournode.com <http://ournode.com>
<http://ournode.com>
HTTP_UA_CPU = x86
HTTP_USER_AGENT = Mozilla/4.0
LD_LIBRARY_PATH = /export/apps/oracle/product/10201/lib
LD_RUN_PATH = /export/apps/oracle/product/10201/lib
NLS_LANG = en_GB.UTF-8
ORACLE_BASE = /export/apps/oracle
ORACLE_HOME = /export/apps/oracle/product/10201
ORA_NLS10 = /export/apps/oracle/product/10201/nls/data/
REQUEST_METHOD = GET
REQUEST_URI = /cgi-bin/oratest.cgi
SERVER_PORT = 80
SERVER_PROTOCOL = HTTP/1.1
SERVER_SIGNATURE =
Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) Server at ournode.com
<http://ournode.com>
<http://ournode.com> Port 80
SERVER_SOFTWARE = Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
DBI connect(...) failed: ERROR OCIEnvNlsCreate. Check
ORACLE_HOME (Linux)
env var or PATH (Windows) and or NLS settings,
permissions, etc. at
/cgi-bin/oratest.cgi line 32
This looks roughly like a CGI enviromnent, and the Oracle
Variables seem to be set. But lots of variables seem to be
missing, like PATH and some variabes starting with HTTP_,
SERVER_,
SCRIPT_, and REQUEST_. And the LD_xxx variables shouldn't be
there.
If this is the *complete* environment provided to the CGI,
something is *very* wrong with the Apache.
If not, post a complete dump of %ENV in CGI context, e.g.
with the
printenv script that came with Apache:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
##
## printenv -- demo CGI program which just prints its
environment
##
print "Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\n\n";
foreach $var (sort(keys(%ENV))) {
$val = $ENV{$var};
$val =~ s|\n|\\n|g;
$val =~ s|"|\\"|g;
print "${var}=\"${val}\"\n";
}
Did you really set AND export ORACLE_HOME or LD_LIBRARY_PATH
such that
Apache children see them? I can't remember what the
syntax in the
httpd.conf file is now (SetEnv perhaps) as I no longer use
Apache but
you used to have to explicitly tell Apache which env vars to
allow.
Martin
Two ways:
1. PassEnv VariableName [...] -- see
<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_env.html#passenv>
2. SetEnv VariableName Value -- see
<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_env.html#setenv>
I prefer PassEnv over SetEnv when the variables already exist in
the environment of the process invoking the Apache server. That
way, I don't have to change the Apache configuration when an
environment variable changes. I use SetEnv only to set additional
variables that must not appear in the environment of the process
invoking the Apache server.
See also
<http://alexander-foken.de/Censored%20copy%20of%20Oracle%20Troubleshooter%20HOWTO.html>
Alexander
-- Alexander Foken
mailto:alexan...@foken.de <mailto:alexan...@foken.de>
<mailto:alexan...@foken.de <mailto:alexan...@foken.de>>
http://www.foken.de/alexander/
--
Alexander Foken
mailto:alexan...@foken.de <mailto:alexan...@foken.de>
http://www.foken.de/alexander/
--
Alexander Foken
mailto:alexan...@foken.de http://www.foken.de/alexander/
