FreeBSD7Ï°²×°php5-oci8

This post is intented to help those trying to install PHP with Oracle support on FreeBSD. I’ll just note that this setup was tested and implemented in FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE. I also assume that your ports location is /usr/ports.

1. Install necessary FreeBSD ports

1. Oracle instant client: /usr/ports/databases/linux-oracle-instantclient-basic/
   You’ll need to download a Linux version of instant client from http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/oci/instantclient/index.html and put it in /usr/ports/distfiles/oracle. The exact version will depend on the freshness of your port revision. At the moment of writing it is “instantclient-basic-linux32-10.2.0.2-20060331.zip”.
2. Oracle instant client SDK: /usr/ports/databases/linux-oracle-instantclient-sdk/
   Another file for download from Oracle (location and destination are the same like in step 1). File name at the moment of writing is “instantclient-sdk-linux32-10.2.0.2-20060331.zip”.
3. Oracle8-client: /usr/ports/databases/oracle8-client/
   Unofficial port of Linux version Oracle client. After doing “make install” go to /usr/local/oracle8-client/freebsd. Execute redefine-syms.sh, then - make, make patch and make install. If make fails with redefinition of gethostbyname_r function error, open oci8stub.c for editing and delete the declaration of this function in this file. Now it should compile correctly. After doing make install, symlink /lib/liboci8stub.a to /usr/local/oracle8-client/lib.

2. Environment setup

1. (optional) Set linker options. If you’re using bash, type: export LDFLAGS=”-lcompat -lpthread”
2. Set ORACLE_HOME location. If you’re using bash, type: export ORACLE_HOME=”/usr/local/oracle8-client”

3. Install PHP5

1. Install PHP5 base from /usr/ports/lang/php5 (make && make install)
2. Install PHP5 extensions from /opt/ports/lang/php5-extensions (make - for typical ncurses menu - simple but very convenient) NOTE: you won’t find OCI8 or other database extensions here - they are located in the other location
3. Install PHP5-OCI8 extension from /usr/ports/databases/php5-oci8 (you’ll find all other available PHP5 database extensions in /usr/ports/databases)

4. Tips

1. It is mandatory that ORACLE_HOME environment variable is set to /usr/local/oracle8-client during startup of Apache (or any other web server of your choice).
2. If you want to use tnsnames.ora then put it into /usr/local/oracle8-client/network/admin. Adjust necessary settings in sqlnet.ora as well.
3. In some cases setting TNS_ADMIN environment variable to /usr/local/oracle8-client/network/admin is necessary.