PHP fails but SQLPLUS works..ORA-01858

[BJE_DBA]

I installed Oracle to linux Red Hat and PHP compiled. When the developer connects he gets this error which looks like 2 problems:

Warning: OCIFetchInto: Error while trying to retrieve text for error ORA-01858 in /var/www/html/examples/oci.php on line 20

Not sure whats missing..

[BJE_DBA]

We believe we traced it down to file permissions. When starting apache as the Oracle userid the problem disappeared.

After examining /var/oracle we saw that it lacked group privelages. chmod 755 on that dir seemed to allow access to apache for OCI calls via PHP language.

Odd how native Oracle ( sqlplus ) connectivity worked the whole time.

[hrishy]

Hi

Was there anything in the apache logs ...because even sqlplus is just a OCI application..

regards
Hrishy

[BJE_DBA]

I did not know that. I thought sqlplus was native. Well the apache user would fork a process for PHP so I asked the developer who noticed the errors going to the apache logs, to attempt to browse oracle_home/bin and he could not.

So we started apache as Oracle user and everything worked.

That led to the discovery of the high level Oracle dir lacking group rights which was left over from the netadmins failed oracle installa nd I did not detect it when I did my install.

PHP allows for oracalls and ocicalls. The oracalls ( native ) were working. The OCI calls were not. sqlplus was incorrect to add to this because I was after all logged in as 'oracle' for that.

thanks