[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#694379: initscripts: Symlinking /dev/shm to /run/shm makes Oracle Database XE unable to start. Bind mount makes it work.

[Roger Leigh]

tags 694379 + serious
thanks

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 09:47:39PM +0000, Roger Leigh wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 09, 2012 at 05:24:50PM +0100, Jozsef Marton wrote:
> > Thank you, Roger, for your comments.
> > 
> > You're right that the test Oracle XE applies is badly broken. See
> > details inline your comment below.
> > 
> > This has not been reported to Oracle as Debian Linux is not a
> > supported platform for running their Database product. (I will make
> > a try reporting this.)
> > 
> > Though I understand that dev/shm is an implementation detail, it was
> > user for ages and would using bind mount would simplify Debian
> > users' life when they intend to use Oracle Database.
> > 
> > I'm attaching a patch[1] I have tested that makes this behaviour
> > configurable in /etc/default/tmpfs leaving symlink as the default
> > value. I hope that this can be intergated in Wheezy.
> 
> Thanks very much for the patch.  I'll look at merging this, or
> something very similar to it--there are some other details which
> also need taking care of.

Preliminary patch is at
  http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=users/rleigh/sysvinit.git;a=commitdiff;h=9be900ce3dc679f3f49b86b439b90f6937a159aa

This fits in with the existing script logic, and will simply mount the
tmpfs on /dev/shm rather than /run/shm if RAMSHM_ON_DEV_SHM=yes.  Note
that this is currently not tested, so it's not ready for use yet.  And
(note to me), needs to default RAMSHM=yes if RAMSHM_ON_DEV_SHM=yes since
there's no underlaying /run to fall back on.  We don't use a bind mount
because with this approach it's firstly not needed, and also because
bind mounts don't play well in chroot environments. (Another note to
me: check chroot upgrade logic in case /run/shm is hardcoded in the
maintainer scripts.)


Regards,
Roger

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