Asterisk with Oracle

...continuation

Now Asterisk:

Having installed unixODBC and unixODBC-devel, I download Asterisk and installed it.

./configure

make or make menuselect

make install

During the execution of ./configure script, on finding uinxODBC and unixODBC-devel installed, it prepares all ODBC related modules for installation, it can be verified it by using ‘make select’ instead of ‘make’. After ‘make install’ had finished, my Asterisk was ODBC enabled, all I needed to do was configure the conf files. 

Before changing the conf files, I created a table called ‘sip_buddies’ in my database, schema can be found here, I had to make some changes in the schema according to my database. I was planning to test peer registration from database.

On Asterisk, I was interested in dynamic mode of Asterisk Realtime Arcitecture (ARA), based on that, I had to change the following conf files:

/etc/asterisk/modules.conf

 /etc/asterisk/res_odbc.conf

/etc/asterisk/extconfig.conf

In modules.conf, I uncommented following two lines:

preload => res_odbc.so

preload => res_config_odbc.so

In res_odbc.conf, I added following context:

[asterisk_oracle]

enabled  => yes

dsn => OracleODBC-11g     ; the context added to odbc.ini

;username => testdb            ;already provided in odbc.ini , may be provided here too

;password => testdb           ;already provided in odbc.ini, may be provided here too

pooling => no

limit => 0

pre-connect => yes

Like username and password, there are other parameters in odbc.ini which may be overridden here in this file, as has been mentioned at the above link.

Finally, I changed the extconfig.conf and added the following line:

sippeers => odbc, asterisk_oracle, sip_buddies

‘asterisk_oracle’ is the database as I created in res_odbc.conf. sip_buddies was the table in my database where peers resided.

After running asterisk, I executed following command on CLI

odbc show

The output showed that I was connected to OracleODBC-11g.

Then I added some peers in my peers table while Asterisk was running and tried to register them on Asterisk through Soft Phones.

Note: I had a little problem here while registering the peer with following output:

chan_sip.c:20603 handle_request_register: Registration from…….. failed for…….. - No
matching peer found.

It was fixed by populating the ‘defaultip’ field of my table sip_buddies, a null value in this field was creating the problem. This problem has been discussed with a patch that is available here. I hope the future release of Asterisk would have it fixed or you can do it yourself from above link by changing the source.

 

It’s all worth it. I was successfully able to register my peers without a reload. Everything I did was working fine especially about unixODBC-devel which seemed like a nightmare!!!!!!

You can do more things with this, I hope this long post (splited into four parts) is helpful to all you guys who dealing with the same issue. Let me know, if it is useful for you.

Asterisk with Oracle

...continuation

Put it all Together:

As a summary of above discussion, l used following components:

•  unixODBC 2.3.0 (available here)
•  Oracle Instant Client 11g  11.2.0.2-both Basic and ODBC Supplement Packages (available here)
•  unixODBC-devel 2.2.11 (Initially unixODBC 2.2.11 is also needed to identify the inter-dependency between both)

As said before, I’ll be using absolute paths for referring directories and file in this discussion. Also I executed all the commands as super user—root.

Following command installed unixODBC 2.2.11 and unixODBC -devel 2.2.11 from repository (you may install them by downloading rpm packages from internet).

yum –install unixodbc unixodbc-devel

Files related to both of these packages resided in different directories after installation which can be check using the commands ‘rpm -ql unixodbc-devel’ and rpm ‘rpm -ql unixodbc’.  Here I was merely interested in identifying the dependency of unixODBC-devel on unixODBC. Apart from other files, both packages had their Static and Shared library files in /usr/lib/ directory.  Some of the Shared library files of unixODBC-devel were actually soft links to the Shared library files of unixODBC which formed the dependency on unixODBC. I was interested only in these shared library files of unixODBC, others had no importance. My plan was to provide unixODBC-devel with these shared library files from unixODBC 2.3.0. That was the only purpose of installing unixODBC 2.2.11 and was supposed to be uninstalled after it had served its purpose. But before uninstalling it I decided to make a copy of all of its files especially shared library files, so that I could use them if I didn’t find any of the shared libraries from unixODBC 2.3.0. I used the following Shell script to copy all files of unixODBC 2.2.11 in a directory /usr/backup/ unixODBC/.

#!/bin/sh
for file in `rpm -ql unixODBC`
do
  cp "$file" /usr/backup/unixODBC/
done

Now I could uninstall unixODBC 2.2.11 using command (yum –e unixodbc) but as unixODBC-devel had a dependency on unixODBC, Package Manager asked to remove unixODBC-devel too which I needed for Asterisk. I used the following command to remove unixODBC package forcing the package not to check the dependencies.

rpm –e  --no-deps unixodbc

This removed the unixODBC package successfully but this made following soft linked shared library files of unixODBC-devel unstable/corrupted having no source file in the directory /usr/lib/ (try ls -lrt). As mentioned before, I had planned to provide these library files from unixODBC 2.3.0.

UnixODBC-devel 2.2.11	UnixODBC 2.2.11
libtemplate.so	libtemplate.so.1.0.0
libtdsS.so	libtdsS.so.1.0.0
libsapdbS.so	libsapdbS.so.1.0.0
liboraodbcS.so	liboraodbcS.so.1.0.0
liboplodbcS.so	liboplodbcS.so.1.0.0
libodbctxtS.so	libodbctxtS.so.1.0.0
libodbcnnS.so	libodbcnnS.so.1.0.0
libodbcminiS.so	libodbcminiS.so.1.0.0
libodbcinst.so	libodbcinst.so.1.0.0
libodbcdrvcfg2S.so	libodbcdrvcfg2S.so.1.0.0
libodbcdrvcfg1S.so	libodbcdrvcfg1S.so.1.0.0
libodbccr.so	libodbccr.so.1.0.0
libnn.so	libnn.so.1.0.0
libmimerS.so	libmimerS.so.1.0.0
libgtrtst.so	libgtrtst.so.1.0.0
libesoobS.so	libesoobS.so.1.0.0
libboundparam.so	libboundparam.so.1.0.0

Next I downloaded and put unixODBC-2.3.0.tar.gz in the directory /usr/local/src/ and installed it by executing the following set of commands:

tar zxvf unixODBC-2.3.0.tar.gz  (This created a directory named unixODBC-2.3.0)

cd unixODBC-2.3.0

./configure --prefix=/usr/

make

make install

This installed the unixODBC-2.3.0’s binary files in /usr/bin/, header files in /usr/include, ini files (odbc.ini, odbcinst.ini) in /usr/etc/ and shared library files in /usr/lib/. The prefix (--prefix=/usr/) passed to the ‘configure’ script purposely so that shared libray files of unixODBC 2.3.0 are put in /usr/lib/ directory to resolve the unstable linked shared library files of unixODBC-devel 2.2.11.

I noticed there were only two files (libodbcinst.so.1.0.0 and libodbccr.so.1.0.0) from unixODBC 2.3.0 which matched two of unstable/corrupted shared library files of unixODBC-devel (libodbcinst.so and libodbccr.so);  highlighted in yellow in above table. For the rest of the files, I copied the original shared library files of unixODBC 2.2.11 of which I had made a backup in /usr/backup/ unixODBC/ previously. After copying these shared library files, all unstable files of devel were stable now. (Again try ls -lrt).

unixODBC can be checked by through  following command:

odbcinst –j

Next I downloaded Oracle Instant Client 11g, both Basic and ODBC Supplement packages and unzipped both of them in same directory /opt/instantclient_11/.

/opt/instantclient_11/ directory contains a script called odbc_update_ini.sh. This script takes four arguments, three of which are optional. I passed only the compulsory argument and leave the optional arguments. The only argument I sent (the one which is mandatory) is the path to Driver Manager that simply means the prefix of etc/odbc.ini and etc/odbcinst.ini.

As I mentioned before when I installed unixODBC 2.3.0, it put ini files in /usr/etc/ so I executed the above script as below:

 cd /opt/instantclient_11/

./odbc_update_ini.sh ‘/usr/’

This script automatically configures the Oracle Driver with unixODBC 2.3.0 by updating two files; /usr/etc/odbcinst.ini and /root/.odbc.ini. (If non-super user is logged in while executing this script, then /home/username/.odbc.ini is update)

In /usr/etc/odbcinst.ini, I had an entry like the one below: 

[Oracle 11g ODBC driver]

Description     = Oracle ODBC driver for Oracle 11g

Driver          = /opt/instantclient_11_2/libsqora.so.11.1

Setup           =

…………….

…………….

…………….

In /root/.odbc.ini, I had an entry like the one below:

[OracleODBC-11g]

Application Attributes = T

…………….

…………….

Driver = Oracle 11g ODBC driver

DSN = OracleODBC-11g

…………….

…………….

……………

I edited the above entry in /root/.odbc.ini, I added some new fields, commented some existing fields (using ;) and changed the values of some of the fields. After these changes its looks like the below:

[OracleODBC-11g]

Application Attributes = T

Attributes = W

BatchAutocommitMode = IfAllSuccessful

BindAsFLOAT = F

CloseCursor = F

DisableDPM = F

DisableMTS = T

Driver = Oracle 11g ODBC driver    ; the entry from odbcinst.ini

DSN = OracleODBC-11g                

EXECSchemaOpt =

EXECSyntax = T

Failover = T

FailoverDelay = 10

FailoverRetryCount = 10

FetchBufferSize = 64000

ForceWCHAR = F

Lobs = T

Longs = T

MaxLargeData = 0

MetadataIdDefault = F

QueryTimeout = T

ResultSets = T

Database = XE                                                   ;db name

ServerName = xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx                  ; db ip

Port = 1521                                                         ;db port

;ServerName = 192.168.0.105:1521/xe                   ; has been commented, may be used as well

SQLGetData extensions = F

Translation DLL =

Translation Option = 0

DisableRULEHint = T

;UserID = testdb                                               ;has been commented

UserName = testdb                                        ;db user

Password = testdb                                          ;db password

StatementCache=F

CacheBufferSize=20

UseOCIDescribeAny=F

I copied this entry i.e. [OracleODBC-11g] in /root/.odbc.ini to /usr/etc/odbc.ini, so both ini files have the entry [OracleODBC-11g] with same fields and their values. 

.odbc.ini (with a dot) is read when db connection is being made by the user himself or herself while odbc.ini (without a preceding dot) is read when a db connection is being made by an application such as Asterisk. (Try odbcinst –q –d to see the driver’s details)

I executed the following command of isql, which is a utility application shipped with unixODBC, to check my Oracle DB connection.

isql –v OracleODBC-11g

I got the following output showing that connection has been successful with the DB.

+---------------------------------------+

| Connected! |

| |

| sql-statement |

| help [tablename] |

| quit |

| |

+---------------------------------------+

This successful connection does not mean that what I did for unixODBC-devel is okay, that could only be confirmed if Asterisk was successful in communicating with the databse. I could make a successful connection with database using isql from unixODBC 2.3.0 without even installing unixODBC-devel. However, unixODBC 2.2.11 wasn’t successful in making a connection with database through isql because that doesn’t work with Oracle Instant Client.

 to be continued

Asterisk with Oracle

....continuation

Note:  As I mentioned previously, this is not a step by step guide of integration of Asterisk with Oracle, I am just writing down everything which I did to make this integration work, which means some of the things I did may not be necessary i.e. there might be some extra steps I did. I didn’t have the opportunity and the time to identify which steps are exactly required. Also in this discussion, I am using absolute paths to referring to directories and files which I had on my system. You can adjust your paths accordingly or just use the ones I did, they are standard places.

Problems and Solutions:

Asterisk works with any RDBMS through ODBC. I was working on Linux CentOS 5, so I used unixODBC—an ODBC implementation for UNIX based Operating Systems. For more details see here. unixODBC (or any implementation of ODBC) needs a driver to communicate with the RDBMS e.g. in my case, I needed Oracle Driver for unixODBC that allows it to communicate with Oracle. There is one Oracle Driver available from easysoft but for this you have to purchase the license- A Problem!!!!!!

So I decided to use Oracle Instant Client with two of its packages—Basic and ODBC Supplement (see here). These two together solve my first problem of a free Oracle Driver. However, somewhere on the web (I can’t remember the link), I read that Oracle Instant Client 10g works only with specific distros of Linux and CentOS wasn’t there in the list-Another Problem!!!!

For which I opted to use Oracle Instant Client 11g—ver:11.2.0.2.0 (available here), this solves both of my problems.

As I said earlier, Asterisk needs unixODBC (an implementation of ODBC), it also needs unixODBC-devel to communicate with the RDBMS. You have to have both these packages installed on your Linux box before you make/install Asterisk if you intend to make Asterisk communicate with a RDBMS. On executing ‘yum’ command to install both these packages (yum install unixODBC unixODBC-devel), I was able to install unixODBC 2.2.11 and unixODBC-devel 2.2.11 packages. The worst thing I came to know: Oracle Instant Client does not work with unixODBC 2.2.11, it needs unixODBC > 2.2.11 and the latest available on CentOS’s repository was 2.2.11. (I also checked at Ubuntu’s Repository on another machine, it was same as CentOS)-Yet Another Problem!!!!

Okay fine!!! I decided to use unixODBC 2.3.0 available here, this fixes my problem but I didn’t find the corresponding devel package anywhere on the web (I was assuming it would be something like unixODBC -devel 2.3.0)-Problem after Problem!!!

After doing quite a lot search for some work around, I decided to go with unixODBC -devel 2.2.11 and unixODBC 2.3.0. I tried to install unixODBC -devel 2.2.11 using ‘yum’ command (yum install unixODBC -devel). This also tries to install unixODBC 2.2.11 showing there is a dependency of unixODBC -devel upon unixODBC -PROBLEMS!!!!!!!!!

Now the new task I had was to identify the dependencies of unixODBC -devel 2.2.11 upon unixODBC 2.2.11 and map them to unixODBC 2.3.0 instead of unixODBC 2.2.11. That means I was going to use unixODBC 2.3.0 and satisfy unixODBC -devel 2.2.11 from unixODBC 2.3.0 for what it needed from unixODBC 2.2.11. If there still are dependencies unresolved from unixODBC 2.3.0, I resolved them through unixODBC 2.2.11 as you see later.

Luckily, this proved to be the last problem that I had to resolve. Following discussion describes how I actually did all the above things.

to be continued ...

 

Asterisk with Oracle

Asterisk works with its conf files where it finds the information it needs. At start up, Asterisk loads all the information from those files, now if you make a change in any of the conf, you have to either restart Asterisk or reload the module the file belongs to. This is our first situation, let’s call it Scenario A.

Now think about a practical deployment of Asterisk where you want do some sort of load sharing having multiple instances of Asterisk. However, you want to have same configuration for all instances of Asterisk e.g. dial plans, peers, users etc. You will have to do the tedious job of updating the conf files for each instance of Asterisk; the situation worsens if you have to make a change in any of the conf files. This is our second situation, let’s call it Scenario B.

Both of these scenarios are not a big problem, if they don’t have to be performed frequently but there are some files which might be required to be updated frequently e.g. changes in dial plans, adding/removing/updating peers or users, these files includes extensions.conf, sip.conf, iax.conf, users.conf etc.

Well scenario A may be resolved by having someone reloading the conf files after the changes, or you may write an external script (e.g. Shell Script) using a command something like asterisk reload and have that script running on regular basis in a scheduler e.g. crontab. However, that doesn’t sound like a reasonable solution, moreover, it doesn’t fit with our Scenario B.

How about putting this configuration information in an external database and having Asterisk to load that information from the database rather than files. That’s solves our problem in scenario B, put the configuration in one database and configure all instances of Asterisk to load the configuration from a single place--Database. Asterisk is equipped with the capability/feature to read the configuration from database through a feature called Asterisk Real-time Architecture (ARA). You can find more information about ARA here. Or you can find this information in ‘doc’ directory of untarred Asterisk directory. ARA mainly works in two modes: Static Real-time and Dynamic Real-time. Static Mode works like the plain conf files i.e. configuration is loaded at the startup and if you make changes, you have to do a reload; asterisk loads the configuration from the database. On the other hand, Dynamic Real-time works in dynamic way, it does load the information at the startup from database but if you make a change in database, it automatically reflects on Asterisk, that means NO RELOAD. Isn’t it great? For example, you add a sip user to database through a front end interface; it gets provisioned automatically on Asterisk!!!!! That fixes our problem for scenario A.

You can find ample information on ARA and its configuration with MySQL and PostgreSQL on the internet and Asterisk’s free book available here.  I’m going to discuss Asterisk’s integration with Oracle. My discussion is more a kind of itinerary rather than a guide towards the issue, it describes what problems I faced with and what did I do to resolve them. 

to be continued...


 

FreeRADIUS with Oracle

Recently working on FreeRADIUS Sever v2.1.10, I found that there are some problems in making FreeRADIUS to work with Oracle. I had the same problem described at here. Following is the problem statement put by Alexandre, at the above link: (Great work Alexandre!!)

Unless I missunderstood the compil process it seems to me that todays source tree is stuck to Oracle 10g. Indeed the configure.in file for the rlm_sql_oracle module has a library name harcoded: libnnz10.
If you run Oracle instantclient 11g (I guess it's the same with a full installation of Oracle 11g) the library is named libnnz11. As a result, oracle linking test wiil always fail even with a correct --with-oracle-lib-dir set.
To be able to compile with both version of Oracle (10g and 11g)
I suggest a new option can be set that would define the version during ./configure.
If it sounds ok for everyone and can be tested by more people (I only tested it on Debian with instantclient_11.1), here is "works for me" patch that introduce the --with-oracle-version switch.

As Alexandre rightly guessed, there exists the same problem with full installation of Oracle 11g. However I reckon there shouldn’t be any problem with Oracle Instant Client 10g or Full Oracle installation of 10g when being configured with FreeRADIUS v2.1.10 and v2.1.9.

Although, required changes have been mentioned at the above link, I am going to provide the complete file here, so you don’t have to make the changes yourself and everything is in place before you start installing FreeRADIUS. This will work for 10g and 11g both instant client and full installation. By the way, I have tried this on Red Hat and CentOS 5. While trying on CentOS, I was trying to install FreeRADIUS Sever v2.1.9 with full Oracle 11g Installation and was struck with the same problem.

Once you have downloaded and untarred the FreeRADIUS tar file. (My untarred FreeRADIUS directory is in /usr/local/src i.e. /usr/local/src/freeradius-server-2.1.10). In this directory, go to ./src/modules/rlm_sql/drivers/rlm_sql_oracle directory. So the complete path becomes /usr/local/src/freeradius-server-2.1.10/src/modules/rlm_sql/drivers/rlm_sql_oracle. Replace the contents of ‘configure.in’ file with the contents I have provided here. (I can upload this file to some location if you need it and if you let me know some place)

AC_INIT(sql_oracle.c)
AC_REVISION($Revision: 1.10 $)
AC_DEFUN(modname,[rlm_sql_oracle])

fail=
sql_oracle_ldflags=
sql_oracle_cflags=
if test x$with_[]modname != xno; then

AC_MSG_CHECKING([for oci.h])

dnl #
dnl # See if the user passed in the oracle_home_dir option and
dnl # use that first. If not, use $ORACLE_HOME. If that's
dnl # not defined, give up. There's no point in blindly
dnl # hunting around for Oracle - there's no standard place
dnl # for it. Any sane Oracle user/developer should have $ORACLE_HOME
dnl # defined anyways.
dnl #

dnl ############################################################
dnl # Check for command line options
dnl ############################################################


dnl extra argument: --with-oracle-version=VER
oracle_version=
AC_ARG_WITH(oracle-version,
[AS_HELP_STRING([--with-oracle-version=VER],
[Version of Oracle to search for. Should be 10 for Oracle 10g and 11 for 11g])],
[case "$withval" in
11)
oracle_version="$withval"
;;
10)
oracle_version="$withval"
;;
*)
AC_MSG_ERROR(Need oracle-version)
;;
esac])

dnl extra argument: --with-oracle-include-dir=DIR
oracle_include_dir=
AC_ARG_WITH(oracle-include-dir,
[AS_HELP_STRING([--with-oracle-include-dir=DIR],
[Directory where the Oracle includes may be found. It should be located under ORACLE_HOME if you have client SDK installed. Use --with-oracle-include-dir=yes if you are sure that your compiler include path includes Oracle include dir. Hint: you might try to do: locate oci.h])],
[case "$withval" in
no)
AC_MSG_ERROR(Need oracle-include-dir)
;;
yes)
;;
*)
oracle_include_dir="$withval"
;;
esac])

dnl extra argument: --with-oracle-lib-dir=DIR
oracle_lib_dir=
AC_ARG_WITH(oracle-lib-dir,
[AS_HELP_STRING([--with-oracle-lib-dir=DIR],
[Directory where the oracle libraries may be found. It should be located under ORACLE_HOME. iUse --with-oracle-lib-dir=yes if you are sure that your linker will find the necessary Oracle client libs. Hint: you might try to do: locate libclntsh.so])],
[case "$withval" in
no)
AC_MSG_ERROR(Need oracle-lib-dir)
;;
yes)
;;
*)
oracle_lib_dir="$withval"
;;
esac])



AC_TRY_COMPILE([#include ],
[ int a = 1;],
ORACLE_INCLUDE=" ",
ORACLE_INCLUDE=
)

RLM_SQL_ORA_WORKING_CFLAGS_FOR_LINKING_TEST=
if test "x$ORACLE_INCLUDE" = "x" ; then
old_CFLAGS="$CFLAGS"
CFLAGS="$old_CFLAGS -I$oracle_include_dir"
AC_TRY_COMPILE([#include ],
[ int a = 1;],
ORACLE_INCLUDE="-I$oracle_include_dir",
ORACLE_INCLUDE=
)

RLM_SQL_ORA_WORKING_CFLAGS_FOR_LINKING_TEST="$CFLAGS"
CFLAGS="$old_CFLAGS"
fi

# Proceed to linking makes only sense if include dir is OK.
if test "x$ORACLE_INCLUDE" != "x" ; then
old_LIBS="$LIBS"
old_CFLAGS="$CFLAGS"
CFLAGS="$RLM_SQL_ORA_WORKING_CFLAGS_FOR_LINKING_TEST"

ORACLE_LIBDIR_SWITCH=
if test "x$oracle_lib_dir" != "x" ; then
ORACLE_LIBDIR_SWITCH="-L${oracle_lib_dir} "
fi
if test "x$oracle_version" = "x" ; then
AC_MSG_RESULT(no)
AC_MSG_WARN([oracle version not found. Use --with-oracle-version={10|11}.])
fail="$fail Oracle version"
else
LIBS="$old_LIBS $ORACLE_LIBDIR_SWITCH -lclntsh -lnnz${oracle_version}"

AC_TRY_LINK([#include

static OCIEnv *p_env;
static OCIError *p_err;
static OCISvcCtx *p_svc;
static OCIStmt *p_sql;
static OCIDefine *p_dfn = (OCIDefine *) 0;
static OCIBind *p_bnd = (OCIBind *) 0;
],
[
int p_bvi;
char p_sli[20];
int rc;
char errbuf[100];
int errcode;

rc = OCIInitialize((ub4) OCI_DEFAULT, (dvoid *)0, /* Initialize OCI */
(dvoid * (*)(dvoid *, size_t)) 0,
(dvoid * (*)(dvoid *, dvoid *, size_t))0,
(void (*)(dvoid *, dvoid *)) 0 );

],
ORACLE_LIBS="$ORACLE_LIBDIR_SWITCH -lclntsh -lnnz${oracle_version}",
ORACLE_LIBS=
)

LIBS="$old_LIBS"
CFLAGS="$old_CFLAGS"
fi
fi


if test "x$ORACLE_INCLUDE" = "x"; then
AC_MSG_RESULT(no)
AC_MSG_WARN([oracle headers not found. Use --with-oracle-include-dir=.])
fail="$fail oci.h"
else
sql_oracle_cflags="${sql_oracle_cflags} ${ORACLE_INCLUDE}"
AC_MSG_RESULT(yes)


if test "x$ORACLE_LIBS" = "x"; then
AC_MSG_WARN([oracle libraries not found. Use --with-oracle-lib-dir=.])
fail="$fail libclntsh libnnz${oracle_version}"
else
sql_oracle_ldflags="${sql_oracle_ldflags} $ORACLE_LIBS"
AC_MSG_RESULT(yes)
fi
fi

targetname=modname
else
targetname=
echo \*\*\* module modname is disabled.
fi

dnl Don't change this section.
if test "x$fail" != x; then
if test "x${enable_strict_dependencies}" = xyes; then
AC_MSG_ERROR([set --without-]modname[ to disable it explicitly.])
else
AC_MSG_WARN([silently not building ]modname[.])
AC_MSG_WARN([FAILURE: ]modname[ requires:$fail.]);
targetname=
fi
fi

AC_SUBST(sql_oracle_ldflags)
AC_SUBST(sql_oracle_cflags)
AC_SUBST(targetname)
AC_OUTPUT(Makefile)


FreeRADIUS needs some library and header files to be integrated with Oracle, these files are shipped with Oracle Instant Client and Oracle Full Package both. You can tell FreeRADIUS where to find these files either by setting some system variables before executing the configure script or by passing some arguments to the configure script. We will stick to the second option here.

On my system, I had Oracle Instant Client (both Basic and SDK Packages) unzipped in /opt/instantclient/ so all of my references to Oracle are based on this path.

Now go back to FreeRADIUS’s untarred directory i.e. /usr/local/src/freeradius-server-2.1.10. Now you can run configure script from here by executing following command.

./configure --with-oracle-version=VER --with-oracle-include-dir=DIR --with-oracle-lib-dir=DIR

On my system this command takes the following form having instant client 11g on the path /opt/instantclient/.

./configure --with-oracle-version=11 --with-oracle-include-dir=/opt/instantclient/sdk/include/ --with-oracle-lib-dir=/opt/instantclient/

On a system with full Oracle 11g Installation, I had to execute the following command.

./configure --with-oracle-version=11 --with-oracle-include-dir=/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1/rdbms/public/ --with-oracle-lib-dir=/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1/lib/

Note: If you are using Instant Client or full Oracle 10g, you don’t have to replace the above ini file nor do you need to send the argument --with-oracle-version=VER to the configure script.

Rest of the commands for FreeRADIUS is quite common as below:

make

make install

I hope this post is helpful to those who are facing this problem.