installing cx_Oracle on Centos 6

Question

I'm having a heck of a time trying to get cx_Oracle installed.

I've tried various versions of the Oracle libraries. The ones I get closest with the 32-bit 11.1 libraries

oracle-instantclient11.1-basic-11.1.0.7.0-1.i386.rpm
oracle-instantclient11.1-devel-11.1.0.7.0-1.i386.rpm
oracle-instantclient11.1-sqlplus-11.1.0.7.0-1.i386.rpm

I have the environment variables set to: [~]# set | grep -i oracle LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/oracle/11.1/client/lib: ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/11.1/client/lib PATH=/usr/lib/oracle/11.1/client/lib:/home/sekingerg/bin:/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/root/bin:/root/.rvm/bin SQLPATH=/usr/lib/oracle/11.1/client/lib:

and when I run pipinstall, it fails to find the include files:

[~]# pip install cx_Oracle
Downloading/unpacking cx-Oracle
  Running setup.py egg_info for package cx-Oracle
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 16, in <module>
      File "/tmp/pip-build-root/cx-Oracle/setup.py", line 180, in <module>
        raise DistutilsSetupError("cannot locate Oracle include files")
    distutils.errors.DistutilsSetupError: cannot locate Oracle include files
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "<string>", line 16, in <module>

  File "/tmp/pip-build-root/cx-Oracle/setup.py", line 180, in <module>

    raise DistutilsSetupError("cannot locate Oracle include files")

distutils.errors.DistutilsSetupError: cannot locate Oracle include files

----------------------------------------
Command python setup.py egg_info failed with error code 1 in /tmp/pip-build-root/cx-Oracle
Storing complete log in /root/.pip/pip.log

Here's the rpms that have been installed:

[~]# rpm -qa | grep -i oracle
oracle-instantclient11.1-devel-11.1.0.7.0-1.i386
oracle-instantclient11.1-sqlplus-11.1.0.7.0-1.i386
oracle-instantclient11.1-basic-11.1.0.7.0-1.i386
[~]#

I also tried to install the cx_Oracle rpm: cx_Oracle-5.1.2-11g-py33-1.x86_64.rpm and that didn't work either.

[~]# rpm -ipv cx_Oracle-5.1.2-11g-py33-1.x86_64.rpm
Preparing packages for installation...
cx_Oracle-5.1.2-1

But after that install, it's still not recognized.

[~]# python3
Python 3.3.2 (default, Nov 18 2013, 12:27:03) 
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-3)] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import cx_Oracle
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named 'cx_Oracle'
>>>

Answer 1

I wrote this script about one years ago for install cx_Oracle in debian:

TMP_ORACLE_HOME="/usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client64"
dpkg -i $PWD/libpython3.2_3.2.3-2_amd64.deb
dpkg -i $PWD/libaio1_0.3.107-7_amd64.deb
dpkg -i $PWD/oracle-instantclient11.2-basic_11.2.0.3.0-2_amd64.deb
echo "$TMP_ORACLE_HOME/lib" > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/oracle.conf
echo "export ORACLE_HOME=$TMP_ORACLE_HOME" > /etc/profile.d/oracle.sh
dpkg -i $PWD/cx-oracle_5.1.2-2-py32_amd64.deb
cd /usr/lib/python3.2
mv site-packages dist-packages
ln -s dist-packages site-packages
ldconfig

Answer 2

I also encountered this situation. The issue was a permissions issue due to installations requiring "sudo" permissions for "pip install".

NOTE: I'm using oracle linux 6, so mileage may differ

Here is the directory listing where cx_Oracle.so was sent following build so you can see the default permissions (compare to cx_Freeze, for example, which has world access):

[vagrant@oracle /]$ ll /usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages
total 4308
drwxr-xr-x   5 root root   4096 Jan 17 09:48 cx_Freeze
drwxr-x---   2 root root   4096 Jan 17 11:30 cx_Oracle-5.1.2-py2.6.egg-info
-rwxr-x---   1 root root 351475 Jan 17 11:30 cx_Oracle.so

I could identify this issue with the following, which executes python as root, and then "import cx_Oracle" works:

[vagrant@oracle cx_OracleTools-8.0]$ sudo ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client64 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:/usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client64/lib python
Python 2.6.6 (r266:84292, Oct 15 2013, 07:32:41) 
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-4)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import cx_Oracle
>>> 

So... I hit it over the head with a hammer... and let my user own it all (which is the wrong solution, admittedly, and may have later fallout. - I would love to hear the right way to let my vagrant user "pip install"

Hope this help, J

Answer 3

Nothing I did could resolve the library issue. While Farhadix's suggestion was helpful, I could not get past this error when doing an "import cx_Oracle":

ImportError: libpython3.3m.so.1.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I ended up removing the cx_Oracle package (rpm -e cx_Oracle-5.1.2-1.x86_64) and building the module from source following instructions from here . That was what I needed to do to get the extension to work on CentOS 6.4 with python 3.3.