and now we present… 11g and Apex on Ubuntu

Thanks to a completed messed-up Windows (I managed to demolish my network connections beyond repair) and a helpful tutorial from Dizwell’s blog (thank you oh so very much!) I installed Ubuntu 7.10 (codenamed Gutsy Gibbon) on my laptop, and afterwards, Oracle 11g. I probably wouldn’t have made without Google and especially Dizwell’s tutorial, but in the end it was quite easy. Mind you, Oracle does not support Ubuntu as platform for it’s products, and over 30 MB of additional linux-sources are necessary for Oracle 11g to work, as well as setting a range of variables and symbolic links. The script linked on Dizwell’s blog does it all for you!

Only thing I really had to set my teeth in was finding a way to enable Apex in this configuration.
When Oracle says ‘Apex comes with the 11g database’ it does not mean you are set to go after installation of the database!

I might as well give it away to you now, it’s all described in chapter 4.5 : post-installation step for Apex. But I found it very confusing though because the manual describes the  two options (Apache HTTP and the pl/sql gateway) in the same chapter.

So 11g chooses the Oracle XML DB HTTP Server with the embedded PL/SQL gateway as a default instead of good ol’ Apache! Saves you some steps in the process, for instance copying the images directory. Makes me wonder if this is the way to go in the future, putting as much of your files and configuration options as possible into the database itself. I wouldn’t mind, being a bit annoyed with al the httpd.conf, marvel.conf and all other little files shattered throughout the Oracle home.

Connect as sysdba, run the apxconf script in $ORACLE_HOME/apex,
provide a new password for admin, and a port name (I chose 7777). Then
issue an ALTER USER ANONYMOUS ACCCOUNT UNLOCK; (isn’t that a possible security issue?)

I think it went wrong there, because whatever I tried and messing with the DMS_EPG package, no apex page was popping up. In the end I tried running the apex_epg_config.sql (the one parameter you need to fill in is the oracle home dir) and now login the page was showing but nothing worked.

Anyway, re-executing apxconf.sql and setting the portnumber to port 8080 (the default!) finally did the trick. One small step for mankind, one big step for me 🙂