Here’s the scenario: I’m writing a setup deployment (installer wizard) project that uses Oracle on a 64-bit system.
Naturally, the installed Oracle Client on the target system is 64-bit. Because Microsoft Installer Executive (MSIEXEC) by default runs in 32-bit mode, and building a dedicated 64-bit project is rather tedious, I’ve resorted to including the Oracle Instant Client into my setup project file.
During setup the wizard will invoke sqlplus to run various database installation scripts. When testing my freshly baked project on the test bed, sqlplus execution ended with code 1.
Well, the problem is: my scripts are configured to exit with code -1 if errors occur during execution. Out of sheer programmer instinct I inspected my setup logs and extracted the specific failed command line out to run it on the console.
The command worked fine.
For a few hours I’ve tried to find out the culprit – changing PATH, altering the script to use “connect”, changing executing user… It just wouldn’t work.
Then I tried redirecting the standard output and error streams (which are originally hidden) from the process into my log file as well.
Sqlplus said:
Error 6 initializing SQL*Plus
Message file sp1<lang>.msb not found
SP2-0750: You may need to set ORACLE_HOME to your Oracle software directory
The error message was very helpful, thank you.
I then checked my default environment variables using “echo %ORACLE_HOME%” – the values looked okay.
So what went wrong?
Apparently some bloody smart component written by a bloody smarty pants changed the ORACLE_HOME environment variable to the current execution directory, which is obviously not ORACLE_HOME.
I did not touch environment variables in my code – so that leaves Oracle Instant Client as the culprit.
Once I changed ORACLE_HOME to the values I find in registry right before launching sqlplus, everything worked like a charm. Bloody Oracle developers.
Yes, this affects imp.exe too.
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