Oracle 18.4.0 for IBM AIX is available since mid November 2018. But I’ve received several emails from people saying that Oracle 18.4.0 installation on AIX may fail with ORA-40238. And it’s true, this can happen. But there’s a simple workaround which unfortunately is not in the documentation yet. We’ll take care that it will be added soon.
Oracle 18.4.0 installation on AIX may fail with ORA-40238
First of all, this is an error pattern you may see on IBM AIX only. You may receive the following error message either during installation or startup of ASM or any database instance:
ORA-40238: invalid linear algebra shared library /u01/app/oracle/product/18.0.0/grid_1/lib/libora_netlib.so
When you query MyOracle Support with the above error, you will get directed to MOS Note: 2476436.1 – AIX: ORA-40238 During Instance Startup in Oracle Restart. But the error is not tied to Oracle Restart. It happens independently of Grid Infrastructure’s presence.
Why does it happen?
With Oracle Database 18.4.0 during database instance startup the libora_netlib.will be loaded. This is a linear algebra library built using the Fortran compiler. It has dependencies on the IBM Fortran runtime libraries. You won’t see this in Oracle 12.2.0.1 or previous releases. This change gets introduced with Oracle 18.4.0.
You can check the presence beforehand:
[root]# lslpp -L all | grep -i "Fortran Runtime"
How to solve it?
It’s actually way more simple than it sounds. You don’t have to install an complete Fortran compiler environment which as far as I understand, would require a license. No worries.
You will need to install a Fortran Runtime Environment (RTE) which is license-free and available from the IBM page.
The page displays also the installation instructions. There may be newer version of the Fortran RTE package available. Please check on IBM’s page.
Summary and Links
Beginning with Oracle Database and Grid Infrastructure 18.4.0 you will need a Fortran Runtime Environment (no license costs) installed on your IBM AIX machines. Otherwise either installation or startup of any instances will fail with ORA-40238.
Find more information here:
- MOS Note: 2476436.1 – AIX: ORA-40238 During Instance Startup
- https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24044611
- https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ibm10725779
As soon as the release notes are updated and a separate MOS note has been published, I will update this blog post. And thanks to the guys internally who helped me compiling this information.
–Mike
