Oracle XE 10gR2 on Kubuntu 64-bit
So I started poking around for instructions on installing Oracle XE 10gR2 on my Kubuntu Hardy 64-bit installation recently. I came across this article from Oracle, which seemed like exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately, it assumes that the intended host operating system is 32-bit, which causes issues if you try to install XE through apt as the Oracle article suggests. After following these instructions, I immediately received this error:
W: Failed to fetch http://oss.oracle.com/debian/dists/unstable/Release \ Unable to find expected entry main/binary-amd64/Packages in \ Meta-index file (malformed Release file?)
After that, any apt command issued (related or not) produced this error.
E: The package oracle-xe needs to be reinstalled, but I can't find an \ archive for it.
And finally, when I resorted to using this excellent guide instead, I ran into this problem because of the earlier failed installation.
dpkg: regarding oracle-xe-universal_10.2.0.1-1.1_i386.deb containing \ oracle-xe-universal: oracle-xe-universal conflicts with oracle-xe oracle-xe (version 10.2.0.1-1.0) is present and broken due to failed \ removal or installation.dpkg: error processing oracle-xe-universal_10.2.0.1-1.1_i386.deb \ (--install): conflicting packages - not installing oracle-xe-universalErrors were encountered while processing: oracle-xe-universal_10.2.0.1-1.1_i386.deb
Luckily, I was able to find a solution to purge the failed installation from the system. One thing that the Oracle article was useful for was creating a swap file large enough for Oracle to use, as the issue described in the article with not having enough swap space did arise when I initially tried the installation. Beyond that, the non-Oracle guide mentioned earlier worked like a charm and I now have a working XE installation on my system.