Many years back, I devised this method to get Oracle client installed on all PCs on the network without needing an installation CD or staged media. It was truly a "necessity is the mother of invention" thing. I had once gone to a client site to find out how they were doing and whether our custom client server application was working fine for them. It turned out that one of their PCs had a hard disk failure, so they wanted me to install the oracle client and application on the newly installed hard disk. I was wondering how I would be able to do it without installation media. However, I took up the challenge and thought logically. We had other PCs which had the application and all I had to do was clone that to another PC. All Windows applications store configuration settings in the Windows Registry. Usually each application has its own tree in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > Software. So I exported the tree HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > Software > Oracle into a file called oracle.reg. I also exported the tree HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > Software > ODBC into a file called odbc.reg.
From the existing client PC, I copied the
1. oracle directory
2. oracle.reg
3. odbc.reg
4. C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Oracle
I executed the oracle.reg and odbc.reg and put $ORACLE_HOME/bin in PATH. I also set environment variables: ORACLE_SID, ORACLE_HOME, TNS_ADMIN in System properties dialog box.
That was it, oracle client was installed and usable.
1 comment:
Wonderful shortcut. I will add this to my toolbox.
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