Monday, March 20, 2017

Oracle Database 12c Perl Distribution and VirtualBox/VMware

The Perl 5.14.1 distribution included with the Oracle 12c Database instance is flawed and crashes when given the true CPUID for the processor. This can happen in several cases, especially when installed on MacOS, VirtualBox, or VMware with newer Intel processors.

This behavior, and solutions, is documented in several places, including here by Laurent Leturgez and here by Danny Bryant. Most noticeably, it occurs when the Perl scripts are run during the creation of a multitenant database using dbca.

The problem hit me hard using virtual computers during a customized Oracle boot camp I am teaching as I write this. The purpose is to document what I found out and how I decided to fix it.