Running Oracle Database 23ai Free on Raspberry Pi 5 via Podman

16 thoughts on “Running Oracle Database 23ai Free on Raspberry Pi 5 via Podman”

1. 

   Vijiaselvam Nayagam

   2024-12-07 at 16:49

   thank you for a great writeup

   am in installing OraDB on windows server 2022 using hyper-v

   I want to try on Pi5 as I have one unit lying around.

   thanks

   Reply
   1. 

      Gerald

      2024-12-07 at 16:50

      Glad you liked it!

      Thx,

      Reply
      1. 

         Vijiaselvam Nayagam

         2024-12-11 at 19:55

         Hi Gerald

         I have tried twice but it always stops at this …

         Trying to pull docker.io/gvenzl/oracle-free:slim…
         Getting image source signatures
         Copying blob c8d326c895da done
         Copying blob a6cb3aa2f765 done
         Copying blob b3066d703646 done
         Copying blob e47df9f05a8a done
         Copying blob 8005aee7dad7 done
         Copying blob 737938346901 done
         Copying config c623a74f32 done
         Writing manifest to image destination
         Storing signatures
         66a7b9cce43db27898962d47c308317c2f1fea4ff953a902f17631f00865a8ba

         ….
         CONTAINER: starting up...
         …this does not happen

         what could be the issue…

         i use Oracle21c for work running off WinServer2022
         hyper-v – i am v familiar
         Podman & Docker – i am too new
         Linux – I am not familiar too much

         Thank You

         Reply
         1. 

            Gerald

            2024-12-13 at 19:08

            Hi Vijiaselvam,

            On which environment are you trying to start the database? Can you provide more details about the host, OS, container runtime version?

            Thanks,

            Reply
            1. 

               Vijiaselvam Nayagam

               2024-12-14 at 05:09

               Hi Gerald
               am sorry to trouble you
               I installed on a Pi 5 with 8gb running Raspberry Pi OS (Desktop)

               I think I need to learn more bout Podman and I will definitely get it figured.
               If I can manage Hypervisor since dozens years ago, I think I can and will pick this Container stuff up.
               Give me some time to learn and I will get back to you.
               Thanks for your article which got me to venture into Containers

               some background
               For work-related testing, we use a Windows Server 2022 with Oracle 21c running in Hyper-V, we share among team members for testing and trouble shooting.

               I wanted to try Containers on my Pi-5 to learn and see if I could use Containers in replacing my Hyper-V which is quite large (300+ GB)

               Thanks Gerald
               have a great day ahead
            2. 

               Gerald

               2024-12-14 at 11:12

               Hi Vijiaselvam,

               It’s no trouble, don’t worry. 🙂

               Ok, thank you! Raspberry Pis are rather slow when it comes to IO, that’s mostly because they use SD cards and SD cards are not made for high speed write or even random writes. For example, the SanDisk 256GB Extreme PRO (SanDisk 256GB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I Memory Card – C10, U3, V30, 4K UHD, SD Card – SDSDXXD-256G-GN4IN, Dark gray/Black) that I’m using, is rated with only 200MB/s and in the fine print it states only 140MB/s for writes in optimal conditions (Shot speeds up to 140MB/s (Write speed up to 140MB/s. Based on internal testing; performance may be lower depending upon host device, interface, usage conditions and other factors. 1MB=1,000,000 bytes. X = 150KB/sec.))

               When the container starts, it first unzips the database files, which is about 3 GB for the slim image. That is a 21.64 seconds at the best maximum theoretical write speed of 140MB/s. So basically, this means starting a larger sized container on a Raspberry Pi 5 takes much longer than on, e.g. a laptop with an SSD. For example, my old 2020 Mac Book has an SSD that is rated with 2,669 MBytes/Sec write speed. That is 19x faster than the SD card in my Raspberry Pi 5.

               So even for me, spinning up an Oracle Database container takes quite a while on the Raspberry Pi 5. I just timed it and it comes down to 1 minute and 20 seconds without having to download the image first.

               There is also an element regard the CPU. The Raspberry Pi 5 really needs active cooling, otherwise the CPU gets just too hot and throttles itself, see https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/heating-and-cooling-raspberry-pi-5/

               Hope this helps!
            3. 

               Vijiaselvam Nayagam

               2024-12-14 at 19:05

               hi Gerald,

               thanks for the heads up, I totally agree and I will halt the Pi-5 dance.

               Maybe it’s better to fire up an old MacBook with Ubuntu for Podman for my deep understanding and potential future uses.

               do you recommend testing and learning Podman over Linux, windows or macOS

               what is your suggestion

               thank you
            4. 

               Gerald

               2024-12-15 at 10:00

               Hey Vijiaselvam,

               I would recommend Podman on Linux. The Windows and macOS ports both come with some sort of embedded Linux VM and hide some of the important details. They are great for getting containers to run but if you want to get a deep understanding for Podman and containers in general, I’d recommend Linux, perhaps even a Linux VM running on a Windows or Mac. 🙂

               Thanks,
            5. 

               Vijiaselvam Nayagam

               2024-12-15 at 16:20

               Hi Gerald
               Once again it’s refreshing communicating with you.
               Yes I realised that, at my stage of infancy with Podman, when I installed Podman on my M1 MacBook, it fired up a virtual machine and I was confused.

               I think like you said, I will either get a machine to install linux (ubuntu maybe on a VM easier) in my old Intel MacBook and dig deeper into Podman, guess this will be the best option.

               Pi-5 has been put to sleep in it’s box …. ha ha ha
               It does it’s job as an easy method to try some stuff, as easy as plug out & in a micro SD card.

               Thank You very much for your time and support.
               God Bless 🙏
            6. 

               Gerald

               2024-12-15 at 19:31

               Hi Vijiaselvam,

               I’m glad that I could help! Good luck with your explorations!

               Thanks,
2. 

   Bob Bryla

   2025-01-14 at 20:48

   Got it mostly running using docker and this image:

   REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
   gvenzl/oracle-free full 635aaefb2b07 4 weeks ago 3.65GB

   I have cgroups memory enabled; 4K PAGESIZE enabled.

   rpi OS version:
   Linux rpi5a 6.6.62+rpt-rpi-v8 #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 1:6.6.62-1+rpt1 (2024-11-25) aarch64 GNU/Linux

   hardware: 8 GB rpi5. No other configuration changes.
   listener starts fine. DB starts up, changes password. But then:

   Errors in file /opt/oracle/diag/rdbms/free/FREE/trace/FREE_m006_403.trc (incident=529) (PDBNAME=CDB$ROOT):
   ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [OSDEP_INTERNAL], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], [], []
   ORA-27302: failure occurred at: sskgm_mga_at
   Incident details in: /opt/oracle/diag/rdbms/free/FREE/incident/incdir_529/FREE_m006_403_i529.trc

   Searches on Oracle Support and elsewhere have no clue about sskgm_mga_at.

   Very short trace file, the only useful lines seem to be:

   *** 2025-01-15T04:20:15.709231+00:00 (CDB$ROOT(1))
   2025-01-15 04:20:15.708236 : fsd_notify_cb: FsDirect not implemented

   Searches for “fsd_notify_cb” only turned up another user who traced it to a 2 GB memory limit, but /proc/meminfo shows

   MemTotal: 8135708 kBMemFree: 123020 kBMemAvailable: 5509140 kB

   also

   bobby@rpi5a:~ $ docker ps
   CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
   64c84fc58aab gvenzl/oracle-free:full “container-entrypoin…” 19 minutes ago Up 19 minutes sleepy_elbakyan
   bobby@rpi5a:~ $

   The CDB and PDB are open, and seem to be running fine, but I get the ORA-00600 error in the alert log every “x” minutes or so. Makes me think something is still not configured correctly. Thanks in advance for any possible ideas you may have!

   Reply
   1. 

      ANH TUAN

      2025-03-06 at 07:31

      Hi,

      You try disable the oracle parameter _it_memory_cdt=OFF by default is LIMITED

      ORA-27302: failure occurred at: sskgm_mga_at

      docker exec -it your_container /bin/bash

      bash-4.4$ sqlplus / as sysdba

      SQL> alter system set “_disable_memory_cdt”=OFF ;

      Shutdown your database and start your database with docker.

      Check le log by

      docker logs -f your_container

      Regards

      Reply
      1. 

         ANH TUAN

         2025-03-06 at 20:41

         Sorry,

         The parameter is _IN_MEMORY_CDT=OFF

         take care this is undercore parameter

         Regards

         Reply
3. 

   Bob Bryla

   2025-01-19 at 16:29

   Gerald, can you tell me the configuration of your rpi5? Such as kernel version? How is the SD card file system formatted? I’ve also tried the new 16GB rpi5 with the latest version of RaspberryPi OS/Debian.

   In every test after configuring cgroups and PAGESIZE per your instructions, I always get ONLY one error using either podman or docker (per my above comment):
   ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [OSDEP_INTERNAL]

   I’ve searched every possible Oracle Support note, other Linux/ARM blogs, Oracle user community note. At this point, I’d submit an Oracle Support ticket, but… the developer edition behind your image is officially unsupported. 🙁

   Of course this all started when UEK for ARM is only available for rpi4, and 23ai for ARM only runs on rpi5.

   Any other ideas to try or something that is different about my configuration would be appreciated. I’ve tried both the FULL and the SLIM images. Same behavior. The messages seem to point to something I/O related, such as direct I/O. But there are not many places I can look to see if that’s working. I only have one SD card formatted by the Raspberry Pi Imager with the latest OS kernel version. Thanks again.

   Reply
4. 

   Gerald

   2025-01-21 at 14:10

   Hey Bob,

   I’ll provide the details of my Raspberry Pi 5 tonight when I get a chance to boot it up. I can tell you already that I formatted the Pi with the Raspberry Pi Imager and installed the default Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit on it.

   I’ll also check whether I too see the same errors at my end.

   In the meantime, could you please post the entire trace file, which would help to also see where the error is coming from.

   Thanks,

   Reply
5. 

   Gerald

   2025-03-08 at 14:02

   Hey Bob,

   Here are the details of my Raspberry Pi 5:

   $ cat /etc/os-release
   PRETTY_NAME=”Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS”
   NAME=”Ubuntu”
   VERSION_ID=”24.04″
   VERSION=”24.04.1 LTS (Noble Numbat)”
   VERSION_CODENAME=noble
   ID=ubuntu
   ID_LIKE=debian
   HOME_URL=”https://www.ubuntu.com/”
   SUPPORT_URL=”https://help.ubuntu.com/”
   BUG_REPORT_URL=”https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/”
   PRIVACY_POLICY_URL=”https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy”
   UBUNTU_CODENAME=noble
   LOGO=ubuntu-logo

   $ uname -a
   Linux gerald-rbp-builder 6.8.0-1016-raspi #18-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Nov 22 11:55:16 UTC 2024 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux

   $ getconf PAGESIZE
   4096

   $ mount | grep ” on / “
   /dev/mmcblk0p2 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,discard)

   $ cat /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt
   zswap.enabled=1 zswap.zpool=z3fold zswap.compressor=zstd multipath=off dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 console=tty1 root=LABEL=writable rootfstype=ext4 rootwait fixrtc quiet splash

   I hope this helps!

   Thanks,

   Reply

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