Question

I’m coding a webservice on python that uses an Oracle database. I have cx_Oracle installed and working but I’m having some problems when I run my python code as CGI using Apache.

For example the following code works perfectly at the command line:

#!/usr/bin/python 
import os 
import cx_Oracle 
import defs as df 

os.putenv('ORACLE_HOME', '/oracledb/10.2.0/') 
os.putenv('LD_LIBRARY_PATH', '/oracledb/10.2.0/lib') 

con = cx_Oracle.Connection(df.DB_USER, df.DB_PASS, df.DB_SID) 
print con

But when I run it as CGI I get a “cx_Oracle.InterfaceError: Unable to acquire Oracle environment handle” at the apache error log.

I searched the Net and everybody says that I have to set the ORACLE_HOME and LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variables. Somehow the CGI script cannot access this environment variables even when I define them using os.putenv as you can see at the code.

What I’m I doing wrong? Thanks!

Answer 1

I’ve managed to solve the problem.

Somehow the user and group that apache was using didn’t have access to the environment variables. I solved the problem by changing the user and group that apache was using to a user that I was certain to have access to this variables.

It’s strange (and frustrating) that it’s so difficult to set this variables using Python.

Thanks to everyone that answered my question!