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If we want to use a database from PHP, we need to install OCI8 extension, which it will provide an API to the use of Oracle databases. Installing OCI8 on Ubuntu is not as easy as doing an apt-get, as it takes some SDK packages provided by Oracle and their distribution license prevents that can be included in Linux distributions. This means we will have to download and compile them ourselves. 

Below is the steps to follow:

 1. Install PEAR and PECL.

2. Download ''Oracle Instant Client''. We need at least the following packages 'Basic' and 'SDK'.

3. Unzip the files

The 'X' should be replaced by the appropriate version.

4. Create symbolic links.

5. Add 'instant client' to the system.

6. Compiling oci8

WARNING: If you are behind a proxy, you have to run:


7. Enter 'instantclient, / opt / oracle / instantclient' when prompted on the command line.

8.Enable the extension.

9. Restart apache2.

We should now have available OCI8 extension to use from our PHP applications.

Recently I needed to create a batch file to back up a file on a FTP from another machine. It was not as trivial as might be expected initially, but once you've found out is pretty easy, I put it here in case someone finds it useful.

You just have to create a file with execute permissions containing the following lines:


#!/bin/bash
ftp -n -v xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx << EOT
user username password
prompt
put filename
bye
EOT