Oracle XE installation on Debian

I just tried installing Oracle Express Edition on Debian 3.1, but without much luck. I guess this really is a beta release.

The linux version is currently distributed as an rpm file, so i converted it to a deb file using alien:

alien -d --test  -c --verbose oracle-xe-10.2.0.1-0.1.i386.rpm

Next I installed the deb file using apt-get, this worked without problems:

debian:/etc# apt-get install oracle-xe
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  oracle-xe
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 6 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/198MB of archives.
After unpacking 384MB of additional disk space will be used.
(Reading database ... 13700 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking oracle-xe (from .../oracle-xe_10.2.0.1-1.1_i386.deb) ...
Setting up oracle-xe (10.2.0.1-1.1) ...
Executing Post-install steps..........

You must run '/etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure' as root user to
configure the database.

So far, so good. But this is where the problems start. I tried running the oracle-xe script as indicated in the apt-get output:

debian:/etc/init.d# /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure
/etc/init.d/oracle-xe: line 16: /etc/init.d/functions: No such file or directory
/etc/init.d/oracle-xe: line 99: init_status: command not found
...
...
Configuring Database...
/etc/init.d/oracle-xe: line 131: /etc/sysconfig/oracle-xe-config: No such file or directory
Starting Oracle Net Listener.
/etc/init.d/oracle-xe: line 493: /sbin/chkconfig: No such file or directory
You need to configure Oracle Database 10g Express Edition before you can start it.

So now i’m pretty much stuck. Anybody know how to solve this, or is this release just too beta?

Update: This article is really outdated. There’s nothing easier than installing the production version of Oracle XE on Debian. You can apt-get install the database, no sweat.