Error Message "Can't load 'C:/Perl64/lib/auto/DBD/Oracle/Oracle.dll" While Connecting to Oracle

[TonyByorick]

I am trying to configure an Oracle connection from Perl running on a Windows 7 desktop to an Oracle 11g database running on Linux; however the database connection step is failing.

The following line of perl code fails:

use DBD::Oracle;

The full error message is:

Can't load 'C:/Perl64/lib/auto/DBD/Oracle/Oracle.dll' for module DBD::Oracle: load_file:%1 is not a valid Win32 application at C:/Perl64/lib/DynaLoader.pm line 191. at C:\go\perl\tracker\pingOracle.pl line 17.

The following line of perl code fails with a similar error message:

$dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:Oracle:host=$host;sid=$sid;port=$port", $user, $passwd);

The version of my Perl install is:

# C:\Perl64\bin>perl -v
# 
# This is perl 5, version 16, subversion 3 (v5.16.3) built for MSWin32
+-x64-multi-thread
# (with 1 registered patch, see perl -V for more detail)
# Binary build 1603 [296746] provided by ActiveState http://www.Active
+State.com
# Built Mar 13 2013 13:31:10

I'm running 64 bit Windows and 64 bit Perl. Is it possible the DBD loader is failing because it is trying to load a 32 bit driver?

The Oracle 11.2 client package of drivers is installed on the same desktop PC and these drivers successfully connect my Toad client to the Oracle database.

From the Perl script error message above, it appears Perl is trying to load a driver that was installed along with ActiveState Perl.

Should I try to configure Perl to use the Oracle 11.2 drivers? Or should Perl be loading drivers installed from ActiveState?

Any help or thoughts would greatly appreciated. -Tony

[bulk88]

You tried to load a 32 bit DLL into a 64 bit process. Either "C:/Perl64/lib/auto/DBD/Oracle/Oracle.dll" is a 32 bit DLL (very unlikely), or whatever DLL Oracle.dll links to, and was found in %PATH, was a 32 bit DLL. Use the "profiling" feature of Dependency Walker to figure it out.

[tye]

is not a valid Win32 applicatio­n

...likely means a file has been corrupted. My guess is that C:/Perl64­/lib/auto/­DBD/Oracle­/Oracle.dl­l got corrupted. But that isn't even a confident guess. But it is the direction that I would direct further investigation.

[Anonymous Monk]

...likely means a file has been corrupted.

I think its more likely its the error message that bubbles up gets corrupted ... see Re^7: if Digest::SHA1 loaded Can't load LibXML/LibXML.dll Invalid access to memory location

I've encountered "%1 is not a valid Win32 application " and its never been because the dll is actually corrupted

[tye]

Reading the linked thread, I didn't see a clear cause clearly called out, but it looked to me like the problem in that case was that the DLL's base address conflicted with some other DLL's base address.

Other likely types of "corruption" could be mixing 64-bit and 32-bit components. Yes, I realize that "corruption" isn't the correct term for any of this. ;)

One next step I might do is watch what the perl process is doing when this fails. Is there a sysinternals-like process monitor that works on Windows 7 these days? Even a file system monitor might help in pointing at which library is the real problem.

On Unix, I'd ask lsof to tell me what other DLLs are loaded so I could just check for conflicting base addresses (seems a poor system to be vulnerable to such -- but maybe I misunderstood the real root cause in that other thread). I'm not sure how to do the equivalent on Windows, but that shouldn't be hard to look up.

(Updated: To move the last sentence of the 2nd-to-last paragraph to be the last sentence of the last paragraph, as I had originally intended.)

[Anonymous Monk]

The Oracle 11.2 client package of drivers is installed on the same desktop PC and these drivers successfully connect my Toad client to the Oracle database.

unlikely story :) either you're missing %ORACLE_HOME% in your env

or the DBD/Oracle.dll is linked against something not compatible with what you have in %PATH% ( and %ORACLE_HOME%

To figure it out you could use depends.exe /c /f:1 /pb /ot:temp.txt ... perl.exe foo.pl

or open DBD/Oracle.dll in depends.exe

[karlgoethebier]

Seems there is something about this issue in the manual of DBD::Oracle:

Most importantly you will have to add the Instant Client directory to your path like this c:\DBD-Oracle>path = c:\IC_11;%path% If you do not do this step you will run into the dreaded Can't load 'C:/Perl/lib/auto/DBD/Oracle/Oracle.dll' for module DBD::Oracle: load_file:%1 is not a valid Win32 application at C:/Perl/lib/DynaLoader.pm line 202. If you do not do this step you will run into the dreaded Can't load 'C:/Perl/lib/auto/DBD/Oracle/Oracle.dll' for module DBD::Oracle: load_file:%1 is not a valid Win32 application at C:/Perl/lib/DynaLoader.pm line 202

Don't know if this helps. Regards, Karl

[Anonymous Monk]

Thanks for the many thoughtful responses to my question.

I have not found a root cause for the problem however, I have found a workaround by installing the 32 bit version of ActiveState Perl and using it rather than the 64 bit version.

With 32 bit Perl, "$dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:Oracle:host=$host;sid=$sid;port=$port", $user, $passwd);" performs without complaining and then executes SQL and returns the answer set.

-Tony

[syphilis]

I have found a workaround by installing the 32 bit version of ActiveState Perl and using it rather than the 64 bit version

This is further indication that the oracle dll that Perl/lib/auto/DBD/Oracle/Oracle.dll tries to load is 32-bit (as already suggested by others) and therefore can't be loaded by a 64-bit perl.

Cheers,
Rob

[Anonymous Monk]

I downloaded MSFT Dependency Walker> https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/256872 . Then opened auto\DBD\Oracle\Oracle.dll, and was shown which MSFT DLLs were the problem. (in this case Oracle DLLs were fine). Nice tool.