oci_connect(): Not working for thread-safe - OCIEnvNlsCreate() failed. There is something wrong with your system - environment variable issue

[laurinkeithdavis]

Sorry for the bad title.

We are using PHP on Windows and have been using this extension for years with PHP non-thread-safe (NTS). We are now having to switch to thread-safe (TS) PHP so that we can use the actively developed Snowflake PDO extension, which will only compile on Windows as thread-safe. Using the OCI8 extension with TS, we get this error:

oci_connect(): OCIEnvNlsCreate() failed. There is something wrong with your system - please check that PATH includes the directory with Oracle Instant Client libraries

The only way to make this work for TS is to copy the Instant Client files (just the relevant DLLs) into the PHP folder.

After extensive testing, it appears that the driver (not the extension) does not "see" the environment variables we have set (PATH or TNS_ADMIN).
I have even compiled the extension myself using SDK from the same version of the Oracle Instant Client, but it still fails with the same error. Again, using the NTS version of PHP with this extension works perfectly.

When I compiled it myself, I verified that it was failing in oci8.c on line 198 by changing the error messages. I also added code to print the PATH env var to the console so that I could verify it is getting the env var value and it is, but apparently the Oracle client/driver is not.

Any idea how to make this work without having to store the Instant Client in our PHP folder?

[laurinkeithdavis]

After some more testing, the TNS_ADMIN env var is working, just not the PATH.

[mvorisek]

This repo comes with Windows CI, can you reproduce this issue there?

[laurinkeithdavis]

I don't know what that means or how to use it. Do you mean the GitHub actions?

[mvorisek]

Yes. It is defined in https://github.com/php/pecl-database-oci8/blob/main/.github/workflows/ci.yml#L141. You should fork this repo and reproduce your problem in your fork. Then someone can look into the problem cause.

[laurinkeithdavis]

I have no idea how to reproduce an environment variable issue using the Github actions mechanism. I have never worked with Github actions, and while I understand what that YML file means, how in the world do I simulate a Windows environment issue.

[sharadraju]

@laurinkeithdavis Are you still facing the issue with the latest 3.4.1 Windows DLLs?
Based on what I understand on reading the issue, only the TS DLL is throwing the error, is that correct? Can you also test with the non-TLS DLL in the same machine?

[laurinkeithdavis]

Yes. We solved this problem by putting the Oracle Instant Client DLLs into the PHP folder - terrible solution, but it works. We know the NTS version works with the PATH variable, we have used that for years, it's only the TS version of this DLL that we have trouble with. We only switched to the TS version recently (because https://github.com/snowflakedb/pdo_snowflake only will compile on Windows in TS).