Error in writing to directory /tmp Please ensure that this directory is writable and has atleast 60 MB of disk space. Installation cannot continue.

I recently got an increasing flood of the same error in all the server environments:

Error in writing to directory /tmp/OraInstallYYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SSAM Please ensure that this directory is writable and has atleast 60 MB of disk space. Installation cannot continue.

Tmp has always got 0777, always plenty of space, Oracle Installer creates a folder in Tmp, but fails writing. Some sources online suggest Temp2 type solution of creating another temporary folder, pass TMP and TEMP variables to the shell, but not all shells and environments accept those.

I have no cure, but based on recent testing it all boils down to this checklist:
- place installer in Oracle home directory (or complete equivalent)
- unpack zips, cpios with Oracle user you are going to use for installation
- run installer from an installation directory with Oracle user (not using full path)
- check if unzip is installed

At least last couple of times first step solved the problem. It looks like Oracle user fails writing somewhere, but it reports it with dummy error.

ApexLib on APEX 4.2, G_VALIDATION_IDS_IN_ERROR, APEXLIB_ERROR

People say ApexLib will not work on Apex > 4.1 (http://www.oracle-and-apex.com/apexlib-framework-on-oracle-apex-4-2/). After Apex upgrade to 4.2 ApexLib failed to compile - thats true. After primary installation (which was 3.2) all the Synonyms for user Apexlib are pointing to APEX_030200 user schema. First attempt was to recreate all the synonyms and I did that.

The only problem I bumped into was G_VALIDATION_IDS_IN_ERROR. Downloaded a new version of ApexLib, repeated the installation referencing to docs (http://apexlib.oracleapex.info/#apexlib_schema) - result is the same: G_VALIDATION_IDS_IN_ERROR.

The type G_VALIDATION_IDS_IN_ERROR is referenced in changelog for APEX_040200 WWV_FLOWS package, but is not found anywhere in the code, as well as a few other packages. So it looks like they were simply discarded sometime in 4.2.

There are 2 package errors you will see when ApexLib is failing, usually its just package that cant be compiled, one of them will be "ORA-04063: package body APEXLIB.
APEXLIB_ERROR has errors". Once you manage to fix all the synonyms and views - in the end you will still bump into G_VALIDATION_IDS_IN_ERROR.

Fix is rather simple, declare the missing types using possible expected Apex internal types in your package that is failing (in our case its APEXLIB.APEXLIB_ERROR). Simply define (there are 2 types missing) the types in APEXLIB_ERROR body, someplace were variables reside:

g_validation_ids_in_error wwv_flow_global.n_arr;
g_validation_message wwv_flow_global.vc_arr2;

Then go and replace all the references to these types (they will be like "wwv_flows.g_validation_ids_in_error and wwv_flows.g_validation_message) - simply remove the schema reference wwv_flows. A few snippets how does it look like: