oraclespatial connection

[Solomon Maina Thuo]

hi
am getting problems getting layers from oracle 9i r2 db. i've installed
mapserver and compiled it against the client libraries on a redhat linux 9i
box.the mapserver is working ok and can run all the demos and also i don't
have problem drawing layers from shapefiles. the problem comes when i try
to connect to the oraclespatial in the native way without using ogr. am
getting msOCIConnect() in msOracleSpatialLayerOpen() error. does anyone
know how to solve this? may be how to set variables in the apache
httpd.conf or something better which could help me. or do i have to use ogr?
thanks in advance solomon