system:
Linux web 2.6.27.21-0.1-pae #1 SMP 2009-03-31 14:50:44 +0200 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
PHP Version 5.3.8
Apache Version Apache/2.2.21 (Linux/SUSE)
You can downgrade to 10g if you want (it evidently doesn't care about this) but that's not necessary...
The 11g instant client requires a /etc/hosts file entry for your hostname pointing to 127.0.0.1. The normal "localhost" entry is not sufficient on it's own.
Assuming your host name is foomachine, there are two places you'll need to check:
In /etc/hosts, make sure you have any entry like - add it if it's not there:
127.0.0.1 foomachine
And also make sure the /etc/sysconfig/network file also has HOSTNAME=foomachine
That should do the trick.
In CentOS 6.5 I changed the value of the file: /etc/sysconfig/network
Original value:
HOSTNAME=localhost.localdomain
New value:
HOSTNAME=127.0.0.1