Packages provided by Oracle needs to be installed prior running pip install cx_Oracle. To install them on Ubuntu:

• Download instantclients RPM packages from the Oracle website.
• Convert these RPM packages to Debian packages with alien: alien -d *.rpm*.
• Install the debian packages: dpkg -i *.deb.

gcc, python-dev and libaio-dev are also required.

This repository stores the packages generated by alien:

• oracle-instantclient12.1-basic_12.1.0.2.0-2_amd64.deb
• oracle-instantclient12.1-devel_12.1.0.2.0-2_amd64.deb
• oracle-instantclient12.1-sqlplus_12.1.0.2.0-2_amd64.deb