Don't forget to apply compat-libstdc++-devel!

For those who have done this before, installing an Oracle SOA Suite 10g (10.1.3.4) cluster on Red Hat ES 4 Update 7 x86 requires:

(1) Installing the Oracle Application Server 10g (10.1.3.1) 'J2EE Server' (via the file soa_linux_x86_101310_disk1.cpio).
(2) Installing Oracle BPEL Process Manager 10g (10.1.3.1) (via the file soa_linux_x86_bpel_101310.cpio).
(3) Manually deploying the BPEL Process Manager application.
(4) Etc, etc, etc...

After steps (1) and (2) above, Oracle BPEL Process Manager Configuration Assistant failed after the installation of BPEL Process Manager with the following error:

BUILD FAILED
/u01/app/oracle/product/10.1.3/soa_1/bpel/system/services/install/ant-tasks/bpminstall.xml:329: The directory you specified does not exist

End output from spawned process.
----------------------------------
Configuration assistant "Oracle BPEL Process Manager Configuration Assistant" was canceled.
Result code for launching of configuration assistant is: -1

Several issues also ensued, such as $ORACLE_HOME/bpel/utilities being created as a file and not a directory.

The source of the problem? During the J2EE install, the compat-libstdc++ and compat-libstdc++-devel RPMs were not applied. The prerequisite checks were incorrectly ignored by the individual installing the software:

Checking for compat-libstdc++-devel-7.3-2.96.128; found Not found.      Failed <<<<
Checking for compat-libstdc++-7.3-2.96.128; found Not found.    Failed <<<<

The solution involved downloading compat-libstdc++-7.3-2.96.128.i386.rpm and compat-libstdc++-devel-7.3-2.96.128.i386.rpm and running the following commands:

rpm -e compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-132.7.2
rpm -ivh compat-libstdc++-7.3-2.96.128.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh compat-libstdc++-devel-7.3-2.96.128.i386.rpm

At that point, reinstallation from scratch was required. Voila!