Oracle/PHP & Instant-Client ( remote connection )

Hello all, Hope this isn't an FAQ - have trawled google, otn.oracle, php.net etc - not sure I can find the answer.. I've been using php&mySql for a while now and getting on great - however I'm now tasked with getting my php to talk to a _remote_ ( right next to me but separate ) Oracle server... I found on otn.oracle.com a thing called 'instantclient' - a couple of .rpm's to install what is supposed to be a kinda plug-and-play Linux Oracle client.. However, I can't seem to be able to compile PHP with Oracle support, because I don't think instantclient has the required header files to compile PHP/OCI8 .. Is that right? The other solution I thought might be to use instantclient itself.. .. It comes with a couple of .so's, so I've tried DynamicallyLoading them at the top of a php page.. It seems to be loading the one I give it (libociei.so) but then complains that it can't find "libclntsh.so.10.1" which I have, and is sitting right next to "libociei.so" .. ( The error is : Warning: dl(): Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/local/lib/php/extensions/libociei.so' - libclntsh.so.10.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in /path/to/info.php on line 2 .. And /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/libclntsh.so.10.1 does exist ) Thought that maybe I've just got a path problem..?? Anyway - is the 'ONLY' solution to getting PHP to connect remotely to an Oracle server to download 1.5Gb's of Oracle CD's? Has anyone had any experience getting instantclient/php to work? Is there any way I can get the headers I need to compile --with-oci8 without the 1.5Gb download?? Am I missing something blatantly obvious? Any advice/points-in-the-right-direction would be much appreciated, Thanks, Jimbo