If you have attempted to install Oracle 8 onto your new RH Linux 6.0 installation, and you are not already an Oracle DBA and quite knowledgeable about all things Linux, you are probably quite frustrated with the installation documentation that is available from Oracle for Linux - the glaring errors, critical omissions, etc.

After fighting with this for well over a day and pouring through discussion threads and any online references I could get my hands on, I finally got the install to work. I thought it might be a good idea for myself to record step-by-step what I did so in the future I will have something to reference, as well as put something up for those of you out there in a similar situation. I hope this helps. Please let me know if there are any mistakes or omissions! I am only a developer - not an Oracle DBA or master (by any means) and only have a basic level of understanding on the ins and outs of Linux. Therefore this advice may be completely worthless to you. However, I do hope you find something of value out of it.

The environment this document was written for is RedHat Linux 6.0 (Hedgwig), Linux kernel v2.2.5-15, running on a Dell Pentium Pro 180 with 128 megs RAM and 2 IDE hard drives. I do not know how these instructions will apply to other versions of Linux, so please let me know if you have success or failure.

Thanks,
-Reuben King
reuben@sagemediagroup.com

Part I: Installation Preliminaries

System Requirements:

Memory:
As per the specification in the install guide from Oracle, at least 32 megs of RAM, and swap space equal to three times your physical memory, is recommended.

Disk Space:
Oracle recommends four devices: One for the Oracle software distribution and three for creating an OFA compliant database.

So, how many devices and how big should each device/partition be? This, of course, is one of those difficult decisions which requires answering the elusive question "how much space will I need?". For small development-base installs, you could certainly pack it all into one partition. However, for higher demand and mission-critical situations, this is definitely one of those issues you need to do your homework on and make sure you form a good understanding of your needs. I am setting up a small Oracle development box, so these instructions will reflect the decisions I made in this spirit.

The Oracle Enterprise install takes approximately 400-500 megs. I partitioned my software partition to be 600 megs just to be on safe side. If you have more room to spare, you might want to use it. I also created one 1.5 gig partition to hold my databases, however you could start with significantly less - even around 200 megs I believe will be sufficient just to load the starter database objects. Since I am only setting up a development instance, I am not concerned with splitting the database across multiple devices. In fact, I could have also simply made one large partition and put both the program executables and the database files all in one spot, however for personal druthers I decided not to do this.

I went ahead and recorded the exact steps I went through to partition, format, and mount my drives for Oracle. If you would like to see what I did, go here.

Get The Software:

A single developer license of Oracle 8.0.5.1 is available free of charge from Oracle at http://technet.oracle.com/tech/linux/main.htm (At least this is true as of the date of this writing, August 8 '99).  There is various documentation available both in PDF and HTML form also at http://technet.oracle.com/doc/linux.htm.  If you experience problems downloading the software, read my notes on the subject.

If you are running RedHat Linux 6.0, or any Linux version which uses the Glibc 2.1 libraries (don't worry if you don't know what that means), you will need an update called "glibcpatch.tgz".  Without this, installation may fail and you will be left scratching your head wondering what the heck a "Segmentation fault" is.  Oracle 8.0.5 was written to the Glibc 2.0 libraries and it breaks in the new Linux environment which has the newer (and improved) 2.1 libraries.  The patch is available via FTP at ftp://ftp.oracle.com/pub/www/otn/linux/glibcpatch.tgz.

In addition to glibcpatch for Redhat, you may need to get these compat RPM's and install them as well (if they aren't installed, the glibcpatch may not run properly):

• compat-binutils-5.2-2.9.1.0.23.1.i386.rpm
• compat-egcs-5.2-1.0.3a.1.i386.rpm
• compat-egcs-c++-5.2-1.0.3a.1.i386.rpm
• compat-glibc-5.2-2.0.7.1.i386.rpm
• compat-libs-5.2-1.i386.rpm

You can get these from ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/redhat-6.0/i386/RedHat/RPMS or from one of the mirror sites listed at http://www.redhat.com/mirrors.html.

Unpack The Software

(This is for those of you who are downloading the installer as an archive from Oracle. If you are installing from CD, you may skip this section.)

For this guide, I am going to put the installation software in /oracle_install. The glibcpatch will be placed in /oracle_install/glibcpatch. To start, I am going to have the files Oracle8051EE_Intel.tgz and glibcpatch.tgz inside /oracle_install.

Note: For the first steps of this, it will be necessary to log in as root. This installer is pretty big, too -- You will need about 650 megs of free space in /oracle_install.

1. Log in as root
2. Type "cd /oracle_install"
3. Unpack the Oracle 8.0.5.1 Enterprise Edition installer using "tar xzvf Oracle8051EE_Intel.tgz". (this is a big file and will take awhile to unpack, so be patient).
4. Type "mkdir glibcpatch"
5. Type "cd glibcpatch"
6. Unpack the Glibcpatch installer using "tar xzvf ../glibcpatch.tgz".
7. Type "cd ../"

Get Ready To Install

Don't run the installer just yet -- There are some initial things which will need to be done first.

In section 2 of the Oracle Install Guide, "Setting the Environment", there are a number of steps which will need be performed by the root user and then by the oracle user. This begins on page 2-1, but I will summarize below.

Important: Everything I am doing here will be using the bash shell. If you have personal preferences other than this, you will need to make the necessary adjustments to the instructions I am giving.

• Log in to the root account and perform the following:
• Create a "dba" user group and optionally a "operator" group. (you don't need an operator group, but you can have one if you want to distinguish between Oracle DBA and Oracle operator accounts):
  1. Use the userconf utility to maintain users and groups.
  2. Select "Group Definitions" and press return.
  3. In the User Groups dialog, press "Add".
  4. For the group name type "dba" (according to the manual, you may select something different but I experienced problems when I did that.)
  5. For create permissions, use the default value of 700.
  6. Select the "Accept" button and then the "Quit" button to return to the main userconf screen.
• Create a user account to own the Oracle software. For this guide, I will use an account called "oracle", but you may name it whatever you want. (just make sure that the environment variable ORACLE_OWNER is set correctly, as will be shown in a moment):
  1. In userconf, select "User Accounts" and press return.
  2. In the User Accounts dialog, press "Add".
  3. For Login name, type "oracle" (or something different if you prefer).
  4. For group, type "dba" (or whatever you just put in for the dba user group).
  5. For command interpreter, use /bin/bash.
  6. Select the "Accept" button.
  7. You will be prompted for a password for this account. Enter whatever you like.
  8. Press "Quit" and then "Quit" again to exit out of userconf.
• Create a Local bin directory if you don't have one already; Using the Linux default /usr/local/bin is fine.
• Run the oratab.sh script using the following commands:

1. Type "cd /oracle_install/orainst"
2. Type "export ORACLE_OWNER=oracle" (* Or whatever you just set the Oracle account to be)
3. Type "./oratab.sh"
4. Accept the default prompts and the /etc/oratab file will be created.

1. Type "chown oracle.dba /oracle"
2. Type "chown oracle.dba /oracle_db"

As the oracle user:

• Log in to the oracle account and perform the following:
• Set permissions for file creation. Type "umask 022" to accomplish this.
• Set Environment Variables. There are several environment variables which need to be set for the oracle account. Modify .bash_profile file in the home directory ("~/") as follows:
  1. Using the text editor of your choice, append the following to the end of the .bash_profile script:
     ORACLE_BASE=/oracle
ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/oracle8051
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib
ORACLE_SID=orcl
ORACLE_TERM=vt100
PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin
TMPDIR=/tmp
export ORACLE_BASE ORACLE_HOME LD_LIBRARY_PATH ORACLE_SID ORACLE_TERM PATH TMPDIR
     
  2. Adjust the above variables appropriately. Refer to pages 2-9 thru 2-11 of the Oracle Install Guide for descriptions of each of these variables (and others).
  3. After changes are complete, you may log out and log back in or simply execute the .bash_profile script to update the environment with the new settings.

Note: In this document, when I refer to paths such as $ORACLE_HOME/bin, this refers to the setting you just placed in that file above. The oracle account's login script sets the variables which will tell both Oracle and the Oracle Installer where you want Oracle to live, what user is the Oracle owner, etc. Remember this!

Part II: Software Installation

Start The Installer:

Note: You must run the installer while logged in as the oracle account. Do Not run the installer as root!

Hopefully the installer you have matches the one I have and you can follow the screens step-by-step as I have outlined below. If something has changed, it shouldn't be a big deal and you should be able to approximate. One important lesson with the Oracle installer is to resist the temptation to let it "Create DB Objects" at the first pass. By choosing this, the installer will probably fail and leave you wondering why. One of the reasons behind this is because it will attempt to execute several programs to create the database objects. However, because of the glibc 2.0 vs. 2.1 problem I mentioned earlier, these programs will core dump and thus the installer will fail. Instead, run the installer once to install the software, then run the glibcpatch to update the software, then run the installer again to create the database objects.

• Log in as the oracle account.
• At the command line type "cd /oracle_install/orainst"
• Next, type "./orainst" to launch installer
• Once inside installer, do the following:
  1. At "Install Type" screen, choose "Default Install"
  2. Read the preamble.txt screen and click "OK"
  3. Read the "README.FIRST" screen and click "OK"
  4. At "Installation Activity Choice", select "Install, Upgrade, or De-Install Software" and click "OK"
  5. At "Installation Options", select "Install New Product - Do Not Create DB Objects" and click "OK"
  6. At "Environment Variables", the values for ORACLE_BASE and ORACLE_HOME should be set to the settings you placed in your .bash_profile script. Click OK if they are or change.
  7. It will present you with the settings you chose, verify and click "OK"
  8. You will now be in the "Software Asset Manager" screen.
     • On the left will be a selection box of all the features available to install and on the right will be a box with all the features installed.
     • In the box on the left, select "Oracle8 Enterprise (RDBMS)" by scrolling to it and pressing the space bar to toggle.
     • Note: You may select other software components to install, but this guide is only written for installing only the basic Oracle 8 server.
     • Click the "Install" button in the middle to install.
     • It will now install Oracle and any necessary support files. If it mentions anything about ULIMIT not being set, just click OK and ignore it.
     • Now is a good time for a stretch/coffee/cigarette break. It will take about 5-10 minutes to fully install.
     • Eventually it will report that it is complete. (Hopefully!) Click "OK" to return to the Software Asset Manager screen.
  9. Click "Exit" to leave the installer.
• For those systems with glibc version 2.1 or above (of which RedHat Linux 6 is a member), we must now run the glibcpatch to relink the files just installed from the new version of glibc to the older 2.0 version:
  • At the command line, type "cd /oracle_install/glibcpatch"
  • Next, type "./glibcpatch.sh"
  • This too will take several minutes, so sit back and relax. You will probably see a bunch of "file not found" errors flash by -- ignore these, for they mean nothing.
• Now, go back to the installer by typing cd /oracle_install/orainst and then ./orainst
• Back in the installer, do the following:
  1. At "Install Type" screen, choose "Default Install"
  2. Click "OK" to get through the preamble.txt and README.FIRST screens.
  3. At "Installation Activity Choice", select "Create/Upgrade Database Objects" and click "OK".
  4. At "Database Options" select "Create Database Objects" and click "OK".
  5. At "Environment Variables" nothing should have changed, so just click "OK".
  6. Again, it will ask you to verify your decisions. Do so and click "OK".
  7. You should now be back in the "Software Asset Manager" screen.
     • In the box on the left, again select "Oracle8 Enterprise (RDBMS)"
     • Click "Install"
     • It will then begin installing once again.
     • At the "Database Action" screen, select "Create Product DB Objects" and then click "OK".
     • You will then be prompted for your database mount points. Enter the three mount points you created earlier for your database and click "OK". I will use "/oracle_db/db1", "/oracle_db/db2" and "/oracle_db/db3" as my mount points. (huh huh huhhuhuh huh i said mount...)
     • This operation too will take a few minutes, so don't panic.
     • At successful completion, click "OK", and you will return to the Software Asset Manager screen.
  8. Click "Exit" to leave the installer.
• That's it! Since SQL scripts are executed against the server you installed to create the database objects, successful completion of the above indicates a properly installed system.
• Note: You may go back into the Oracle installer to install anything else, but be sure to choose "Add/Upgrade Software" in the "Installation Choice" screen. Also, you will probably need to rerun the glibcpatch as instructed above if you are installing new components.

Congratulations!

• Try deleting everything and starting over from scratch. Use rm -rf /oracle

          ows_sol_rel=4;
  +       solaris_rel=5;

          if (solaris_rel > ows_sol_rel)
                  Start_Server=false;

  --

  *** ows/3.0/install/wrb.ins~    Tue Jun 30 02:12:36 1998
  --- ows/3.0/install/wrb.ins     Sun Dec 27 23:39:07 1998
  ***************
  *** 1204,1209 ****
  --- 1204,1210 ----
          }

          ows_sol_rel=4;
  +       solaris_rel=5;

          if (solaris_rel > ows_sol_rel)
                  Start_Server=false;

  --

  *** ows/3.0/install/ows.ins~    Tue Jun 30 02:12:32 1998
  --- ows/3.0/install/ows.ins     Sun Dec 27 23:43:02 1998
  ***************
  *** 431,436 ****
  --- 431,437 ----
          }

          ows_sol_rel=4;
  +       solaris_rel=5;

          if (solaris_rel > ows_sol_rel)
                  Start_Server=false;

  After applying the patches, you can install the product.
   

  3.2 Post-install patches

  After installation, you can apply the following patch:

  *** owsctl.orig Wed Dec 30 14:55:28 1998
  --- owsctl      Wed Dec 30 14:56:17 1998
  ***************
  *** 224,233 ****

          OPTION="$1"     # save the option
          shift
  !       if [ "$1" = "WRB" -o "$1" = "wrb" -o "$1" = "-p" -o "$1" = "-e" -o "$1"
  = "NCX" -o "$1" = "ncx" ]
          then
                  $CONTROLPATH/wrbctl $OPTION $@
  !       elif [ "$1" = "CARTRIDGE" -o "$1" = "cartridge" -o "$1" = "-p" ]
             then
                  $CONTROLPATH/wrbctl $OPTION $@
             else
  --- 224,233 ----

          OPTION="$1"     # save the option
          shift
  !       if [ "x$1" = "xWRB" -o "x$1" = "xwrb" -o "x$1" = "x-p" -o "x$1" = "x-e"
  -o "x$1" = "xNCX" -o "x$1" = "xncx" ]
          then
                  $CONTROLPATH/wrbctl $OPTION $@
  !       elif [ "x$1" = "xCARTRIDGE" -o "x$1" = "xcartridge" -o "x$1" = "x-p" ]
             then
                  $CONTROLPATH/wrbctl $OPTION $@
             else

  The patch is optional in that owsctl does work without it, but generates some annoying errors.
   

  4. Known problems

  • When an instance of a listener (oraweb) terminates, it sometimes coredumps. The cause has not been investigated yet.
  • Oraweb leaves a lot of zombies. This may be related to the previous bullet.