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There are few steps to be performed before the installation process.
They are divided into the following categories:
Hardware requirements
Oracle 9i is a tough bit, you better have a good machine. Here is
what the Installation Guide says (summary):
Parameter Required Sufficient (tested)
---------------------------------------------------
CPU PII or K6 K6/2 *(1)
RAM 512 MB 256 MB
HDD space 3.5 GB 2.5 GB *(2)
Swap space 1GB or RAMx2 512 MB or more
(1) Dual CPUs are recommended for large databases. Usually a high
performance CPU couple (Xeon or Athlon MP) or even quad system is
considered a good choice.
(2) Using SCSI HDD with RAID or separate HDD for each database, if
multiple database instances will be installed, is recommended.
Software requirements
Oracle requires a minimal version of the kernel and JRE software:
Parameter Required Sufficient (tested)
---------------------------------------------------
Kernel Version 2.4.7 later is fine
JRE 1.1.8v3 1.1.8v3
Since (and including) version 8i, the installation processes are GUI-based
and built with Java, so a main requirement is X server and a
Window Manager. At least the JRE version 1.1.8v3 should be installed.
This installation was done with version 1.1.8v3 of JRE. I can
not guarantee that other versions can do the job. Test it at your
own risk.
These requirements are valid if you decide to install the Enterprise
Server. For the Standard Edition the sufficient values are fine. Even
in some cases these parameters could be lower.
De-facto installation environment
Here is the installation environment I used for this example:
CPU K6 III /400
RAM 512 MB
HDD space 2.3 GB
Swap space 512 MB
CD ROM 24x
Kernel version 2.4.18-24.8.0
JRE 1.1.8v3
It seems that this environment is enough for testing with small
database sizes, but as recommended before, if you need to use a large
or very large database, choose better hardware.
The installation requires a few environment variables to be set before
it starts. These variables can be set into one's profile directly by
putting the lines in the .bash_profile of every account, which will be
used to access the database, or in a more generic approach -- in the file
/etc/profile (as this installation). Here is a simple list and
example values for the variables (current example):
ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle
ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/9.2.0.1.0
ORACLE_SID=ORTD
PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/lib:$ORACLE_HOME/network/lib
export PATH ORACLE_BASE ORACLE_HOME ORACLE_SID LD_LIBRARY_PATH
Everything so far is valid for both RedHat 8.x and 9.x, but it seems
that Oracle has thought of another variable, which must be set in
RedHat 9. It must be included with the previous ones and exported
accordingly. It is necessary to set it if you don't want to be stuck
into an infinite loop during installation:
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1
Thanks to Steve Schladel, a colleague and a DBA, the installation
continued smoothly without a problem.
The ORACLE_SID variable I set by using the abbreviation of ORacle Test
Database. It is up to you what you will set as SID. This will be your
default database name and part of the global database name.
For more information on the meanings of the variables, please refer
to the Oracle Administrator's Manual or Reference.
The JRE (Java Runtime Environment) can be downloaded from
Blackdown website. Pick
1.1.8v3 if you don't know what to download and unpack the tarball in
the /usr/local directory. This will create a directory, named after the
version of the JRE. Make the following link in /usr/local/:
ln -s jre118_v3 jre
for the JRE 1.1.8v3 distribution. If a newer version is used, change the
command correspondingly. Now add to the PATH variable the bin directory of your
JRE:
PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/jre/bin
export $PATH
or mix the lines here with those in the profile as you find efficient.
Before starting the installation, the Linux environment and directory
structure should be prepared. There are few steps and they are listed
below with a description of each step. Remember, these steps are the
minimum required steps for installation of the Standard Edition. If
one intends to install Enterprise and additional services, I suggest a
thorough study of the Oracle 9i Installation Guide.
Log in as root and follow the list.
Kernel Tune-up
If the following section is not quite clear, please refer to IPC
programmers reference for Linux.
>From version 2.2.1 on, the kernel has dynamically set parameters through
the /proc file system and does not need to be re-compiled. For this
purpose the /proc file system can be used with great flexibility.
Here are the steps needed to update the kernel and set up scripts to
run on boot, so that the parameters are set every time the system is
booted.
Change current directory to /proc/sys/kernel.
Listed below, are the minimum required sets to be updated (if necessary).
Read and set the semaphore parameters
The values of the semaphore parameters SEMMSL, SEMMNS, SEMOPM, SEMMNI
can be read with the following command:
cat sem
The output should be similar to:
250 32000 32 128
which is the list of values of the parameters in the above list order.
Now set the values with the following command:
echo 100 32000 100 100 > sem
Read and set the shared memory parameters
Shared memory parameters SHMMAX, SHMMIN, SHMMNI, SHMSEG can be read
by using the following command:
cat shm_param
where shm_param is one of shmmax, shmmin, shmmni, shmall, etc. Now use
the following commands to set values for the necessary parameters:
echo 2147483648 > shmmax
echo 4096 > shmmni
echo 2097152 > shmall
The above set of commands can be combined in a shell script and
can be run on boot in the run level, to decide which Oracle database will be
used, but keep in mind these parameters should be set
before the database instance is started up. Please refer to
the Linux Administrator's guide for more information on run-levels and
startup init scripts.
File handles
Set the file handles using the following commands:
echo 65536 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max
ulimit -n 65536
Sockets
Set the sockets using the following command:
echo 1024 65000 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range
Process Limit
Set the process limit using the following command:
ulimit -u 16384
Groups and accounts
As with all Oracle databases, 9i requires an account for the owner,
traditionally named oracle. The requirements for
the groups are a bit unusual; there must be a group for OSDBA, which
by default is named dba. Oracle requires also second group
(usually called oinstall) to assign authority to install software.
Another group for operators should also be present (but is optional),
used to grant operator access to certain groups of users. So here is
the sequence of commands to create the groups:
groupadd dba
groupadd oinstall
groupadd oper
After the groups are created, we can add an account for the Oracle owner:
useradd -c DBA -g oinstall -G dba oracle
which will create the oracle account, with primary group
oinstall and secondary - dba.
In addition, users who will use this database instance can be
added to the dba group in the /etc/group file.
Mount points and permissions
Oracle 9i installation requires a minimum of two mount points -- one for
the software and one for the database files. If OFA (Optimal Flexible
architecture) is used, then the minimum mount points are four -- one
for the software and three (or more) for the database files.
Oracle documentation recommends each mount point to be on a separate
physical disk, but for a minimal use as in this case, the mount point
could be directories. The names of the mount points are traditionally
/u01, /u02, /u03, etc. They can be created as subdirectories anywhere
on the system and linked with root directory links. In my case I
created the directories (only 2 of them - /u01 and /u02) under
the root directory.
Here is a short list of commands to create and prepare
the mount point (as root):
mkdir /u01 /u02
chown oracle.dba /u01 /u02
chmod 755 /u01 /u02
The last two commands set the ownership of the installation
directories to the user authorized to install Oracle 9i, but after
the installation by administrator's choice the topmost directories
can be switched back to root ownership.
Permissions for file creation
In most cases the umask should be set to 0022. When installing
Oracle databases it is recommended that the umask is checked and set to
0022 if not set properly. This will ensure that all the files during
the installation are created with proper attributes. Use the following
commands:
umask
to test the mask, and:
umask 0022
to set the mask. This command can also be set on the profile in case
it isn't the default value of 0022.
Before starting the installation log in as user oracle in an X
terminal and make sure that the DISPLAY and PATH variables contain
the proper values. The DISPLAY variable should specify the name,
server number and the screen number of the system, and where the Oracle
Universal Installer will be run. This step is only necessary if you
are using remote X server. In case of local installation, if
you can run X Window Manager you will be able to run the installer
without a problem. If there is a problem running the installer
because of the DISPLAY variable, execute:
xhost +localhost
export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0
This should do the trick.
In addition as oracle user execute:
env
and check for all the previously mentioned environment variables. If there is a
suspicion that one or more are not set properly, they should be
corrected and the environment reloaded.
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