Oracle Database Tips by Donald Burleson

Installing Oracle

It is strongly suggested that the DBA use the installation guide provided by Oracle for his or her own release of the operating system in use. The following procedure should be regarded only as a general set of guidelines; it is not intended to replace the installation procedures provided by Oracle.

Example Installation of Oracle9i Using the Linux Operating System

Before you can successfully install and operate Oracle on the Linux operating system, you must be sure that you meet all the required prerequisites to do so. These prerequisites are specified in the Oracle9i installation guide for Linux, which is available online at technet.oracle.com. Always check the latest version of the operating guide, as these requirements may change from release to release and, of course, between different operating systems. Table 1.2 shows the suggested kernel parameters for the UNIX and other systems for Oracle9i release 9.0.1, as of 8/13/2001.

Table 1.2   Sample Changes to UNIX System Shared Memory and Semaphore Parameters

As you can see from examining the values for different operating systems in Table 1.2, many parameters are similar, but some vary greatly. Operating systems such as NT, W2K (Windows 2000), and AIX have fewer tunable parameters because they do automatic tuning of their internals.    

You will need to consult the system administrator or the system specific installation documents to determine how to adjust the parameters on your system. On some, it may be as easy as a change to a configuration file and a reboot; others may require a complete relink and replacement of the kernel executable.

Once the kernel has been properly baseline-tuned, you need to examine the available disk assets and determine which will be used for Oracle. On UNIX or Linux, you (or the system administrator) will need to create mount points to structure the Oracle file systems the way you want. On other systems, such as NT or W2K, you will need to allocate directories for use by Oracle.    

Following the disk asset setup, you are ready to install Oracle. This is usually accomplished from one of two possible sources: either you have a distribution CD set or you have downloaded the compressed image files from the technet.oracle.com or Oracle store Web sites.   

If you have the distribution CD set, you simply mount the first CD in the CD-ROM drive and use the appropriate command to execute the runInstaller program. The runInstaller program on the UNIX systems will normally be located in the install/os_typ directory on the CD-ROM, where the os_type is the name of the operating system (such as Sun or Linux) and may include a version designation. Do not, on UNIX systems, use the "cd" command to place your user in the top level of the CD-ROM directory structure. The Oracle9i and Oracle8i (starting with 8.1.7) installation involves multiple CD-ROMs, if you are located in the top-level directory when you launch the runInstaller program, it will lock this directory and you will not be able to unmount the CD-ROM to change to the second or third CDs as requested by the installation procedure. Instead, stay in the Oracle users home directory and simply issue the full path command to run the installer, for example:

$ ./cdrom/install/linux/runInstaller.sh     

The installer will welcome you to the Oracle Universal Installer, or OUI for short. An example of this is shown in

Oracle Universal Installer Welcome screen.   

If you need to deinstall any older versions of Oracle, you can choose the Deinstall Products button or just choose to see the installed products (if any). Otherwise, choose the Next button. The next screen displayed will be the file source and Oracle Home selection screen. If the defaults are correct, choose Next; or make the needed changes and then select Next. This is shown in Figure 1.5.

Oracle Universal Installer File Locations screen.

The next screen lists the three possible installation options: Oracle9i Database 9.0.1.0.0, Oracle9i Client 9.0.1.0.0, or Oracle9i Management and Integration 9.0.1.0.0. The Oracle9i Database 9.0.1.0.0 option installs the complete database suite, the client, and the Management and Integration suites. The Oracle9i Client 9.0.1.0.0 option installs the enterprise management tools, networking services, utilities, development tools, and basic client software. The Oracle9i 9.0.1.0.0 Management and Integration option installs the management server, management tools, Oracle Internet Directory, Oracle Integration Server, networking servers, utilities, and basic client software. Select the option you desire, then select the next button. This screen is shown in Figure 1.6.

Oracle Universal Installer Available Products screen.      

The next screen shows the options for the types of database that can be installed: Enterprise, Standard, or custom. Enterprise allows access to virtually all options (except RAC); Standard has a restricted set of options; and custom allows the options installed to be user selectable. Choose the type of install desired and select the Next button. For our example install we will choose the Enterprise Install. Figure 1.7 shows this screen.

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