Installing Oracle9i

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

HP-UX Release

SUN 2.8

Linux 7.1 (SuSE)

Tru64(Compaq)

SHMMAX

0x40000000

4294967295

2147483648

4278190080 (SHM_MAX)

SHMMIN

1

1

1

1024 (SHM_MIN)

SHMSEG

10

10

4096

128 (SHM_SEG)

SHMMNS

1000

1000

256

SHMMNI

100

100

100

256 (SHM_MNI)

SEMMNI

100

100

100

SEMMSL

250

100

SEMOPM

100

SEMVMX

32767

MAX_PER_PROC_STACK_SIZE

33554432

PER_PROC_STACK_SIZE

33554432 (no larger than 512MB)

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 Figure 1.4.

Figure 1.4 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.

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.

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.

Figure 1.7 Oracle Universal Installer Installation Types screen.

The next screen shows the Database Configuration options. The database configuration options are General Purpose, Transaction Processing, Data Warehouse, Customized, or Software Only. Select the option you wish and then select Next. The Software Only option is the only one where no database is installed; use it when migration of an existing database will be performed as a part of the Oracle9i installation. This is shown in Figure 1.8.

Figure 1.8 Oracle Universal Installer Database Configuration screen.

The next screen of the installation routine allows you to specify a name for the database if you choose to install a new database. Specify the name and domain name for your database; the program will strip off the domain to specify a system identifier (SID) for the database. The normal format for the domain is sid.domain. Select the Next button when you are satisfied with the SID and domain specification. Figure 1.9 shows this screen.

Figure 1.9 Oracle Universal Installer Database Identification screen.

Next, you will choose the character set to use in the database that you will be creating (if you choose to create a database). The selections available are:

* Use the default from the settings of the Operations System.

* Use Unicode (UTF8) as the setting (if you wish to support multiple languages in the database you are creating choose this one).

* Choose one of the common character sets from a drop down list.

If your character set of choice is not shown in the drop-down list, you must use the Previous button, then choose Custom database to get a wider selection. When you have made your choice of the database character set, select the Next button. This screen is shown in Figure 1.10.

Figure 1.10 Oracle Universal Installer Database Character Set screen.

The next screen allows you to enter the location of the Java Developer Kit (JDK). You must have at least version JDK1.1.8, which is available from www.blackdown.com or the SUN Web site. The standard location for a normal installation of the JDK is /usr/lib/jkd1.1.8; if yours is different, make sure to enter it properly. If you are not sure where your JDK is located, ask your system administrator or start another terminal window and use the find command from the root directory to locate it for example:

$ cd /
$ find . -name jdk* -print

These commands should give you the full path location of the JDK on UNIX or Linux. On Windows, use the find drop-down item on the File menu. The JDK screen is shown in Figure 1.11.

Figure 1.11 Oracle Universal Installer JDK Home Directory screen.

The next screen shows a summary of what you will be installing if you proceed. If everything looks correct, select the Install button and installation will commence. This summary screen is shown in Figure 1.12.

Figure 1.12 Oracle Universal Installer Summary screen.

The install progress screen (Figure 1.13) will be shown next. It will display a dialog that shows which options and products are being installed and which actions are being performed. Once all install operations are complete, the Setup Privileges dialog box (Figure 1.14) will be displayed. At this point, you will need to start a second display in UNIX or Linux and log in as the root user. In the ORACLE_HOME location, a root.sh script will be created; this script must be run before continuing the installation. Once the script has been run as root, click on the OK button to continue the installation.

Figure 1.13 Oracle Universal Installer Install status screen.

Figure 1.14 Oracle Universal Installer Setup Privileges screen.

The Configuration Tools screen is shown next. It shows the status of the various tools used to configure NET8/9, the Web server and the Oracle database. This is shown in Figure 1.15. When the database configuration assistant starts, you will see a status window showing the results of copying the Oracle base datafiles into your environment. These files are used as a "seed" database to quickly start a new instance. Rather than create a new database, load the database with the various configuration scripts. Next Oracle copies the basic tablespaces from compressed jar files to your system, then uses the control file rebuild command to give the database the name you have selected. This database configuration assistant is shown in Figure 1.16.

Figure 1.15 Oracle Universal Installer Configuration Tools status screen.

Figure 1.16 Database Configuration Assistant file copy screen.

The second screen in the Configuration Assistant allows you to perform password management  and selective account lock/unlock tasks against the new database. This is a welcome new feature, as previous Oracle systems set the passwords on critical Oracle accounts the same as the user name and gave little guidance on how to reset the passwords. The password/account management screen is shown in Figure 1.17.

Figure 1.17 Database Configuration Assistant password management screen.

If you choose to change the passwords and lock configuration for the default Oracle accounts (which is strongly recommended), select the Password Management button on the screen in Figure 1.17. Selection of this option will display the Password Management dialog box that contains a table of the default accounts, their lock status, and the entry points for their new passwords. Fill in the password management/lock table as needed for your system; then select the OK button. This screen is shown in Figure 1.18.

Figure 1.18 Oracle Password Management screen.

Once the default account passwords and lock status have been updated, the installation completes, marked by display of the End of Installation screen, shown in Figure 1.19. Select the Exit button from this screen to return to the command line.

Figure 1.19 Oracle Universal Installer End of Installation screen.

The next section of this chapter deals with migration from previous versions of Oracle to Oracle9i.