Basics of Oracle Installation: Oracle10g - A CASE STUDY: Part 1

Being an Oracle DBA, installations, configurations and maintenance of Oracle are the basics jobs that a DBA needs to take care of at first instance. Even while facing any entry level DBA job interviews the first questions you face is on these topics. Nonetheless without going in much detail on the interview part let’s get started with the basic installations.

There are two ways in which Oracle Installations can be carried out:

1) OUI (Oracle Universal Installer):  Basic and most easiest way to install Oracle. Based on Java engine,

It is Oracle’s self initiated GUI with lots of options ranging from Basic installations, DB creations and various configurations like Password and Network (listener) management. Doesn’t require much of the hallaboo for installation as the basic steps can guide you through installation. You just need to feed up some options/parameters and the OUI does all installation and configuration part for you.

2) Silent Installation: This is other mode of installation. Unlike OUI, this mode is Command line base. You can either provide the installation and configuration options directly at the command line (command/bash prompt) or you can make the changes in the response file which is the sample file provided by Oracle. Just feed the path of this file for installation so that during installation the parameters are picked up from this file and the installation is done.

Quite a tough one haa!!! Now the question arises by the silent installation when OUI is available. After all graphical interfaces appeal more than the Command interfaces. Also they are much easier to handle and operate.

Basic requirement for the OUI installation is that the server needs to be across same network or locally accessible so that GUI can be accessed. But consider a scenario where the servers are not accessible directly as also the GUI. In that case the command interface can work as a CHARM and LIFE savior. So that’s the time Silent installation comes to the rescue.

We will be discussing both the installations here. For more information and any queries you can just leave a comment below this article or mail me.

Getting started with installation what are the basic questions we need to answer.

1)  What are the pre-requisites for Installation?

2)  What care should be taken during the Installation?

3)  Last but not the least, the post installation requisites.

 Pre-Requisites for Oracle Installation:

Most of the pre-requisites for the Oracle Installations are tabulated in the below table.

Note: These are basic requirements but according to the environment and the system these may change. Here we are just concerned on the basic requirements.

CPU	Pentium (32 bit): 450 MHz
Disk	Enterprise Edition                   1.5 GB Standard Edition                       1.5 GB Custom                                                       1.5 GB
Memory	1024 MB
Temporary	(Defined by TMP or TMPDIR variable) 400 MB
Swap/Page	Swap 1.5 GB
Monitor	256 color
Operating System	RHEL AS/ES 3.0 (update 4 or later), RHL 4.0, SuSE Server 9.0, SuSE Server 9, Asianux 1.0, Asianux 2.0
Kernel	RHEL3.0 and Asianux 1.0: 2.4.21-27.EL RHEL 4.0 and Asianux 2.0: 2.6.9-5.EL SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.0: 2.6.5-7.201

The following groups are required when installing the Oracle Database:

1.                   The OSDBA group (dba)

2.                   The OSOPER group (oper)

The following groups are required for all installations

1.                   The Oracle Inventory group (oinstall)     

2.                   The Oracle software owner user (typically, oracle)

Done with the pre-requisites, let’s start with the Installation Part step by step.

It is not possible to demonstrate the installations across all the platforms (considering that there are so many flavors of OS available in the market), here we will demonstrate the installation on basic Unix Server as I consider windows installations are quite much simpler as most of the JOB is done automatically. You just need to click on few NEXT-NEXT buttons and there you have Oracle services running on you WINDOWS machine. This is not the case with Unix Machines. Lots of care needs to be taken and hence let me demonstrate basic Unix Installation Steps.

Step 1:

·                     Open a terminal window. Login as the root user.  

·                     Create the following operating system groups: oinstall, dba, and, oper.  

bash$ /usr/sbin/groupadd oinstall

bash$ /usr/sbin/groupadd dba

bash$ /usr/sbin/groupadd groupadd oper

·                     Create the operating system user for Oracle

           bash$ /usr/sbin/useradd -g oinstall -m -d /home/oracle -u 786 oracle

·                     Enter the following command to set the password of the oracle user:                                    

           bash$ /usr/sbin /passwd oracle

           password:******

          confirm password: ******

Step 2:

After done with the basic groups and user creation now comes the part for setting the environment variables for your user. Login to the oracle user and With an editor of your choice, edit /home/oracle/.bash_profile  to include the following entries:

 

                                   umask 022  

                                   PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin

                                   LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib:/usr/X11R6/lib   

                                   ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle

                                   ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/product/10.2.0/db_1

                                   ORACLE_SID=orcl

                                   $ORACLE_HOME/jdk/jre/lib/i386/server:

                                  $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib:$ORACLE_HOME/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

                                    PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH   

                                    export PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH

                                    export ORACLE_BASE ORACLE_HOME ORACLE_SID

 

Create the directory for the software installation and assign ownership to oracle:oinstall.

  

                                                mkdir -p /u01/app/oracle

                                                chown -R oracle:oinstall /u01/app

                                                chmod -R 775 /u01/app

After setting the basic environment variables at the user level some settings need also be carried out the system level. Login through the root user once again and do the following changes in the sysctl.conf file.

                                                kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128

                                                kernel.shmall = 2097152

                                                kernel.shmmax = 2147483648

                                                kernel.shmmni = 4096

                                                fs.file-max = 65536

                                                net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000
                                                net.core.rmem_default = 262144
                                                net.core.rmem_max = 262144
                                                net.core.wmem_default = 262144

                                                net.core.wmem_max = 262144

Issue the following command to set the kernel parameters:

 

                                                /sbin/sysctl –p

 

Word of Caution: These are memory parameters and these can change depending upon the configuration of the system. You need to contact your system administrator or if you are too experienced you can set these parameters on your own accordingly. Here I am considering the basic scenario and setting the parameters.

Before staring the installation, make sure that the pre-requisite directory structure for Oracle Installation is in place. Oracle requires two directory structures mandatorily.

1) Oracle Base Directory

2) Oracle Inventory: However this is created dynamically on installation. But for safer side make sure it is created and EMPTY. Now why am I stressing on this word EMPTY. It’s because if these directory is not empty the Oracle Installation Exists with Warning. So make sure this is just a BLANK DIRECTORY structure.

I guess you are well versed with the command to create directories, if not it seems you are not reading the article properly, scan some above pages and you will come to know.

Done with the directory structure, next in pipeline is the execute permissions for the binaries for installation. Oracle user should have following privileges

1. Execute privilege on Oracle setup files.
2. Should be owner of the Oracle Base

 Continuing with the User Environment Setting make sure you have taken care of these things too before proceeding with installation.

Configure the oracle User's Environment

• Set the default file mode creation mask (umask) to 022 in the shell startup file.
• Set the DISPLAY environment variable.
• If the ORACLE_SID, ORACLE_HOME, or ORACLE_BASE environment variable is set in the file, then unset the same.

Pheww!! So much to do before installation???  Is it more?? When do I get to install the software actually. Well don’t give up its here. Done with all the configurations, its time to set the installation rolling. But just cross check you have done all the configurations once. Because any one miss in configuration and your whole installation will come crashing down. Did I hear ALL IS WELL!!! Well if that’s the thing let’s start with basic OUI installation.