Oracle provides some critical
information needed for installing the Oracle software, both with the
software itself and in the Oracle support site MetaLink notes. These are
important documents for successful installs that can help you with the
planning and research (for example, the Quick Installation Guide, Database Readme, and Database Release Notes)
and they contain hardware requirements, prerequisites, and the setup to
be done before and after installation. Also, information on
installation issues for Oracle software can be obtained from most recent
release notes, which contain possible workarounds or updated steps for
the installs.
Gathering information on what
is required to install the software and running it effectively is a very
important first step. Neglecting to do this by going straight to the
install can mean a lot more work, due to the potential need for
uninstalling and reinstalling
parts of the software. Important information you’ll want to watch for:
what is needed for the operating system to be configured for Oracle to
run and the fact that the initial settings are minimum values to be
adjusted for larger systems.
With Linux and Unix
environments, there are kernel parameters and settings that need to be
adjusted when the system starts up. The uses for these parameters range
from being able to allocate shared memory for Oracle to the number of
processes that are allowed to run on the server. Failure to set
parameters and verify the needed system requirements may allow the
software to be installed, but it could prevent the database from
starting up because it is unable to get the system resources that are
needed. Each operating system has a particular set of configurations
that it needs. There are also patches that need to be in synch with the
version of Oracle that is to be installed. So, knowing the requirements
that are needed and gathering the needed patches and parameter values
for application to the operating system are critical to the install.
Define System Requirements
Hardware minimum
requirements are related to processors, memory, and the disk needed to
install OS and Oracle software. For Oracle 11g,
at least 1GB of RAM is required and the Oracle software requires 3.5 to
5GB of disk space. The processors themselves can be verified in
pre-installation checks. Other hardware requirements, such as network
adapters or additional disks, all depend on the environment that is
being set up: for example, systems with Real Application Clusters or
other additional features.
In taking a closer look at
how to prepare the operating system for an Oracle install, let’s use
Linux as an example from installation to configuration. You’ll start the
Linux installation by obtaining the media and starting up the server
with the Linux CDs inserted. Oracle Enterprise Linux has included all
the needed packages with the standard install. After a bootup of the
server, the install screens will come up and walk you through the simple
process of setting up the operating system. The following figures and
comments explain the Linux install screens, as well as a basic
configuration to get started with Oracle on Linux.
Linux Installation
Most of the beginning
screens simply step through and configure the language and very basic
server settings. The first install screen that might require additional
information is disk partition, which has two options: to leave as is or
customize. These include partitions for swap, root, tmp, or other file
system mount points. The file system mount points are the disk mounts
for the directories where the software will be installed and the
databases will eventually be created. Bare minimum partitions are swap
and another device for the file mount points. Figure 1
shows the install screen with the standard disk partitions, which is
definitely enough to get you started with the Oracle install on Linux.
In Figure 1,
you can see one logical device for the swap space, which is the memory
area on the disk allowing for programs to swap to virtual memory when
they need more memory than the physical memory contains. There is
another device for the boot area, the initial partition of the disk, and
then the rest of the disk under the root directory can be used for
creating the directories for tmp, var, home, oracle, and so on. Even if
it isn’t defined on separate devices, the directories that Linux needs,
such as the tmp and var directories, will be created during install.
However, you will need to create a directory for the Oracle software
before you install it.
As shown in Figure 1,
the devices are configured based on the disk available to the server,
and the values and sizes can be adjusted at this point. The swap space
can be adjusted later, but it is just as easy to configure here. Also,
new mount points or file systems can be created on the root directory,
depending on your needs. After setting the values and mount points,
click on Next for the next configuration screen.
After the disk partitions install screen, you need to make a choice about boot loaders.
In Linux, a boot loader is the piece that loads the operating system
into memory (there are usually a couple of them in use). The boot
loaders in this case are LILO, Linux Loader, and Grand Unified
Bootloader (GRUB). The GRUB boot loader is the default for RedHat and
Oracle Linux and can be selected if needed.
The
network configuration and devices are the next step. Plug in the IP
address and edit the network device on the installation screen, shown in
Figure 2-2.
This can also be done after installation, using the network settings.
This is where the host name is defined as shown with the domain name;
the miscellaneous settings are dependent on the network settings and
configurations. Figure 2
also shows where to manually enter the server name with the domain and
the miscellaneous settings with the Gateway, Primary, and Secondary DNS.
The next couple of
installation screens go through the root password and time zone
information; the proper time zone for your location just needs to be
chosen when going through the installation. Choose and remember the root
password carefully. At this point, there is no other way to login to
the OS without the root password. The default install will include
packages for generic use, but it should also be selected to support
software development for this system. The option to customize can be
done here or the needed packages can also be installed afterward. During
the install, the packages can just be selected and then verified after
the install to ensure that they are completed. The required packages for
Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.0 (based on the current installation guide)
are as follows:
binutils-2.17.50.0.6-2.e15
compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-61
elfutils-libelf-0.125-3.e15
elfutils-libelf-devel-0.125
glibc-2.5-12
glibc-common-2.5-12
glibc-devel-2.5-12
glibc-headers-2.5-12
gcc-4.1.1-52
gcc-c++-4.1.1-52
libaio-0.3.106
libaio-devel-0.3.106
libgcc-4.1.1-52
libstdc++-4.1.1
libstdc++-devel-4.1.1-52.e15
make-3.81-1.1
sysstat-7.0.0
unixODBC-2.2.11
unixODBC-devel-2.2.11
After the installation, the packages should be verified by running the command at the Linux prompt:
rpm –q unixODBC-devel-2.2.11
If the packages were not
installed or if the installation failed, then the following commands can
be run to install packages as needed from the Linux source files. Here
is an example install command for this package:
rpm –ivh unixODBC-devel-2*rpm
These steps are seen in Figure 3;
the rpm –q used to verify the packages shows that the unixODBC package
was not installed, so executing the command to install the package
completes this step. This step is repeated for each of the packages that
are required.
