Installing Oracle 9iR2 on Red Hat 9

by Roko Roic
09/04/2003

There are an ever-growing number of reasons to run the Oracle database server on a Linux-based OS. The price factor is obvious, as OS licenses can really boost the total price of your multiple workstation or clustered (RAC) server installation. Then there's the stability factor, the possibility of total remote administration, the availability of platform source code, speed, flexible filesystem, the strong Unix legacy .... Heck, even Oracle itself runs its business on what they like to call Unbreakable Linux.

Red Hat's latest and greatest Linux distribution release comes with quite a few improvements, many of which are targeted at the needs of the workstation user. As new hardware owners become early adopters, this OS will surely dominate Linux developers' workstations in the months to come. Support for cutting-edge hardware and software technologies, easier maintenance via graphical configuration tools, polished office and productivity applications, a unified interface, development tools, and, of course, Red Hat's reputation will also make it the OS of choice for many Oracle developers. Unfortunately, unless the current version was certified, Oracle installation hardly ever ran smoothly on Red Hat Linux. Still, where there's a will, there's always a way. With a little help from this article, you will have your Oracle 9iR2 server running in no time on your new Red Hat 9 box. Let us begin.

Adding Users and Groups

First, you will need to create the Oracle installation and users and groups. Oracle installation needs two Unix user groups and one runtime Oracle user.

[root@miniroko]# groupadd dba
[root@miniroko]# groupadd oinstall
[root@miniroko]# useradd -g oinstall -G dba oracle
[root@miniroko]# passwd oracle

The last command will prompt you to enter the password for your oracle user. Make sure you remember it, because you will probably need it as we go along.

Creating Directories

Oracle recommends OFA, the Optimal Flexible Architecture directory structure for a deployment server, but on a development machine and for the sake of simplicity, we will install everything under /opt/ora9.

Just make sure you have at least 3.5GB available for a full installation including one database, and issue the following commands as root:

[root@miniroko]# mkdir -p /opt/ora9/product/9.2
[root@miniroko]# mkdir /var/opt/oracle
[root@miniroko]# chown oracle.dba /var/opt/oracle
[root@miniroko]# chown -R oracle.dba /opt/ora9
[root@miniroko]# chmod 755 /var/opt/oracle

You have now created Oracle runtime directories and granted write privileges to user oracle and execute privileges to group dba.

Installing Required Tools and Libraries

You will need to install the following Red Hat backward-compatibility and software-development packages before we get further underway. All of these packages can be found on Red Hat installation CDs 1-3.

gcc-3.2.2-5
cpp-3.2.2-5
glibc-devel-2.3.2-11.9
binutils-2.13.90.0.18-9
compat-gcc-7.3-2.96.118.i386.rpm
compat-libgcj-7.3-2.96.118.i386.rpm
compat-libgcj-devel-7.3-2.96.118.i386.rpm
nss_db-compat-2.2-20.i386.rpm

You can install these packages using Redhat's graphical package manager available in Start menu->System Settings->Add/Remove Applications, or from the command line, using:

rpm -Uvh <package_name>

Replace package_name with each RPM listed above.

Important notice: A shrink-wrapped Red Hat 9 and the freely downloadable version do not contain the same glibc package. The purchased version contains some patches needed for Oracle Intelligent Agent to run correctly, while the downloaded version does not contain these patches. If you are unsure which version of Red Hat you have installed, you will be on the safe side if you replace your glibc packages with prepatched glibc packages prepared by Jason McIntosh. His RPMs were built from the same source (*.rpms) files as the original ones, but with the required patches applied.

If your system contains a non-empty /lib/i686 directory, fetch the i686 packages. Otherwise, you may run into trouble with misplaced libraries. Where an i686 version of the package is not available, just use whatever is.

Once you have downloaded all of the packages, use the command line rpm tool to upgrade:

% rpm -UVh package_name

Setting Kernel Parameters

Red Hat religiously sets some kernel parameters too conservatively. Check your hardware configuration and assign enough shared memory, open files, and ports, or you may run into trouble installing and running Oracle. Append these lines to /etc/sysctl.conf to set kernel parameters:

kernel.shmmax = 536870912
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.sem    = 250 32000 100 128
fs.file-max   = 65536

net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000

Append these lines to /etc/security/limits.conf to modify your resource limits:

oracle soft nofile 65536
oracle hard nofile 65536
oracle soft nproc 16384
oracle hard nproc 16384

Reboot the system so the kernel changes can take effect. If rebooting is not an option, you can change the kernel params at runtime by issuing:

[root@miniroko]# echo 250 32000 100 128 > /proc/sys/kernel/sem
[root@miniroko]# echo 536870912 > /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
[root@miniroko]# echo 4096 > /proc/sys/kernel/shmmni
[root@miniroko]# echo 2097152 > /proc/sys/kernel/shmall
[root@miniroko]# echo 65536 > /proc/sys/fs/file-max
[root@miniroko]# echo 1024 65000 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range

For a full explanation of the /proc filesystem and available parameters, you might want to read Red Hat's Online Linux Manual.

Oracle Regular Expressions Pocket Reference

Setting up the `oracle` User Environment

% su - oracle

I will assume that you are using the default bash shell for this user. Setting environment variables in other shells may differ from this example, so check your shell's manual page or set bash as the oracle user's shell. We will set up Oracle basic environment (users, paths, locale) and some extra values needed for Oracle to run correctly on Red Hat 9. Put the following lines at the end of ~/.bashrc:

# oracle 9i
export ORACLE_BASE=/opt/ora9
export ORACLE_HOME=/opt/ora9/product/9.2
export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$ORACLE_HOME/Apache/Apache/bin:$PATH
export ORACLE_OWNER=oracle
export ORACLE_SID=ora9i
export ORACLE_TERM=xterm

# Use old Linuxthreads with floating stacks instead of
# the new Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL)
export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1
export THREADS_FLAG=native

# Edit paths
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/ora9/product/9.2/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export PATH=/opt/ora9/product/9.2/bin:$PATH

#
# change this NLS settings to suit your country:
# example:
# german_germany.we8iso8859p15, american_america.we8iso8859p2 etc.
#
export NLS_LANG='croatian_croatia.ee8iso8859p2'

If you are using other national settings for Oracle (these are Croatian), consult the supported settings and change the NLS_LANG variable accordingly.

The Red Hat 9 Linux kernel comes with the new Native POSIX Thread Library, which causes Oracle installation to hang. By setting the LD_ASSUME_KERNEL variable to an older kernel version, we are making Linux use the old Linuxthreads library. For more information about the difference between these threading methods, please consult the Red Hat 9 Release notes.

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