Installing Oracle 11g on RedHat 5.5(64 bit)

Part I: Pre Installation

To list all rpms(for defining what packages are installed ), run the following command:

rpm –qa

You should have installed the following rpms, but if you don’t have them, you should install.
But now we are doing an upgrade, because assume that these packages exist,but old versions(as it should be):

rpm –Uvh libaio-devel-0.3.106-3.2.i386.rpm
rpm –Uvh libaio-devel-0.3.106-3.2.x86_64.rpm
rpm –Uvh pdksh-5.2.14-36.el5.x86_64.rpm
rpm –Uvh unixODBC-2.2.11-7.1.i386.rpm
rpm –Uvh unixODBC-2.2.11-7.1.x86_64.rpm
rpm –Uvh unixODBC-devel-2.2.11-7.1.i386.rpm
rpm –Uvh unixODBC-devel-2.2.11-7.1.x86_64.rpm

Note: RPM(RedHat Packet Manager) is a program for installing, uninstalling, verifying,
querying, and updating software packages. The Option –Uvh tells the manager to upgrade
the following packages.(These packages is needed for oracle to install software).
If you don’t have these packages you should write –ivh,  which means install, instead of -Uvh.

Part II: Configuring Linux for Oracle:

–First of all, you should create directory where oracle software will be kept.

mkdir -p /u0/app/oracle
groupadd oinstall
groupadd dba
useradd –s /bin/bash –d /u0/app/oracle –g oinstall –G dba oracle
passwd oracle
chown -R oracle:oinstall /u0/app
chmod -R 777 /u0/app

Explanation:
1)Option –p for mkdir tells linux to create  the parent directories if they don’t exist.
For example if  “app” or “u0” do not exist they will automatically be  created.
2) groupadd command creates some special group, in this case oinstall and dba.
3) useradd command will create a new user.
* –s means shell-> /bin/bash is a path of user’s login shell.
* –d directory->/u0/app/oracle  is a path where oracle software (will be)/is located.
* –g the group name for a new user’s initial group. The named group must exist.
* –G A list of supplementary groups which the user is also a member of
(separated by comma for example -G  group1,group2).

4) passwd sets/changes the password for user.
5) chown -R Changes the owner for the following files/directories recursively.
* oracle is an username.
* oinstall initial group name for this user.
* /u0/app path of the folder for which the owner must  be changed.
6) chmod –R changes the permission of a file recursively(for subdirectories also )
* 777 all permission(read,write,execute)
*/u0/app path of a directory, on which permissions must be assigned.

–Modify  the following file

/etc/sysctl.conf

–And add/update the following lines these are parameters which is needed for oracle
to install software:

fs.aio-max-nr = 1048576
fs.file-max = 6815744
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 536870912
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 9000 65500
net.core.rmem_default = 262144
net.core.rmem_max = 4194304
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_max = 1048586

–Modify the following file:

/etc/security/limits.conf

–And add/update the following lines these are parameters which is needed for
oracle to install software:

oracle soft nproc 2047
oracle hard nproc 16384
oracle soft nofile 1024
oracle hard nofile 65536

Part III

Reboot system

Part IV :Install Oracle Software

Run Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) by finding runInstaller.sh file and executing it by the following way:

Go to the directory where this executable file exists and type the following command:

./ runInstaller.sh

Note: The runInstaller.sh executable performs a preinstall check of the operating system and hardware resources before starting the OUI graphical tool(If this fails, please  repeat  steps in part I, part II and part III,or your computer doesn’t have anough space for oracle db)

After that, there will appear Graphical  User Interface which helps you to install just oracle software or software with database it is up to you. Follow the instructions.

Note: There will appear alert ,during the installation,which tells you to run root.sh and also shows the path where this file exists. Change your directory location to this path and run root.sh file. Executing the root.sh script copies some files to a location outside $ORACLE_HOME and sets the permissions on several files inside and outside $ORACLE_HOME. Once the root.sh script executes successfully, click OK to continue the installation.

Part V: Post Installation

If you have installed oracle software with database ,or then created db by DBCA(Database Configuration Assistant) you should do the following. DBCA executable file is located in  $ORACLE_HOME/bin.
First of all, let’s discuss what oratab file is:
“oratab” is a file created by Oracle in the /etc or /var/opt/oracle directory when installing database software. Originally ORATAB was used for SQL*Net V1, but lately is’s being used to list the databases and software versions installed on a server. This file contains  lines consisting of entries in the following format:

database_sid:oracle_home_dir:Y|N

* database_sid is the system id (SID) of an Oracle instances on the server.
* Oracle_home_dir is the ORACLE_HOME directory associated with this instance.
* The Y|N flags indicate if the instance should automatically start at boot time (Y=yes, N=no).

So now, when we already know what oratab file contains,modify it by the following entry set the restart flag for each instance to ‘Y’:

DB11G:/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1:Y

Which means that DB11G instance,which database is located in /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1 must be automatically started.

That is all… I hope it was useful for you.