Re: Oracle base

"Ed Stevens" <nospam_at_noway.nohow> wrote in message news:sdd6s0l24om0kcn7s09oqp0kmdm3vql3pt_at_4ax.com...
> On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 08:26:41 -0900, "David E. Grove"
> <david_grove_at_correct.state.ak.us> wrote:
>
> >I have previously been DBA of Informix on Sun Solaris platform. I am now
> >familiarizing myself with Oracle.
> >
> >Consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds, I have an inclination to
> >make the Oracle base directory consistent with other stuff.
Specifically,
> >I'd like to make it "/opt/oracle".
> >
> >Will this bite me in the future?
> >
> >Thank you.
> >
> >DG
> >
> >
> >
> >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> >"I think not," said Descartes, and disappeared.
> >
>
> I don't have any links handy, but if you'll poke around on the web you
> should be able to find a paper by Carey Milsap called 'The OFA
> Standard - Oracle for Open Systems'. It is almost ten years old now,
> but I believe it is still the definitive paper on defining your
> directory structure for Oracle. A somewhat more concise statement of
> the same principals is located in Appendix G of the "Oracle9i
> Adminstrator's Reference Release 2 (9.2.0.1.0) for Unix Systems."
> Available at tahiti.oracle.com.
>
> Our implementation looks like this:
>
> /u01/app/oracle < this is ORACLE_BASE
> /u01/app/oracle/product/9.2.0 <-- this is ORACLE_HOME
> /u01/app/oracle/admin
> /u01/app/oracle/admin/<sid name>
> /u01/app/oracle/admin/<sid name>/bdump
> /u01/app/oracle/admin/<sid name>/cdump
> /u01/app/oracle/admin/<sid name>/pfile
> /u01/app/oracle/admin/<sid name>/scripts
> /u01/app/oracle/admin/<sid name>/trace
> /u01/app/oracle/admin/<sid name>/udump
>
> While Oracle doesn't really care where you put things, as long as you
> tell it, I'm not enough of a Unix SA to know if there might be some
> admin gotchas by placing it in the /opt directory. Other than that,
> the structure still works:
>
> <whatever>/oracle < this is ORACLE_BASE
> <whatever>/oracle/product/9.2.0 <-- this is ORACLE_HOME
> <whatever>/oracle/admin
> <whatever>/oracle/admin/<sid name>
> <whatever>/oracle/admin/<sid name>/bdump
> <whatever>/oracle/admin/<sid name>/cdump
> <whatever>/oracle/admin/<sid name>/pfile
> <whatever>/oracle/admin/<sid name>/scripts
> <whatever>/oracle/admin/<sid name>/trace
> <whatever>/oracle/admin/<sid name>/udump
>
> Thanks.
>
> - Ed Stevens
>
> Cohn's Law: The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing,
the less time you have to do anything. Stability is achieved when you spend all your time doing nothing but reporting on the nothing you are doing.

Ed,

Thank you-- you just answered another question I was about to ask.

I wondered why the use of apparently unnecessarily long paths. For instance, "$ORACLE_BASE/product/10.1.0/db_1" (from the Install Guide.

I didn't see the purpose for "product". But, I see form your example, that there will be another directory ("admin") that will also be at that level in the path. So, that now makes sense. The "db_1" didn't make a lot of sense either, until I realized that (trying to use terms carefully here to avoid confusing Informix and Oracle terminology) a distinct instance, and, therefore, a distinct Oracle home directory, is required for each database (if one requires multiple databases). That explained the "db_1".

How about the "app", as in "/u01/app/oracle", in the Oracle base directory? And the "/u01", which doesn't seem to mean anything in particular, and is not used by anything else, as far as I can tell. This is why I want to just use "/opt" instead of "/u01/app".

I now understand from yours and others comments that the Oracle base doesn't matter to Oracle (which is what I was concerned about). It sure doesn't matter to Solaris (since that is the purpose of "/opt"-- unless you are an "old timer" in which case you would use "/usr/local").

Anyway, thank you. I plan to use "/opt/oracle" as Oracle base, and I will stick with the Oracle convention of
"<oracle_base>/product/10.1.0/<database_name>" for Oracle home.

Lastly, is there any reason (either a real danger or violation of common Oracle practice) not to mount a file system at "<oracle_base>/oradata/" to use for all the data?

Thank you, again.

Regards,

DG Received on Fri Dec 17 2004 - 17:22:00 CST