Re: Linux flavor

> On Apr 10, 9:17 am, Palooka <nob..._at_nowhere.com> wrote:
>
> snip
>
>> Yes, I am aware that HJR has stopped his blog, and of the history.
>> However, Doris still lives:
>>
>> http://dizwell.com/2009/03/
>>
>> All I can say is that the script has worked perfectly for me on both 10g
>> and 11g, on multiple distros.
>
> Does it help you decide how much of your memory to set aside and use
> for huge pages? Are you running 64 bit and not using huge pages?
>
> As far as I am aware it is a pretty generic thing not really suitable
> to configuring a system for more than some kind of generic install and
> creation of an testing oracle database.
>
> If all you are doing is playing around then fine otherwise I think it
> may be time to ask you what exactly are you doing? For example ...
> multiple distros ... how many production oracle shops are checking out
> multiple distros?

Personally, if the OP just wants to experiment with Oracle and wold prefer to do that on Linux, my advice wold be to just use the Linux distribution that is most familiar to them.

Oracle 9i and (I think 10gR1) were a bit of a pain to install on anything that wasn't Red Hat or derived from Red Hat or SUSE. However, I found that the restriction in the installer was really easy to beat - all you had to do was install the Red Hat release rpm (which only puts a text file in /etc with release detials). I did this to install 10g on a Debian box and it has worked fine. I've since been told, but have not verified, that Oracle is no longer as restrictive on the flavor of Linux it will install on.

So, my advice would be that if your fairly comfortable with a particular Linux distro, as long as your using a recent version of that distro and you go for at least 10gR2 or better/later, then try and do it on the distro your comfortable with. If you are new to Linux and not particularly comfortable with one distro over another, then go with one that is recommended by Oracle. Just make sure you read all the Linux Oracle installation docs *before* you start. This will help to ensure you can verify all pre-requisites are in place before you start and will help you make the right decisions when it comes to choices in the installation. A couple of o\hours of reading the docs before actually doing anything can actually save you days and days of owrk trying to fix something, particularly a half completed Oracle install.

Do a backup of your OS prior to doing the install and if it goes wrong, rollback your OS to its state before starting and start from there. Oracle can get a bit messy if you get into the situation where you have half and isntallation and you try to uninstall and start again (though I believe the Oracle install has improved a lot - I remember the 8i version had heaps of problems (especially if you had a non C or en.US locale setting). Most of these little problems have been fixed in later versions and it is much more reliable than it once was. Just make sure you have read and understood the installation docs before you start and you have verified *all* the platform prerequisites are set.

HTH Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au