Re: HELP WITH ORACLE INSTALLATION!

Ross Edwards wrote:
>
> I am new the DBA field and recently got my first contract to do
> an Oracle 7 installation, and an I(nformix installation.
>
> My problem is that I have no idea how long these take, and since I'm under
> contract, I have to be as accurate as possible.
>
> Can anybody tell me how long it usually takes to install Oracle 7 on Unix?
> I believe the brand of Unix is SCO/Unix.

Here is a story that may be relevant.

Without any prior knowledge of Oracle, it took me approximately 1 hour to install the software from a cd-rom on my HPUX10 workstation. I then had to re-install the whole thing because I had chosen an incorrect character set (Oracle left out the relevant document from my documentation pack so I had to contact a colleague to find out the correct character set name).

The next step was to install the SQL*Net V2 package. Installation was simple, but configuration was difficult. For this I had to borrow a PC to install the Oracle Network Manager (available only for PCs). Again, lacking documentation relevant to Unix and TCP/IP, I was unable to generate the correct configuration files and had to ask a colleague for assistance. This colleague supplied me with hand made versions of the tsnnames.ora and listener.ora files.

Since the purpose of my database is to act as a partial mirror of another site, I had to install the advanced replication option. For some reason, the Oracle installer was not able to install this option correctly. Unfortunately, my colleague was at a loss on this one so I tried to contact Oracle support. At this stage, I had to find our contract number but central administration couldn't locate the correct number and Oracle wouldn't answer my questions without it. While waiting for the contract number business to be straightened out, I decided to reinstall everything again from scratch. This time it worked.

So the total time to install Oracle plus various options including advanced replication and SQL*Net V2 was probably several hours. However, this time was spread out over several days due to communications
turnaround. Also, I have yet to actually create any real databases; all this work was just to install the server software. Since I just used the system defaults, I may have to modify some of the system parametres when I actually start planning on putting in some data.

In conclusion, your installation may take just one hour, or it may take a few days. To be confident of successful installation, make sure to have the phone number of a knowledgeable friend and your Oracle contract number at hand.

KW

-- 
warkentyne_at_di.epfl.ch            Departement d'Informatique, Ecole
http://ltiwww.epfl.ch/~warkent/  Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne,