Re: Installing 9i on Linux

From: Dave Haas <davehaas_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Sun, 02 Sep 2001 07:17:47 GMT
Message-ID: <20010902.012343.1308044878.11015@hotmail.com>

Answers inline :) Hope it helps ...

> Being a simple-minded Windows user, I'm having great O/S difficulty
> trying to follow the Oracle guide to installing 9i on Linux.

The guide itself isn't very good, so don't worry about it.  

> Basically, I fall at the first hurdle: "Steps to Perform as the Root
> User - Create Mount Points". And then it goes downhill thereafter.

There are some things you need to do as root to get it to work. Unfortunately, some of them have already been done so we'll try it piece by piece. I've had it going on Suse7.1 for a while now and it's really quite cool (although the spfile takes some getting used to).

> I know the basic mount command, but if I try "mount /u01
> /some_directory", it doesn't work, so the subtleties of its syntax must
> be escaping me. Any suggestions for how to get this working, and what
> my mount point should actually reference?

Actually, there is a difference between a 'mount point' and the 'mount' command. A mount point is nothing more than a directory in the directory structure. The mount command is used to actually mount filesystems on the local (or other) machine(s). Think of mounting a filesystem as mapping a drive.

To create mount points, simply use the mkdir command, like:

mkdir -p /oracle/mnt1 /oracle/mnt2 /oracle/mnt3

The -p option simply creates the upper directories if they don't already exist (for example, the /oracle directory in the example above).

Now we would have to change the ownership of those directories (and the group as well) to the oracle user, otherwise noone but root can write to them.

chown oracle /oracle
chgrp dba /oracle

While we are on the topic of the oracle user, on Suse7.1 the Suse ppl have already created the oracle account. You don't have to do it. According to the install docs though, it says you are supposed to make the primary group for the oracle user the oinstall group, and a secondary group the dba group. That's bad advice. I would recommend switching those around:

usermod oracle -g dba -G oinstall

You probably want to change the password for the oracle account as well:

passwd oracle

So, you should have three directories plus the directory for the software (something like the following, YMMV). Make sure all are owned by oracle and the group is set to either oinstall or dba (I recommend dba, it makes the db creation cleaner. If it's not dba then the background processes have trouble writing trace files, etc)

/oracle/mnt1
/oracle/mnt2
/oracle/mnt3
/oracle/software

Log out of root and in as the oracle user. Then you set some evironment variables (in .bashrc most likely):

export ORACLE_SID=xxxx
export ORACLE_BASE=/oracle/software
export ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/9i

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib
export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH

and then start a new terminal for them to take effect. You can also put them in .bash_profile if you want, it doesn't really matter.

Run the installer and you are off to the races. The installer takes a LOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGG time and you need a LOT of swap. It took 384M of physical and 512M of swap to get it to go on my machine. Christ. IMHO that is way the hell too much. Java to the rescue ...

Anyway, if you need any other help let me know. It's really cool and I'm getting to play with the new features. EM is a LOT snappier than previous versions. SVRMGRL is indeed gone. Connect internal no longer works either :)

Cheers,

Dave Haas Received on Sun Sep 02 2001 - 02:17:47 CDT