3. The installer

3.1 How?

Generally, following the documentation is a good idea. It's not that bad and you'll get much better support from Oracle if you have. (I ended up breaking things -- and knowing it would -- by following the documentation for Oracle Applications. It was the only way to get decent support.)

This document is going to give an overview, but you should still have their documentation available.

3.2 What do I tell the installation program?

As part of the installation Oracle will ask a number of questions. Generally they're not too difficult but let's see what I entered and why.

1. Many people make the mistake of following Oracle's documentation and, therefore, fail at the first hurdle. Don't execute runInstaller as it almost always fails. Instead move to install/linux on the CD and run runIns.sh while logged in as 'oracle'.
2. It should show a title screen. Click 'Next.'
3. It should ask you to enter the source directory of the installation files ('jar' file) and your Oracle installation directory. You should be able to leave the former alone. The Oracle home directory is where you want to install the software. According to the installation documentation is should be somewhere on /u01, but I ignored that and put it in /home/oracle. Oracles advice, in this respect, is usually worth following. Click 'Next' when you've entered the details.
4. Now it should ask you for the DBA group. This is the Unix group you created in the last section and is probably 'dba'. Enter the details and click 'Next.'
5. This time it wants you to log in as 'root' and run /tmp/OraInstall/orainstRoot.sh. Do as it says. (You may have to run pdksh or bash in the 'Bourne compatibility mode' to get it to complete successfully.) When you're done click 'Retry.'
6. You're now given the option of what to install. Your best bet here is 'Oracle Enterprise Edition,' as this includes just about everything (table 3.1 in the Oracle documentation tells you exactly what it installs). Make sure the right radio button is selected and click 'Next.'
7. It should now allow you to choose what you install with much finer granularity. Unless you're particularly constrained by disk space or know exactly what you need, I'd recommend leaving it exactly as it is and clicking 'Next.' The Universal Installer won't let you make any silly choices so don't worry too much if you unselect something. You can always add it back in later.
8. For any products that you've asked it to install, the installer will allow you to change where it puts them. Again, only if you have a good reason to should you change it. Click 'Next' when you're done.
9. It now goes away and installs all the pieces of software you asked it to. This will probably take quite a while and will use far more memory than is reasonable.
10. It should ask you if you want to create a database. Select 'no'. There are two reasons for this: it often doesn't work and, even when it does, it's very slow (it seems to fire up another JVM, leaving X, the Oracle back-end and two virtual machines in memory; not good with 128Mb of memory).
11. The installer should now ask you about the network protocols that you want Oracle to support. The boxes all came up blank for me. I don't know what's supposed to be in there, but I clicked 'Next' and found that everything worked.
12. All the hard stuff is complete now. All the products you want should be installed and are ready to go. Congratulations.

3.3 Installing the patch

Unfortunately, the CD that Oracle sent you was probably version 8.1.5.0.0. As with almost all first releases there are problems with that version (problems include empty files, so they're quite serious) and a patch, to version 8.1.5.0.2 is essential. You'll certainly need it to progress to the "Configuration" section of this HOWTO. The patch described here is a cumulative patch, i.e., it includes all the files required to move from version 8.1.5.0.0 to 8.1.5.0.2.

The file you need is on the Oracle web site and is relatively easy to install.

1. This is probably the first of many patches, so create a directory called "patches" somewhere convenient (mine is in $ORACLE_HOME).
2. Download the file into it.
3. Create somewhere to put the files:

   mkdir /tmp/orapatch
   cd /tmp/orapatch
   

4. Uncompress the file:

   tar zvxf $ORACLE_HOME/patches/linux815patches.tgz
   

5. Run the shell script that's now in the current directory:

   ./linux_815patches.sh
   

Note that it's important not to uncompress the file in the current directory. The patch installer checks that the correct number of files are present and fails if there are not the right number. Of course, if it finds the patch archive it finds too many files!

3.4 Setting up your environment

Add the following lines to your ".profile" (or whatever the equivalent is for your shell):

. oraenv
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/lib

Quite why the Oracle installer doesn't do this I have no idea.

If you see "[: integer expression expected before -lt" the next time you log in, it's because 'oraenv' is expecting your ULIMIT to be an integer rather than the default 'unlimited.' I've seen no ill effects by ignoring the error, but you can fix it by setting the ULIMIT to something finite.

3.5 Installations questions and answers

The installation program exits with 'CreateOUIProcess()'

Firstly, make sure that you're running the right version of the JVM. I don't know what Oracle do with their software, but it's very dependent on the version you use.

Secondly, it might help if, instead of running runInstaller from the root of the CD, you move into install/linux and run the runInst.sh shell script instead.

This problem seems more common on RedHat 6.1 than 6.0 and could be something to do with a newer C library.

I've also heard reports that if you have the wrong version of Gnome's usual window manager, Enlightenment, you might get this problem. Upgrade or switch to another environment such as KDE or Fvwm2.

The installer just flashes on the screen and then vanishes

This is not an uncommon occurrence. Usually it means that you're running an old version of Enlightenment. Upgrading or switching to another environment should fix the problem.

A similar problem is the installation program vanishing at some later point in the process, often around 80% of the way through. The consensus seems to be that Oracle ran out of memory. You should increase the amount of swap space your machine has, anything over 200Mb should be sufficient.

Strange Java errors when I start the installation program?

Which version of the Java Virtual Machine are you using? People have claimed success with other versions, but most of the problems that I had disappeared when I downgraded to JRE 1.1.6v5, the one that Oracle recommends in their documentation.

Two other things that are worth mentioning: make sure you use the JRE and not the JDK and, secondly, you should be using "green" threads. Unless you've set THREADS_FLAG to 'native' you almost certainly have the correct setting.

The installation program 'Segmentation Fault's

You do have GLIBC 2.1 don't you?

Problems loading shared libraries

The error message that I'm talking about looks a bit like this:

error in loading shared libraries: libclntsh.so.8.0: cannot open
shared object file: No such file or directory

This is the same as NT complaining that it can't find a DLL. It's very easy to fix. Simply add the following line to the end of your ".profile" if you're using a Bourne-like shell (ask a local guru if you don't know):

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/lib

Or use the following line if you're using a CSH-like shell:

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH "$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
$ORACLE_HOME/lib"

I don't use the C-Shell, so independent verification of this command would be appreciated.

Pro*C doesn't work

The answer to this took quite a bit of tracking down, although the answer is on the Oracle web site if you look hard enough.

The default configuration of Pro*C doesn't know where to find all its libraries, so you need to tell it. After installation $ORACLE_HOME/precomp/admin/pcscfg.cfg is empty, but it needs to contain the following:

sys_include=(/home/oracle/precomp/public, /usr/include,
/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-redhat-linux/egcs-2.91.66/include/,
/usr/include, /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-redhat-linux/egcs-2.91.66/include,
/usr/include)
include=(/home/oracle/precomp/public) 
include=(/home/oracle/rdbms/demo) 
include=(/home/oracle/network/public) 
include=(/home/oracle/plsql/public)
ltype=short

(The first four lines above, from sys_include to include) should all be on the same line in the file.)

The Oracle documentation doesn't mention this, but you also need to edit $ORACLE_HOME/precomp/lib/env_precomp.mk. On the line that defines CCPSYSINCLUDE, put the following:

CCPSYSINCLUDE=sys_include='($(ORACLE_HOME)/precomp/public,
/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-redhat-linux/egcs-2.91.66/include,
/usr/include/g++-2, /usr/include)'

This works for RedHat 6.0, but may need tweaking for other distributions or later versions of RH.

I installed the patch but it made things worse!

This is tricky, barely documented by Oracle and common across all their products and installation programs. It's about time they did something about it!

Often what happens is as follows: you install Oracle Enterprise Edition and, as Oracle tells you, you dash off and install all the available patches. Then you decide you need the pre-compilers and install Oracle Programmer from the same CD.

Before you installed Pro*C your database worked, and now it doesn't.

The problem is that the versions of the pre-compilers that you installed were not patched and some of the Oracle server code relies on the fixes; Oracle's installer is so stupid that it will overwrite newer version of the same code.

The solution is not pretty. Since you can't extract an individual file from the CD you need to install the whole thing again, this time adding Oracle Programmer before the patch.

Oracle thinks I don't have enough disk space

There's something wrong with the installation program. Assuming you do have enough space it will install okay.