Installation of Oracle 9i (R2) on SUSE Linux 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3


This paper (HOWTO) describes step-by-step installation of Oracle 9i database software on SUSE LINUX 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3.

This paper covers following steps:

Pre-Instalation Tasks

1. Create oracle User Account

Login as root and create te user oracle which belongs to dba group.
su -
# groupadd dba
# useradd -g dba oracle
# mkdir /home/oracle
# chown oracle:dba /home/oracle

2. Setting System parameters
Edit the /etc/sysctl.conf and add following lines:
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
kernel.shmmax = 2147483648
kernel.shmmni = 128
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.msgmnb = 65536
kernel.msgmni = 2878
fs.file-max = 65536
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000
Note: You need reboot system to apply above settings.

Edit the /etc/security/limits.conf file and add following lines:
* - nproc 16384
* - nofile 16384

3. Setting Oracle Enviroment
Edit the /home/oracle/.bash_profile file and add following lines:
ORACLE_BASE=/opt/oracle
ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/920
ORACLE_SID=MY_ORACLE
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1
PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin

export ORACLE_BASE ORACLE_HOME ORACLE_SID LD_LIBRARY_PATH PATH LD_ASSUME_KERNEL

Save the .bash_profile and execute following commands for load new enviroment:
cd /home/oracle
. .bash_profile

Download & Install

1. Download and install required .rpm packages

Some additional packages are required for succesful instalation of Oracle software. To check wheter required packages are installed on your operating system use following command:
rpm -q gcc glibc-devel libstdc++ libstdc++-devel cpp

If some package is not installed download it from SUSE ftp server or direct from 9.1, 9.2 or 9.3 locations.

Download the gcc_old-2.95.3-175.2.i586.rpm package.

Install the required packages using the rpm command:
# rpm -ivh gcc-3.3.4-11.i586.rpm \
glibc-devel-2.3.3-118.i586.rpm \
libstdc++-3.3.4-11.i586.rpm \
libstdc++-devel-3.3.4-11.i586.rpm \
cpp-3.3.4-11.i586.rpm \
gcc_old-2.95.3-175.2.i586.rpm

If all required packages were installed succesfuly then login as root and switch the GCC3 compiler binary with GCC2 compiler binary as following:
su -
# cd /usr/bin
# mv ./gcc ./gcc3
# mv /opt/gcc295/bin/gcc ./gcc

2. Download the Java Runtime Enviroment (j2re-1_3_1_15-linux-i586.bin) from the Sun website. Keep in mind you need to download j2re1.3.1_11 or higher.

Login as root and make the the file executable and then execute it. When the JRE is exracted move the "jre1.3.1_15" di rectory to "/opt" directory.
# chmod +x j2re-1_3_1_15-linux-i586.bin
# ./j2re-1_3_1_15-linux-i586.bin

# mv jre1.3.1_15 /opt/

3. Download the Oracle 9i (9.2.0.4) software from Oracle website.
Extract the files using following command:
gunzip ship_9204_linux_disk1.cpio.gz
gunzip ship_9204_linux_disk2.cpio.gz
gunzip ship_9204_linux_disk3.cpio.gz

cpio -idmv < ship_9204_linux_disk1.cpio
cpio -idmv < ship_9204_linux_disk2.cpio
cpio -idmv < ship_9204_linux_disk3.cpio

When all archives were extracted you've got three directories Disk1, Disk2 and Disk3.
Edit the Disk1/install/linux/oraparam.ini and modify JRE_LOCATION variable and set path to our JRE installation from Step 2.

JRE_LOCATION=/opt/jre1.3.1_15

4. Start the Oracle software installation process.

Now the system is prepared for Oracle software installation. To start the installation process execute the following commands:
cd Disk1
./runInstaller

When network configuration assistant and database configuration assistant has failed during startup then do following steps:
cd /opt/oracle/920
rm JRE
ln -s /opt/jre1.3.1_15 JRE
su -
# cd JRE/bin
# ln -s java jre
# cd i386/native_threads
# ln -s java jre

Click on "Retry" button.

Post-Instalation Tasks

1. Switch back the GCC binaries
su -
# cd /usr/bin
# mv ./gcc ./gcc296
# mv ./gcc3 ./gcc

2. Change of JRE path in Oracle Universal Installer

Edit the $ORACLE_BASE/oui/oraparam.ini file and modify the value of JRE_LOCATION to /opt/jre1.3.1_15

Common Installation Errors

Unable to load native library: /tmp/OraInstall2005-01-08_11-11-34AM/jre/lib/i386/libjava.so: symbol __libc_wait, version GLIBC_2.0 not defined in file libc.so.6 with link time reference
Solution: Install new JRE 1.3.1 version. Edit the Disk1/install/linux/oraparam.ini and set path to new JRE for JRE_LOCATION variable. For more information see Download & Install section.

Error in invoking target install of makefile /opt/oracle/920/ctx/lib/ins_ctx.mk
Error in invoking target install of makefile /opt/oracle/920/precomp/lib/ins_precomp.mk
Error in invoking target install of makefile /opt/oracle/920/plsql/lib/ins_plsql.mk
Error in invoking ntcontab.o of makfile /opt/oracle/920/network/lib/ins_net_client.mk
Solution: Install the gcc_old-2.95.3-175.2.i586.rpm (gcc 2.95) package and change the GCC binaries. For more information see Download & Install section.


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