Preparing Enterprise Linux 5 (64-bit) for installation of Oracle Database 11gR2

Minimum hardware requirements:

64-bit (x86_64)

• x86_64 compatible CPU
• 2 GB RAM
• 14 GB available disk space (4 GB for the Oracle software + 2 GB for the database + 4 GB for OS + 4 GB swap)

Note: Both Linux and Oracle must be installed for the same architecture: you need 64-bit Oracle to install on 64 bit Linux.

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 is certified to run the base release of OEL5 without patches. Free copies of OEL5 and  RHEL 5(called evaluation copy by Red Hat) can be downloaded from Oracle and Red Hat sites, correspondingly.  Required minimum kernel version: 2.6.18. Check your kernel version by running the following command:

uname -r

Installing additional packages

Oracle does not automate this part of the installation process well.  In Suse 11 you can install all the dependencies for orarrun package (but do not install orarun package itself, unless you want additional problems).

In Oracle Linux you can use oracle-validated  RPM (but don't run it as init script on startup: Oracle is crazy to recommend this ;-).

rpm -ql oracle-validated
/etc/rc.d/init.d/oraclevalidated
/etc/sysconfig/oracle-validated/oracle-validated-verify
/etc/sysconfig/oracle-validated/oracle-validated.params
/usr/bin/oracle-validated-verify

Configuring Linux for Oracle

Now that the Linux OS is installed, you need to configure it for Oracle.

Create the Oracle Groups and User Account

ORacel and dba account are often installed automatically vy packages like orarrun or oracle-validated. In this case they are ususlaly installed incorrectly and you need to modify them to make it comliant with the way you company is using them. The group oinstall is actually redundant and you can skip it althoether. 

To create accounts manually: 

/usr/sbin/groupadd dba
/usr/sbin/useradd -m -G dba oracle
id oracle

Set the password on the oracle account:

passwd oracle

Create Directories

Location depends on you company practice. There is so called Optimal Flexible Architecture (OFA) for the naming conventions used in creating the directory structure. For more information on OFA standards, see Appendix D of the Oracle Database Installation Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1) for Linux.

The following assumes that the directories are being created in the root filesystem. This is done for the sake of simplicity and is not recommended as a general practice. These directories would normally be created as separate filesystems.

For example:

mkdir -p /u01/app/oracle
chown -R oracle:oinstall /u01/app
chmod -R 775 /u01/app 

Configuring the Linux Kernel Parameters

See Oracle kernel parameters tuning on Linux

Setting shell limits for the oracle user

Oracle recommends setting limits on the number of processes and open files each Linux account may use. To make these changes, cut and paste the following commands as root:

cat >> /etc/security/limits.conf <<EOF
oracle soft nproc 2047
oracle hard nproc 16384
oracle soft nofile 1024
oracle hard nofile 65536
EOF

cat >> /etc/pam.d/login <<EOF
session required pam_limits.so
EOF

Change the default profile to change ulimit or add this to oracle user profile

cat >> /etc/profile <<EOF
if [ \$USER = "oracle" ]; then 
   ulimit -u 16384 -n 65536
   umask 022
fi
EOF

Create the Filesystem

Use ext4 to create this new filesystem. Other filesystems such as ext3 work just as well, but ext4 is a little bit faster.

It is recommended to create separate filesystems for database and for archives.

NEWS CONTENTS

• 20110411 : Requirements for Installing Oracle 11gR2 RDBMS on RHEL (and OEL) 5 on AMD64/EM64T [ID 880989.] ( Apr 11, 2011 )

Old News ;-)

[Apr 11, 2011] Requirements for Installing Oracle 11gR2 RDBMS on RHEL (and OEL) 5 on AMD64/EM64T [ID 880989.]

3. Required OS Components (per Release Notes, and Install Guide)

a.) The exact version number details of this list are based upon 64-bit (x86_64) RHEL Server 5.2 (aka "update 2"). When a higher "update" level is used, the RPM release numbers (such as 4.1.2-44) may be slightly different (such as 4.1.2-57 or 4.1.3-10). Since "update 2" and greater of RHEL 5 are certified, this is fine so long as you are still using 64-bit Linux (x86_64) RHEL Server 5 RPMs.
b.) Some of the Install Guide requirements will already be present from the "default-RPMs" foundation of Linux that you started with:
1.) binutils-2.17.50.0.6-6.el5 (x86_64)
2.) compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-61 (x86_64) <<< both ARCH's are required. See next line.
3.) compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-61 (i386) <<< both ARCH's are required. See previous line.
4.) elfutils-libelf-0.125-3.el5 (x86_64)
5.) glibc-2.5-24 (x86_64) <<< both ARCH's are required. See next line.
6.) glibc-2.5-24 (i686) <<< both ARCH's are required. See previous line.
7.) glibc-common-2.5-24 (x86_64)
8.) ksh-20060214-1.7 (x86_64)
9.) libaio-0.3.106-3.2 (x86_64) <<< both ARCH's are required. See next line.
10.) libaio-0.3.106-3.2 (i386) <<< both ARCH's are required. See previous line.
11.) libgcc-4.1.2-42.el5 (i386) <<< both ARCH's are required. See next line.
12.) libgcc-4.1.2-42.el5 (x86_64) <<< both ARCH's are required. See previous line.
13.) libstdc++-4.1.2-42.el5 (x86_64) <<< both ARCH's are required. See next line.
14.) libstdc++-4.1.2-42.el5 (i386) <<< both ARCH's are required. See previous line.
15.) make-3.81-3.el5 (x86_64)

c.) The remaining Install Guide requirements will have to be installed:
1.) elfutils-libelf-devel-0.125-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
a.) requires elfutils-libelf-devel-static-0.125-3.el5.x86_64.rpm as a prerequisite, as listed below.
b.) elfutils-libelf-devel and elfutils-libelf-devel-static each depend upon the other. Therefore, they must be installed together, in one (1) "rpm -ivh" command as follows:
rpm -ivh elfutils-libelf-devel-0.125-3.el5.x86_64.rpm elfutils-libelf-devel-static-0.125-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
2.) glibc-headers-2.5-24.x86_64.rpm
a.) requires kernel-headers-2.6.18-92.el5.x86_64.rpm as a prerequisite, as listed below
3.) glibc-devel-2.5-24.x86_64.rpm <<< both ARCH's are required. See next item.
4.) glibc-devel-2.5-24.i386.rpm <<< both ARCH's are required. See previous item.
5.) gcc-4.1.2-42.el5.x86_64.rpm
a.) requires libgomp-4.1.2-42.el5.x86_64.rpm as a prerequisite, as listed below
6.) libstdc++-devel-4.1.2-42.el5.x86_64.rpm
7.) gcc-c++-4.1.2-42.el5.x86_64.rpm
8.) libaio-devel-0.3.106-3.2.x86_64.rpm <<< both ARCH's are required. See next item
9.) libaio-devel-0.3.106-3.2.i386.rpm <<< both ARCH's are required. See previous item.
10.) sysstat-7.0.2-1.el5.x86_64.rpm
11.) unixODBC-2.2.11-7.1.x86_64.rpm <<< both ARCH's are required. See next item
12.) unixODBC-2.2.11-7.1.i386.rpm <<< both ARCH's are required. See previous item.
13.) unixODBC-devel-2.2.11-7.1.x86_64.rpm <<< both ARCH's are required. See next item
14.) unixODBC-devel-2.2.11-7.1.i386.rpm <<< both ARCH's are required. See previous item.

4. Additional Required OS Components (per the runInstaller OUI)
a.) intentionally blank

5. Additional Required OS Components (per this NOTE)
a.) Please do not rush, skip, or minimize this critical step.

• This list is based upon a "default-RPMs" installation of 64-bit (x86_64) RHEL Server 5.
• Additional RPMs (beyond anything known to Oracle) may be needed if a "less-than-default-RPMs" installation of 64-bit (x86_64) RHEL Server 5 is performed. For more information, please refer to Note 376183.1, "Defining a "default RPMs" installation of the RHEL OS"

b.) Several RPMs will be required as prerequisites to those listed in section II.3.c:

• elfutils-libelf-devel-static-0.125-3.el5.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-headers-2.6.18-92.el5.x86_64.rpm
• libgomp-4.1.2-42.el5.x86_64.rpm

6. Oracle Global Customer Support has noticed a recent trend with install problems that originates from installing too many RPMs. For example:

1. installing your own JDK version (prior to beginning the Oracle Software "runInstaller") is not needed on Linux, and is not recommended on Linux. A pre-existing JDK often interferes with the correct JDK that the Linux Oracle Software "runInstaller" will place and use.
2. installing more than the required version of the gcc / g++ RPMs often leads to accidentally using (aka enabling or activating) the incorrect one. If you have multiple RDBMS versions installed on the same Linux machine, then you will likely have to manage multiple versions of gcc /g++ . For more information, please see Note 444084.1, "Multiple gcc / g++ Versions in Linux"

7. All of the RPMs in section II. are on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 64-bit (x86_64) distribution media.

III. Environment:
================
1. Modify your kernel settings in /etc/sysctl.conf (RedHat) as follows. If the current value for any parameter is higher than the value listed in this table, do not change the value of that parameter. Range values (such as net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range) must match exactly.

kernel.shmall = physical RAM size / pagesize For most systems, this will be the value 2097152. See Note 301830.1 for more information.

kernel.shmmax = 1/2 of physical RAM. This would be the value 2147483648 for a system with 4Gb of physical RAM.

kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
fs.file-max = 512 x processes (for example 6815744 for 13312 processes)

fs.aio-max-nr = 1048576
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 9000 65500 
net.core.rmem_default = 262144
net.core.rmem_max = 4194304
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_max = 1048576 

2. To activate these new settings into the running kernel space, run the "sysctl –p" command as root.

3. Set Shell Limits for the oracle User. Assuming that the "oracle" Unix user will perform the installation, do the following:

1. Add the following settings to /etc/security/limits.conf

   oracle soft nproc 2047
   oracle hard nproc 16384 
   oracle soft nofile 1024 
   oracle hard nofile 65536 

2. Add or edit the following line in the /etc/pam.d/login file, if it does not already exist:
   session required pam_limits.so

3. Add the following lines to /etc/profile:

   if [ $USER = "oracle" ]; then
     ulimit -u 16384 -n 65536 
   fi

4. The gcc-4.1.2 and gcc-c++-4.1.2 RPM items above will ensure that the correct gcc / g++ versions are installed. It is also required that you ensure that these correct gcc / g++ versions are active, and in-use. Ensure that the commands "gcc --version" and "g++ --version" each return "4.1.x".

5. The hostname command should return the fully qualified hostname as shown below:

% hostname
hostname.domainname 

6. If any Java packages are installed on the system, unset the Java environment variables, for example JAVA_HOME.

7. The oracle account that is used to install Oracle 11.2.0.1, should not have the Oracle install related variables set by default. For example setting ORACLE_HOME, PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include Oracle binaries in .profile, .login file and /etc/profile.d should be completely avoided.

1. Setting $ORACLE_BASE (not $ORACLE_HOME) is recommended, since it eases a few prompts in the OUI runInstaller tool.
2. following the succesful install, it is recommended to set $ORACLE_HOME, and to set $PATH to include $ORACLE_HOME/bin at the beginning of the $PATH string.

8. By default, RHEL 5 x86_64 Linux is installed with SELinux as "enforcing". This is fine for the 11gR2 installation process. However, to subsequently run "sqlplus", switch SELinux to the "Permissive" mode. See NOTE 454196.1, "./sqlplus: error on libnnz11.so: cannot restore segment prot after reloc" for more details.

9. Log in as Oracle user and start the installation as follows:

./runInstaller 

1. It is best practice not to use any form of "su" to start the runInstaller, in order to avoid potential display-related problems.
2. When performing the 11.2.0.1 installation, make sure to use the "runInstaller" version that comes with 11.2.0.1 software.
3. When performing any subsequent 11.2.0.x patchset, make sure to use the "runInstaller" version that comes with the patchset.

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