Installation article for 11g Release 2 on Redhat,OEL and Centos 5
I prepared short installation HOWTO for Redhat and it's clones (Oracle Enterprise Linux and Centos). Installation on first two of them was fine without significant problems but Centos needs couple of workarounds which are the reason why I created this article. In fact there is not problem with Centos as it is same as RHEL and OEL but as Centos is not certified operating system OUI and some scripts makes complications during installation process. You might say "Use certified distribution", but there are lot of Centos users which don't want to use other distribution (for example because of missing free updates) or they don't use some of Virtual machines for Oracle. But in fact some of certified distributions aren't fully supported by the new Database release.
In case You are the Centos 5 user here are the fixes for successful installation of 11gR2:
1. Old good /etc/redhat-release and /etc/issue (Optional)
Solution which I posted years ago for 10gR1 release does not solve everything. Also modification of oraparam.ini (which was far better solution) does not solve anything.
But to be sure apply this settings (backup /etc/redhat-release and /etc/issue before) change existing value to
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5 (Tikanga)
2. Install fake redhat-release RPM file
OUI checks for presence of redhat-release package and if it is missing then it will skip the prerequisites verification process. Unfortunatelly there is centos-release package installed on system (Don't uninstall it!). I created fake centos-fake.noarch.rpm RPM package to solve this issue. If you don't trust to my packages (I fully understand this) You can build your own package using this
.spec file.
Install downloaded (built) package:
rpm -i centos-fake.noarch.rpm
Don't worry about package name, after installation it will appear as "redhat-release" in RPM database.
3. Solve the "ADVM/ACFS is not supported" issue
This workaround solves Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Grid Infrastructure installation (neccessary for ASM or RAC). In fact ASMFS is not needed for for ASM but in case you want to test this new feature this workaround will help you.
ASMFS feature is available only on Redhat and Oracle Enterprise Linux distribuion. So SUSE (SLES) is out of play at this moment (I won't speculate wh
y it so but modules are provided for RH and OEL kernel only) so as You can see not all certified distributions are supported equally.
During root.sh execution or ohasd initiation You could see one of these messages:
ADVM/ACFS is not supported on centos-release-5-4.el5.centos
ADVM/ACFS is not supported on centos-release-5-3.el5.centos
ADVM/ACFS is not supported on centos-release-5-2.el5.centos
ADVM/ACFS is not supported on centos-release-5-1.el5.centos
To workaround this use this simple fix (I suggest to to this before GRID installation):
echo "redhat-release-5Server-5" > /tmp/.linux_release
To prevent deletion or modification of .linux_release file I suggest to set immunitable flag:
/usr/bin/chattr +i /tmp/.linux_release
Note!: This workaround is working Redhat clones (OEL, Centos) only! It will be not working on other distros.
Now your Centos will appear for Oracle 11g R2 as certified distribution.
Full installation paper for all three distributions (including workarounds for Centos) You can find here or in menu of this page.
Posted on Sunday, January 10, 2010 Comments [0]
How to install and setup Yum in OpenSUSE 11.1 and 11.2
Few days ago I received e-mail with question how to setup Yum on OpenSuse 11.2 as yum package is missing in official repository. Instead of reply I'm posting the solution here.
So in case you don't like the Yast utility (many people I know hates the Yast), missing some function that yum provides or you simply prefer installing/uninstalling packages using the Yum utility then here are the simple steps how to install and configure it on OpenSuse distribution (note OpenSuse 11.0 contains Yum package but it does not work on newer releases which contains python-2.6).
Download required packages:
From official OpenSuse repository:
python-gpgme
python-urlgrabber
rpm-python
yum-metadata-parser
Note: I you have registered package repository in Yast you can install it using:
yast -i python-gpgme python-urlgrabber rpm-python yum-metadata-parser
These packages are not available for Open Suse 11.1 and 11.2 so you need to donwload and install them manually:
python-sqlite2
yum-3.2.34-2
Yum package was built from source package shipped with Fedora 11 using this (just little modified) .spec file
Install downloaded packages:
# rpm -i python-sqlite2-2.4.1-2.1.x86_64.rpm yum-3.2.34-2-suse.noarch.rpm
Configure YUM:
Add folowing line to "[main]" section of /etc/yum.conf file:
distroverpkg=openSUSE-release
Create source repositories files
Create file OpenSUSE-inet.repo and OpenSUSE-local.repo in /etc/yum.repos.d directory.
# touch /etc/yum.repos.d/OpenSUSE-inet.repo
# touch /etc/yum.repos.d/OpenSUSE-local.repo
Contents of OpenSUSE-inet.repo
[base]
name=OpenSUSE-$releasever - Base
baseurl=http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/$releasever/repo/oss/suse/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
gpgkey=file:///etc/path/to/file
[updates]
name=OpenSUSE-$releasever - Updates
baseurl=http://download.opensuse.org/update/$releasever/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
gpgkey=file:///path/to/file
Contents of OpenSUSE-local.repo (Optional and disabled by default - For installation using local repository/DVD):
[cd-media]
name=OpenSUSE-$releasever - Local
baseurl=file:///media/cdrom/
gpgcheck=0
enabled=0
Now the installation is done.
Posted on Thursday, January 07, 2010 Comments [0]
Installation article for 11g release 2 on Solaris x86_64
I was installing new (second) release of Oracle 11g database on Solaris x86 (Intel/AMD compatible) 64 bit version. Installation was fain, I was facing just one error (.../root.sh: /usr/xpg4/bin/grep: not found) during execution of root.sh script at the end of the installation. As I was unable to find right package and during review
of script (I found out there is not used grep -E) I created symlink as workaround.
As usual I made installation article which You can find on right menu of
this page.
Rest in peace good old HTML version of Metalink!
Oracle had anounced retirement of old (HTML) version of Metalink what really scared me. I was asking my colleagues and friends on DBA position which version are they using or prefer. All answers (except one) were same: HTML. I understand that Oracle fell in love with "Open Laszlo" technology times ago but new "My Oracle Support" (a.k.a Flash version) is really piece of #%%^#$#$. I used old good HTML version until it's official death.
Now I have no choice as since last weekend HTML version is working no longer and I must use "My Oracle Support". And I need to say it's a painful experience. My last login to this site took "only" 19 min. (I have really good internet connection) so "Benefits" listed on page as "Improved System Stability" or "Faster Problem Resolution" becomes funny to me.
In case you were using direct link (http://www.oracle.com/technology/support/metalink/index.html) to Oracle Certification Matrix (which was accessible without need to login to Metalink) in your posts then keep in mind this application had disappeared too.