Installation of Oracle 9i (R2) on SUSE LINUX 9.1, 9.2, 9.3 and 10.1

Installation of Oracle 9i (R2) on SUSE Linux 9.1, 9.2, 9.3 and 10.1

This paper (HOWTO) describes step-by-step installation of Oracle 9i database software on SUSE LINUX 9.1, 9.2, 9.3 and 10.1.

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 execute "sysctl -p" command or 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:

Settings for SuSE 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3 only. For SuSE 10.1 use the next settings.

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

Settings for SuSE 10.1 only. For SeSE 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3 use the above settings. Note setting of LD_ASSUME_KERNEL in 10.1 will cause incorrect functionality of OS.

ORACLE_BASE=/opt/oracle
ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/920
ORACLE_SID=MY_ORACLE
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib
PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin

export ORACLE_BASE ORACLE_HOME ORACLE_SID LD_LIBRARY_PATH PATH

Save the .bash_profile and execute following commands for load new enviroment:

cd /home/oracle
. .bash_profile

4. Create base directory for Oracle

Login as root and create base directory for Oracle ($ORACLE_BASE).

su -
# cd /opt
# mkdir oracle
# chown oracle:dba oracle

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, 9.3 locations or install it from installation media.

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 \
compat-2004.9.6-2.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 (Note: Install JRE 1.3.1_1x version only).

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 /opt/oracle/920/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

3. (Optional) You may consider to use rlwrap for comfortable work with sqlplus. RPM package for SuSE (x86) distribution you can download here.

su -
# rpm -ivh rlwrap-0.24-suse.i586.rpm
# exit
echo "alias sqlplus='rlwrap sqlplus'" >> /home/oracle/.bash_profile
. /home/oracle/.bash_profile

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.

Starting Oracle Intelligent Agent.../opt/oracle/920/bin/dbsnmpwd: line 156: 2861 Segmentation fault nohup $ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbsnmp $* >>$DBSNMP_WDLOGFILE 2>&1
/opt/oracle/920/bin/dbsnmpwd: line 156: 2873 Segmentation fault nohup $ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbsnmp $* >>$DBSNMP_WDLOGFILE 2>&1
/opt/oracle/920/bin/dbsnmpwd: line 156: 2884 Segmentation fault nohup $ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbsnmp $* >>$DBSNMP_WDLOGFILE 2>&1
/opt/oracle/920/bin/dbsnmpwd: line 156: 2895 Segmentation fault nohup $ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbsnmp $* >>$DBSNMP_WDLOGFILE 2>&1
Solution: Download and apply patch nr.: 3238244 from http://metalink.oracle.com.

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.InternalError: Can't connect to X11 window server using 'localhost:0.0' as the value of the DISPLAY variable.
Solution: Execute "export DISPLAY=:0.0" (as oracle user) and "xhost +" as user who has opened X session (for example logged in KDE, GNOME, etc.). If the value is other than 127.0.0.1 or localhost you should "xhost +" on client machine.

Last update: 23-07-2006. Comments, suggestions, questions, errors (also grammatical :) )? Feel free to contact me.