Oracle killed the OpenSolaris project (fork of former OpenSolaris is now OpenIndiana - http://openindiana.org) and released Solaris 11 Express. So the new Solaris is officially out and comes with several very interresting features but I'll mention about few which user may facing to during his work with this version. Root account is now Root role In fact this thing is not new. RBAC was here for long but now it is the default. When you try to log on as the "root" user then logon will fail. So you can't to logon directly. You need to log on as non-root user and then execute "su -". For successfull logon via "su -" command you need to have granted "root" role otherwise you will get "Roles can only be assumed by authorized users" message. Only first created user (you are creating it during installation) has this role granted by default. So for the other users root role needs to be granted. Example:

usermod -R root johndoe

Of course you can specify role (root role in this case) also during user creation. Example:

useradd -R root -m -d /export/home/johndoe johndoe

You may ask "Is there possibility to set old fashioned behaviour?" Yes, it is but be sure you really want to do that. To enable login as root directly execute following command:

rolemod -K type=normal root

Also to enable connect using SSH and allow root login you need to change PermitRootLogin in SSH configuration and restart SSH service.

PermitRootLogin yes

and then

svcadm restart ssh

Done. Some keywords for study: RBAC, sudo, pfexec, pf(shell name) The home directory and default shell Root role is not the only thing that first user will get. When you create new user using following command:

useradd oracle

Assume that first account created (during installation) was "ivan". If you compare entries in /etc/passwd you will find one difference. "ivan" account has /bin/bash as default shell and "oracle" has /bin/sh (which is symlink to ksh93 in fact). For change of shell to Bash just use the usermod command:

usermod -s /bin/bash oracle

The second difference is that /home/oracle does not exist even if it is stored in /etc/passwd file. When you try to create it manually you will get: "mkdir: cannot create directory `oracle': Operation not applicable". You may delete the user and try to create it using -d an -m switch. In that case you will get: "UX: useradd: ERROR: Unable to create the home directory: Operation not applicable.". The answer for this is simple. You can't do that because /home directory is maintained by AutoFS. Possible solutions (classic well known way): 1. Use different (existing) home directory. Example:

useradd -R root -m -d /export/home/johndoe johndoe

2. Modify /etc/auto_home add relevant entry for future user and then create it. Example:

echo "johndoe localhost:/export/home/&" >> /etc/auto_home
useradd -m -d /home/johndoe johndoe

Bugs and Fun No, this is not name of some feature. This will be just light description of issues I was facing to during the installation of Oracle Database.

- 11.2.0.1 version doesn't know Solaris 11 OS. In fact it will install correctly also it is functional it just skips the prerequistes check step. You need to download latest release 11.2.0.2 from My Oracle Support website.

- 11.2.0.2 version knows the Solaris 11 OS but during prerequisites check it requests to install non existing packages (replaced) packages i.e.: SUNWi1of and SUNWxwfnt (I belive there were replaced by SUNWfont-xorg-core and SUNWfont-xorg-iso8859-1 packages).

- 11.2.0.2 version requests to set LoginGraceTime 0 but I don't think this is a good idea even there is limit to max connections.

- There is lot of URLs to OpenSolaris website and lot of "OpenSolaris" texts in configuration files.

 

Installation article you can find here http://ivan.kartik.sk/oracle/install_ora11gR2_solaris11.html or in menu of this page. I belive that this paper will work also for last OpenSolaris versions and OpenIndiana (I wish long life to this project) as well. Enjoy.

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 use this simple fix (I suggest to do it 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:

chattr +i /tmp/.linux_release

Note!: This workaround is working for 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.

I was installing new (second) release of Oracle 11g database on Solaris x86 (Intel/AMD compatible) 64 bit version. Installation was fain, I had been 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) so I created symlink as workaround. As usual I made installation article which You can find on right menu of this page.