I found some free time (not so much in these days) to try fresh release of Oracle Database 11g (released few days ago). So I took some free machine with certified Linux and downloaded 1.7 GB installation archive from well known site. Then I've installed all required packages (surprise #1: some of the RPM packages aren't required anymore). At first look nothing has changed in OUI (just background image). Installation went without problems and the SW was installed in a while.

I noticed that diag directory has been created in my $ORACLE_BASE directory but I didn't pay attention to it for that moment. After succesfull install I've decided create the database manually, so I created my own init.ora with common parameters along with other files (as orapw file and custom database creation script). Issued "startup nomount" and as usually watched output from "tail -f alert.log" in other terminal. Suddenly there new message appeared in output (suprise #2): "Thu Aug 16 17:22:41 2007 WARNING: The background_dump_dest init.ora parameter has been deprecated. WARNING: Please remove the background_dump_dest parameter from the init.ora file. WARNING: The diagnostic_dest init.ora parameter now determines the location of the diagnostic data WARNING: The new location for the background logs and traces is /opt/oracle/diag/rdbms/orcl/ORCL/trace Thu Aug 16 17:22:41 2007 WARNING: The user_dump_dest init.ora parameter has been deprecated. WARNING: Please remove the user_dump_dest parameter from the init.ora file. WARNING: The diagnostic_dest init.ora parameter now determines the location of the diagnostic data WARNING: The new location for the user logs and traces is /opt/oracle/diag/rdbms/orcl/ORCL/trace". Time to check the New Features Guide... I found that background_dump_dest and user_dump_dest were replaced by new parameter diagnostic_dest (yes, the diag directory...). So I changed the parameters, started instance and created the database and EM repository. I found that alert.log is not plan text anymore but it became little "well formed" - so now it is XML (surprise #3). But there is still option how to read alert.log as plain text. For this purpose here is new utility adrci which has many features and of course this one. So instead of 
tail -f alertORCL.log
you need now execute following: 

[oracle@ika ~]$ adrci
ADRCI: Release 11.1.0.6.0 - Beta on Mon Aug 16 22:01:28 2007
Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle.  All rights reserved.
ADR base = "/opt/oracle/admin"
adrci> show alert -tail -f
One thing that I don't understand is why Oracle guys made the adrci utility comfortable such as SQL*Plus (I mean not so comfortable). Well another tool for good old rlwrap. Btw look at the banner: ADRCI: Release 11.1.0.6.0 - Beta on Mon Aug 16 22:01:28 2007. Maybe Oracle guys forgot something (maybe not but it is little surprising when the "Beta" word occurs in final release). Oracle 11g brings new features (and of course EM got face lifting too :-D ) so don't wait and check the New Features Guide. As usually, I have prepared the installation paper. It's valid for Enterpise Linux 4,5 (shipped by Oracle) and also for Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5. You can find it here:http://ivan.kartik.sk/oracle/install_ora11gR1_elinux.html (and of course in the right menu of this page).