Having been out a few days with the flu, I’m feeling a bit behind on my geeky project (see Parts 1 and 2 for background), so last night, I decided to tackle the next big step, installing Oracle 11gR2.
Obviously, WebCenter needs a database, and I haven’t installed Oracle for a few years. So, this should be fun, especially since I’ve never installed Oracle on Linux.
My first Oracle install was way back in 1996, 7.3 on Unix, all character mode. My command-line Unix/Linux skills are shaky at best, so you can imagine how fun that whole process was. I stuck to Windows installs after that.
The good news for me is that the days of command-line only installs are long gone. Anyway, after downloading the files from OTN, I found this guide.
I started with the section in Part I, “Installing Required Packages”, which assumed I had the CD media. So, since I still haven’t solved the VirtualBox shared folders issue I hit in Part 2 and don’t care to band my head against it anymore, I had to download Disk 2 and Disk 3 of the OEL install again.
After downloading and extracting them, I dug up some help on how to mount an iso image in Linux:
1) You must login as a root user, if not root user then switch to root user using following command:
$ su -2) Create the directory i.e. mount point:
# mkdir -p /mnt/disk3) Use mount command as follows to mount iso file called disk1.iso:
# mount -o loop disk1.iso /mnt/disk4) Change directory to list files stored inside an ISO image:
# cd /mnt/disk # ls -l
I know, this is n00b stuff, but like I said, I’m not only crappy in command line, I’m used to Ubuntu, a Debian distro, so OEL has subtle differences.
Anyway, it took me two tries to get to the finish line with 11g, and this is where I had to begin in each try. If you want to skip to the successful iteration, bounce down to the second try.
First Try
After mounting the two install disks, I verified the packages on Disk 2 (elfutils-libelf-devel* glibc-devel-2* glibc-headers-2* gcc-4* libgomp-4* gcc-c++-4* libstdc++-devel-4*), but then hit a snag for the ones on Disk 3:
Interesting. I dug around a bit and found this note.
As I suspected, the failed packages were only related to ODBC, which I doubt I need. So, fingers crossed, I proceeded with the other configuration steps and then logged out and back in as the newly created oracle user.
After reinstalling Firefox 3.5 as oracle and digging up the guide again, I ran the installer. The first step seems a bit unintuitive to me, or at least the message phrasing is.
I guess I read it too fast. I do “wish to stay uninformed”, so Yes. I probably went in a loop three times before I got past this one. PEBKAC problem.
Anyway, moving on, I doubt I need the demo database . . .
OK, why are there two options for Standard Edition? They’re identical.
I want to pick Standard because it’s slightly smaller and since this is a VM with limited resources, I want to keep it as bare bones as possible.
However, before picking Standard Edition option two, I did some digging to see if WebCenter required Enterprise Edition. I found no requirement, but again, fingers crossed. Since I don’t think there’s an upgrade process from Standard to Enterprise, I’d have to do an uninstall of Standard and an install of Enterprise.
Now, on to the prerequisite checks.
Failed due to a bunch of missing packages? Doh, didn’t I confirm those?
Second Try
So, on to the second try. I retraced my steps back to “Installing Required Packages” and discovered that batch rpm wasn’t working. I needed to run each rpm individually.
The first time through I ran this command:
rpm -ivh elfutils-libelf-devel* glibc-devel-2* glibc-headers-2* gcc-4* libgomp-4* gcc-c++-4* libstdc++-devel-4*
The results returned a list of results saying the packages were already installed. I didn’t check to ensure that each of the eight packages on Disk 2 were in that list as already installed.
Oops.
So, I went through and installed the missing ones like so:
rpm -ivh elfutils-libelf-devel*
rpm -ivh glibc-devel-2*
And so on until I had all eight installed. I suppose that obvious. On to the Disk 3 dependencies, where I hit the same ODBC failure. This time I poked around a bit more and found this nugget.
Issue is because of missing rpm unixODBC-2.2.11-7.1.i386.rpm which is present in CD2 . Install it first and then the other RPM i.e unixODBC-devel-2.2.11-7.1.i386 and unixODBC-kde-2.2.11-7.1.i386 can be installed without errors.
Mount CD2
#cd /media/E*/Server#rpm -ivh unixODBC-2.2.11-7.1.i386.rpmOnce rpm is successfully installed, mount CD3 and install unixODBC* rpm
Mount CD3
#cd /media/E*/Server#rpm -ivh unixODBC*
Sweet. I like it when there are no errors. So, back to the installer and finally to the prerequisite checks, which, this time only include the obvious errors.
I’m definitely concerned about memory issues. It’s going to be nigh impossible for me to give 1 GB of RAM to a VM when the host only hase 2 GB total. This may be something that derails my entire plan, but I’ll soldier ahead anyway.
It occurs to me now that I could allocate a swap file through OEL somehow. Drop a comment if you know how to do this. I’ll add it to my mental checklist of things to do when I continue the project.
Anyway, I ignored the errors and completed the install.
Success! I felt a little let down by the boring message thought. I expected something grander, like balloons or something. Oh well, I guess it’s not supposed to be difficult.
I still need to do a couple things to confirm the install, but that can wait.
After installing 11g, the VM is right about 20 gGB, which is about what I expected. I’ve allocated 100 GB of dynamic storage, and I’m hoping that’s enough. If it’s not, I’ve got problems.
Stay tuned for the next part, which will be the final configuration steps for 11g and then on to installing WebLogic.
Find the comments if you like.
Update: The next logical step after this is to use dbca to create a database. I missed that initially, and it’s covered in Part 7. I highly recommend you go there next if you’re following along at home.
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