After our last post about installing Oracle 11g on Ubuntu 7.10 (November, 6^th), and considering Ubuntu 8.04 LTS was released on April 21^st, I spent some time reviewing and putting together this new HOWTO for the installation.

Please note: I’ve used the x86 server version of Ubuntu 8.04, but the same steps should work without any problems for the Desktop version. Also notice that this whole procedure can easily take over six hours to complete, so don’t complain I didn’t warn you!

So, let’s get started, shall we?

Step One

Get the Ubuntu Linux 8.04 Hardy Heron (x86, 32-bit) image here, burn it, and install on any box you like. The only remark on the installation is that you should ask the installer to install an OpenSSH server at the end of the installation, since we’ll perform all the steps on this procedure remotely.

I’m not sure about the minimum requirements for the server, as, the last time I checked, running Oracle on Ubuntu is not officially supported by Oracle. In case you’re wondering, however, I’m using an x86 Pentium-like machine with 512M of RAM.

Step Two

Download Oracle 11g for Linux (x86, 32-bit).

It’s a good idea to verify the checksum hashes of the downloaded images before burning them (especially the ISO file to install Ubuntu). You can do that with one or more of md5sum filename, sha1sum filename , or cksum filename on almost any Unix-like box. Here are the pages showing the hashes:

• The MD5sums for the Ubuntu image
• The cksums of the Oracle image

(Wikipedia has pages on both these hash functions: MD5 and cksum.)

Step Three

We’ll need an X server for this howto, so on your desktop computer, allow X connections from your (soon-to-be) database server to your desktop. If you happen to be using Ubuntu on the Desktop as well, go to System -> Administration -> Login Window, select the Security tab and uncheck the box next to “Deny TCP connections to the Xserver”. You will have to restart your Xserver for this change to take effect.

I’m running Ubuntu on the desktop (I call this host “note“), so I have already an X server up and running. You can probably skip this step if you’re running the X server on the same machine you’re installing the database onto. Change 192.168.x.y to the IP address of your soon-to-be Oracle 11g database server:

bott@note:~$ hostname
note
user@note:~$ xhost +192.168.x.y
192.168.x.y being added to access control list

Step Four

Log in to your machine via SSH and upgrade all packages.

bott@note:~$ ssh user@192.168.x.y
user@192.168.x.y's password:
Linux hardy 2.6.24-16-server #1 SMP Thu Apr 10 13:58:00 UTC 2008 i686

The programs included with the Ubuntu system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
applicable law.

To access official Ubuntu documentation, please visit:
http://help.ubuntu.com/
Last login: Thu May  1 21:45:05 2008 from 192.168.w.z
user@hardy:~$

Once you have made sure you have network connectivity, update all packages to the latest version (after all, we’re using a newly released version and updates can be expected at some point in the future). Here’s the output as of Thursday, May 4^th 2008:

user@hardy:~$ hostname
hardy
user@hardy:~$ sudo su -
[sudo] password for pythian:
root@hardy:~# apt-get update
Hit http://security.ubuntu.com hardy-security Release.gpg
Ign http://security.ubuntu.com hardy-security/main Translation-en_US
Hit http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy Release.gpg
Ign http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main Translation-en_US
(...)
Fetched 7455kB in 2min36s (47.6kB/s)
Reading package lists... Done
root@hardy:~# apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  libldap-2.4-2 lshw
2 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 498kB of archives.
After this operation, 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy-updates/main libldap-2.4-2 2.4.7-6ubuntu4.1 [181kB]
Get:2 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy-updates/main lshw 02.12.01-2ubuntu1.1 [317kB]
Fetched 498kB in 2s (211kB/s)
(Reading database ... 18768 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace libldap-2.4-2 2.4.7-6ubuntu3 (using .../libldap-2.4-2_2.4.7-6ubuntu4.1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libldap-2.4-2 ...
Preparing to replace lshw 02.12.01-2ubuntu1 (using .../lshw_02.12.01-2ubuntu1.1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement lshw ...
Setting up libldap-2.4-2 (2.4.7-6ubuntu4.1) ...
Setting up lshw (02.12.01-2ubuntu1.1) ...
Processing triggers for libc6 ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
root@hardy:~#

In case you’re wondering why we used sudo su - instead of sudo -s (as on the last version of this HOWTO ): sudo su - effectively makes us root with a new/empty session, while sudo -s makes us root while preserving some of our session variables from our “user” session. I chose this path in an attempt to make this whole process a bit more deterministic and less vulnerable to problems.

If apt-get dist-upgrade installs a new kernel version, it’s a good idea to reboot the box before proceeding.

root@hardy:~# reboot

Broadcast message from user@hardy
        (/dev/pts/0) at 0:04 ...

The system is going down for reboot NOW!
root@hardy:~# Connection to 192.168.x.y closed by remote host.
Connection to 192.168.x.y closed.
bott@note:~$

Step Five

Once our machine is back up, we log in again and install a few extra packages needed for the installation: build-essential, libaio1, gawk, ksh, libmotif3, alien, libtool, and lsb-rpm. Please also note that our kernel has been upgraded to a newer build:

bott@note:~$ ssh user@192.168.x.y
user@192.168.x.y's password:
Linux hardy 2.6.24-16-server #1 SMP Thu Apr 10 13:58:00 UTC 2008 i686

The programs included with the Ubuntu system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
applicable law.

To access official Ubuntu documentation, please visit:
http://help.ubuntu.com/
Last login: Thu May  1 21:45:05 2008 from 192.168.w.z

user@hardy:~$ sudo su -
[sudo] password for pythian:
root@hardy:~# apt-get install build-essential libaio1 gawk ksh libmotif3 alien libtool lsb-rpm
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  autotools-dev binutils debhelper dpkg-dev g++ g++-4.2 gcc gcc-4.2 gettext html2text intltool-debian libbeecrypt6 libc6-dev libgomp1 libice6 libneon27
  librpm4.4 libsm6 libstdc++6-4.2-dev libtimedate-perl libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxcb-xlib0 libxcb1 libxdmcp6 libxext6 libxml2 libxmu6 libxp6 libxt6
  linux-libc-dev make patch po-debconf rpm x11-common
Suggested packages:
  lintian binutils-doc dh-make debian-keyring g++-multilib g++-4.2-multilib gcc-4.2-doc libstdc++6-4.2-dbg autoconf automake1.9 bison flex gcc-doc
  gcc-multilib gdb manpages-dev gcc-4.2-locales gcc-4.2-multilib libgcc1-dbg libgomp1-dbg libmudflap0-4.2-dbg libmudflap0-4.2-dev cvs gettext-doc glibc-doc
  libstdc++6-4.2-doc automaken gcj gfortran fortran95-compiler libtool-doc make-doc diff-doc
Recommended packages:
  libltdl3-dev xml-core libmail-sendmail-perl libcompress-zlib-perl libmail-box-perl
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  alien autotools-dev binutils build-essential debhelper dpkg-dev g++ g++-4.2 gawk gcc gcc-4.2 gettext html2text intltool-debian ksh libaio1 libbeecrypt6
  libc6-dev libgomp1 libice6 libmotif3 libneon27 librpm4.4 libsm6 libstdc++6-4.2-dev libtimedate-perl libtool libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxcb-xlib0
  libxcb1 libxdmcp6 libxext6 libxml2 libxmu6 libxp6 libxt6 linux-libc-dev lsb-rpm make patch po-debconf rpm x11-common
0 upgraded, 45 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 22.9MB of archives.
After this operation, 80.5MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
(... again: downloads a bunch of packages ...)
(... again: installs a bunch of packages  ...)
Processing triggers for libc6 ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place

root@hardy:~#

Step Six

After all those packages and updates are installed, we make some adjustments on our system. First of all, we change the default replacement for sh from dash to bash. Do not forget skip this step, otherwise we might get all sorts of weird errors during our installation:

root@hardy:~# cd /bin
root@hardy:/bin# ls -l /bin/sh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 2008-04-28 19:59 /bin/sh -> dash
root@hardy:/bin# ln -sf bash /bin/sh
root@hardy:/bin# ls -l /bin/sh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 2008-05-01 22:51 /bin/sh -> bash

In case you’re wondering why Ubuntu uses dash as default, here is a detailed explanation of why dash is the default system shell and how if differs from bash.

Step Seven

Next we make some modifications to our base system (line numbers added for clarity, see below):

01 root@hardy:/bin# cd
02 root@hardy:~# pwd
   /root
04 root@hardy:~# addgroup oinstall
   Adding group `oinstall' (GID 1001) ...
   Done.
07 root@hardy:~# addgroup dba
   Adding group `dba' (GID 1002) ...
   Done.
10 root@hardy:~# addgroup nobody
   Adding group `nobody' (GID 1003) ...
   Done.
13 root@hardy:~# usermod -g nobody nobody
14 root@hardy:~# useradd -g oinstall -G dba -p password -d /home/oracle -s /bin/bash oracle
15 root@hardy:~# passwd -l oracle
   Password changed.
17 root@hardy:~# mkdir /home/oracle
18 root@hardy:~# chown -R oracle:dba /home/oracle
19 root@hardy:~# ln -s /usr/bin/awk /bin/awk
20 root@hardy:~# ln -s /usr/bin/rpm /bin/rpm
21 root@hardy:~# ln -s /usr/bin/basename /bin/basename
22 root@hardy:~# mkdir /etc/rc.d
23 root@hardy:~# for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 S ; do ln -s /etc/rc$i.d /etc/rc.d/rc$i.d ; done
24 root@hardy:~# mkdir -p /u01/app/oracle
25 root@hardy:~# chown -R oracle:dba /u01
26 root@hardy:~#

• Lines 01-03: change our path back to /root (HOME for the root user, not really needed)
• Lines 04-12: add the groups we need.
• Line 13: adapts Ubuntu’s nobody user so the Oracle installer doesn’t get confused.
• Lines 14-18: we create the oracle user, lock that account so no one can log in with it, and create a HOME directory for the user (not the same as ORACLE_HOME).
• Lines 19-23: we create some symlinks so the Oracle installer finds the paths where it expects them to be.
• Finally, on lines 24-25 we create our ORACLE_BASE.

Step Eight

We change a few of the defaults on our system, adding the following to the end of /etc/sysctl.conf. This will extend the total number of file descriptors on a system, the size of shared memory, and will do some tweaking on the networking subsystem. About the networking tweaks: it may bring benefits or it may not — your mileage may vary.

fs.file-max = 65535
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 2147483648
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65535
net.core.rmem_default = 1048576
net.core.rmem_max = 1048576
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_max = 262144

Add this to the end of /etc/security/limits.conf:

oracle soft nproc 2047
oracle hard nproc 16383
oracle soft nofile 1023
oracle hard nofile 65535

And add this to the end of /etc/pam.d/login so we enforce what we just added to /etc/security/limits.conf:

session required /lib/security/pam_limits.so
session required pam_limits.so

There is some explanation for all these system modifications on the first post: Installing Oracle 11g on Ubuntu Linux 7.04.

Before continuing, you have two choices: you reboot the machine so the new values are loaded for sysctl.conf; or you ask the box to reload them with sysctl -p:

root@hardy:~# sysctl -p
kernel.printk = 4 4 1 7
kernel.maps_protect = 1
fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 524288
vm.mmap_min_addr = 65536
net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1
fs.file-max = 65535
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 2147483648
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65535
net.core.rmem_default = 1048576
net.core.rmem_max = 1048576
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_max = 262144
root@hardy:~#

Step Nine

For this HOWTO, I’ve unpacked the ZIP file we downloaded on Step 2 in /home/oracle, so we su to the oracle user, export our DISPLAY (change 192.168.w.z to the IP address of your X server), and start the installation. When we do su - oracle, Ubuntu will complain about the account being expired — this is harmless. When starting the installer, please note that we pass the -ignoreSysPrereqs command-line switch.

root@hardy:~# su - oracle
Your account has expired; please contact your system administrator
su: User account has expired
(Ignored)
oracle@hardy:~$ export DISPLAY=192.168.w.z:0.0
oracle@hardy:~$ pwd
/home/oracle
oracle@hardy:~$ ls -l
total 4
drwxr-xr-x 6 oracle dba 4096 2007-09-18 18:50 database
oracle@hardy:~$ cd database
oracle@hardy:~/database$ ls -l
total 28
drwxr-xr-x 11 oracle dba 4096 2007-08-06 16:02 doc
drwxr-xr-x  5 oracle dba 4096 2007-08-03 13:28 install
drwxr-xr-x  2 oracle dba 4096 2007-09-18 18:52 response
-rwxr-xr-x  1 oracle dba 2911 2007-08-03 13:28 runInstaller
drwxr-xr-x 14 oracle dba 4096 2007-08-03 13:27 stage
-rw-r--r--  1 oracle dba 4835 2007-08-06 18:19 welcome.html
oracle@hardy:~/database$ ./runInstaller -ignoreSysPrereqs

After a few moments, the Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) will show you a window similar to this one (as well as a bunch of garbled text on the SSH session, no need to bother with that now unless no window pops up):

After you hit Next, it will ask you where you want the Oracle Inventory should be installed. I’ve changed the group to dba, but you don’t need to change it if you don’t want to

Hitting Next will make the OUI review which products are included in the package:

We’re choosing Enterprise Edition on this HOWTO, but you can choose whatever you want.

It will ask you the paths for the installation:

I chose the defaults and hit Next:

The next step — some prerequisite checks. Some of them will fail: this is expected — after all we’re installing on an unsupported platform.

All you have to to is click on each of the unmarked the checkboxes (those on which Status is not Succeeded). As you click on them, the Status will change to User Verified.

After hitting Next, OUI will ask if we want to create a database. I chose “Install Software Only” as a new database can be created later with dbca.

I’ve changed all groups to dba:

It’ll show you a Summary before starting the installation. After hitting Install, go get yourself some coffee: this is going to take a while.

After we get to 90% of the installation (linking stage) it might seem stuck, but it isn’t: let it run, and go get yourself more coffee.

Once OUI is done with the linking, it will ask you to run two scripts as root:

Here’s the output on my setup:

root@hardy:~# /u01/app/oraInventory/orainstRoot.sh
Changing permissions of /u01/app/oraInventory to 770.
Changing groupname of /u01/app/oraInventory to dba.
The execution of the script is complete
root@hardy:~# /u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/db_1/root.sh
Running Oracle 11g root.sh script...

The following environment variables are set as:
    ORACLE_OWNER= oracle
    ORACLE_HOME=  /u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/db_1

Enter the full pathname of the local bin directory: [/usr/local/bin]:
   Copying dbhome to /usr/local/bin ...
   Copying oraenv to /usr/local/bin ...
   Copying coraenv to /usr/local/bin ...

Creating /etc/oratab file...
Entries will be added to the /etc/oratab file as needed by
Database Configuration Assistant when a database is created
Finished running generic part of root.sh script.
Now product-specific root actions will be performed.
Finished product-specific root actions.
root@hardy:~#

And… congratulations! You just finished installing Oracle 11g on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron)!

However, we’re not completely done yet: a few actions need to be performed to make your life easier. First, we add these lines to /etc/profile:

export ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/db_1
export PATH=$PATH:/u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/db_1/bin

Also, a startup script might be useful, right? Create a file called /etc/init.d/oracledb and put this into it:

#!/bin/bash
#
# /etc/init.d/oracledb
#
# Run-level Startup script for the Oracle Listener and Instances
# It relies on the information on /etc/oratab

export ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle
export ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/db_1
export ORACLE_OWNR=oracle
export PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin

if [ ! -f $ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbstart -o ! -d $ORACLE_HOME ]
then
    echo "Oracle startup: cannot start"
    exit 1
fi

case "$1" in
    start)
        # Oracle listener and instance startup
        echo -n "Starting Oracle: "
        su $ORACLE_OWNR -c "$ORACLE_HOME/bin/lsnrctl start"
        su $ORACLE_OWNR -c "$ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbstart $ORACLE_HOME"
        touch /var/lock/oracle
        echo "OK"
        ;;
    stop)
        # Oracle listener and instance shutdown
        echo -n "Shutdown Oracle: "
        su $ORACLE_OWNR -c "$ORACLE_HOME/bin/lsnrctl stop"
        su $ORACLE_OWNR -c "$ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbshut $ORACLE_HOME"
        rm -f /var/lock/oracle
        echo "OK"
        ;;
    reload|restart)
        $0 stop
        $0 start
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Usage: `basename $0` start|stop|restart|reload"
        exit 1
esac

exit 0

After saving this file, make it executable:

root@hardy:~# chmod a+x /etc/init.d/oracledb

If you want this script to be run at every boot, execute this:

root@hardy:~# update-rc.d oracledb defaults 99
 Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/oracledb ...
   /etc/rc0.d/K99oracledb -> ../init.d/oracledb
   /etc/rc1.d/K99oracledb -> ../init.d/oracledb
   /etc/rc6.d/K99oracledb -> ../init.d/oracledb
   /etc/rc2.d/S99oracledb -> ../init.d/oracledb
   /etc/rc3.d/S99oracledb -> ../init.d/oracledb
   /etc/rc4.d/S99oracledb -> ../init.d/oracledb
   /etc/rc5.d/S99oracledb -> ../init.d/oracledb

Just remember: this script depends on the existence of a database on the machine, so don’t forget to run dbca as the oracle user, and configure it to start at boot time (edit /etc/oratab after creating the database, and set the last column to Y).

To make things easier, make your user part of the dba group. This way your user will be able to interact with the database server with the dba role. In the example below, user is the username:

root@hardy:~# usermod -G dba -a user

When creating a database with dbca, don’t forget to do so as the oracle user (and to export the DISPLAY environment variable). After creation, you should test if you can connect to it:

oracle@hardy:~$ export ORACLE_SID=heron
oracle@hardy:~$ sqlplus '/as sysdba'

SQL*Plus: Release 11.1.0.6.0 - Production on Mon May 5 02:39:27 2008

Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.6.0 - Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL>

After you get this output, we can finally say: it’s complete! Of course, I invite you to share your thoughts and your experiences with this HOWTO.

Augusto Bott.

Related Posts

• Installing Oracle 11g on Ubuntu Linux 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)
• Installing Oracle 11g on Ubuntu Linux 7.04

Tags: Hardy Heron • install • Linux • Oracle 11g • Ubuntu • Ubuntu 8.04

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Oracle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.