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).

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Hi there!

I arrived at Santa Clara yesterday, just in time for the MySQL Community dinner (check this post on Arjen’s blog). It was a lot of fun, not to mention the opportunity to talk to developers and other folks from MySQL/Sun.

Unfortunately, I forgot to pack in my luggage a card reader or a proper cable for my camera, so pictures will have to wait a few days. To mitigate this problem, I’ll try to hunt down more posts from other guys, but in the meantime, you might want to check the 2008 MySQL Users Conference & Expo group at Flickr.

Yesterday was the “Tutorials Day”. I’ve been to many of them. The subjects were so interesting I just couldn’t stay put for the whole session so, I kept jumping from one to the other. A few quite interesting sessions: MySQL Proxy, the complete tutorial. A very interesting session on hacking and adjusting it to fit your needs. It was held by Jan Kneschke (main author and developer) and Giuseppe Maxia (testing).

MySQL Cluster, with Stewart Smith. An amazing and thorough session on MySQL Cluster - all day long. There’s nothing better than learning from the guys that actually are writing the code, right? If you are curious, his blog can be found here.

In the afternoon, there were two very interesting sessions, but I had to pick only one of them. SQL Antipatterns (by Bill Karwin) was quite interesting, but I ended up at the Ask Bjørn Hansen’s session, called Real World Web: Performance & Scalability, MySQL Edition. This must have been one of the best sessions, ever (mostly because we’ve been giving the exact same advice to our clients for some time now).

This morning started with a keynote from Mårten Mickos (who used to be MySQL’s CEO, but his “job title” must have changed after the acquisition by Sun). His speech was followed by Jonathan Schwartz’s (CEO of Sun) and after that, we heard from Werner Vogels (CTO of Amazon.com). Quite interesting, but I’m not about to repeat everything they’ve said. Instead, I’m linking Colin Charles’s post, Ahead in the Cloud by Verner Vogels.

I’m running to another session now, so… keep tuned: more news will follow!

After many requests from readers, I’ve put together new, revised version of the Oracle 11g on Ubuntu recipe. This new version is a little different than the first one published: it’s based on a bare-bones install of Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) server version instead of the desktop version. As an improvement, I’ve tried to pare down dependencies to a minimal set.

Your feedback is more than welcome — it’s the main reason why I wrote a new version of this HOWTO. I’ve also tested and repeated this procedure twice. Even so, it might still have problems, so please let me know so we can improve it ¹.

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As stated on my first post on this blog, I’m a MySQL DBA trying to draw a map of this new (to me) world called Oracle. The other day I was trying different things with Oracle, like (but not limited to) issuing kill -9 to random Oracle processes to see what would happen (on my own box of course!). The purpose? To study STARTUP statements and recovery techniques, and to get to know a little better the Oracle SQL dialect.

I was a little surprised by the results. They’re probably no news for most of you guys, but it is new to me, and I’d like to share my findings with other MySQL guys around the planet.

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Note: I have now published “Installing Oracle 11g on Ubuntu Linux 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)”

Note: This page focuses on Ubuntu installs. Oracle has published a web page for successfully installing Linux on unsupported platforms that you may find helpful.

I come from a MySQL background, and I have been given the challenge of learning Oracle. I can’t just play around with our customers’ databases, but I remembered that Paul Vallée said that there is nothing wrong with learning on company time. So I decided to install my own Oracle database, which I’ll be free to destroy in every way I can think of… and of course, free to bring it back to life. Recovering from crashes will probably be the most difficult part of my adventures in the Oracle world, but let’s take one step at a time, shall we?

Now, onto Oracle 11g (beta 5) on Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). One little issue is that Ubuntu is unsupported by Oracle. So, through this text, we will trick the Oracle installer into thinking it’s actually running on a Red Hat box.

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