9i Installation on Linux (Red Hat)

Oracle9i uses UNIX resources such as shared memory, swap space, and semaphores extensively for interprocess communication. If your kernel parameter settings are insufficient for Oracle9i, you will experience problems during installation and instance startup. The greater the amount of data you can store in memory, the faster your database will operate. In addition, by maintaining data in memory, the UNIX kernel reduces disk I/O activity.

Use the ipcs command to obtain a list of the system’s current shared memory and semaphore segments, and their identification number and owner. You can modify the kernel parameters by using the /proc file system.

To modify kernel parameters using the /proc file system:

1. Log in as root user.

2. Change to the /proc/sys/kernel directory.

3. Review the current semaphore parameter values in the sem file using the cat or more utility

# cat sem

The output will list, in order, the values for the SEMMSL, SEMMNS, SEMOPM, and SEMMNI parameters. The following example shows how the output will appear.

250 32000 32 128

In the preceding example, 250 is the value of the SEMMSL parameter, 32000 is the value of the SEMMNS parameter, 32 is the value of the SEMOPM parameter, and 128 is the value of the SEMMNI parameter.

4. Modify the parameter values using the following command:

# echo SEMMSL_value SEMMNS_value SEMOPM_value SEMMNI_value > sem

In the preceding command, all parameters must be entered in order.

5. Review the current shared memory parameters using the cat or more utility.

# cat shared_memory_parameter

In the preceding example, the shared_memory_parameter is either the SHMMAX or SHMMNI parameter. The parameter name must be entered in lowercase letters.

6. Modify the shared memory parameter using the echo utility. For example, to modify the SHMMAX parameter, enter the following:

echo 2147483648 > shmmax

7. Write a script to initialize these values during system startup and include the script in your system init files. Refer to the following table to determine if your system shared memory and semaphore kernel parameters are set high enough for Oracle9i. The parameters in the following table are the minimum values required to run Oracle9i with a single database instance. You can put the initialization in the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local

# Setup Kernel Parameters for Oracle 9i

echo 250 32000 100 128 > /proc/sys/kernel/sem
echo 2147483648 > /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
echo 4096 > /proc/sys/kernel/shmmni

groupadd -g 400 dba

useradd -u 400 -c "Oracle Owner" -d /home/oracle \
-g "dba" -m -s /bin/bash oracle

ORACLE_HOME=/opt/oracle/product/9.0.1; export ORACLE_HOME
ORACLE_SID=VEN1; export ORACLE_SID
ORACLE_TERM=xterm; export ORACLE_TERM
ORACLE_OWNER=oracle; export ORACLE_OWNER
TNS_ADMIN=/home/oracle/config/9.0.1; export TNS_ADMIN
NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8ISO8859P1; export NLS_LANG
ORA_NLS33=$ORACLE_HOME/ocommon/nls/admin/data; export ORA_NLS33
CLASSPATH=$ORACLE_HOME/jdbc/lib/classes111.zip
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/java
export JSDK_HOME=/usr/local/jsdk

CLASSPATH=$ORACLE_HOME/JRE:$ORACLE_HOME/jlib:$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/jlib
CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:$ORACLE_HOME/network/jlib

PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/java/bin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin
PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin:$ORACLE_HOME/bin:/usr/local/jsdk/bin
PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/X11R6/bin:/root/bin
export PATH

Mount the CD as root user.

su root mkdir /cdrom mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /cdrom exit

Log in as the oracle account
cd /disk1
DISPLAY=:0.0
export DISPLAY
./runInstaller