Ever notice how installing almost any Oracle product has not dozens, but hundreds of pages of detailed documentation? The installation guide for R12, Oracle Applications Installation Guide: Using Rapid Install, 120oaig.pdf, is 150 pages long!
Unfortunately, most of the time, Oracle docs do not give the big picture. In a few hundred words or less, what’s involved? What’s the procedure? What’s the order of operations?
Blogs and forums I find to be much better written, and much more useful.
Recently at home, I installed Oracle Apps R12 on a single Redhat Linux 5.5 64 bit server. Here is what I would describe as the big picture, or the high level. Refer to other docs, blogs and forums for the remainder of the very many gory details.
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Note that this is not necessarily in the perfect order of operations.
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Ingredients:
Server to dedicate to Redhat 5.5 and Oracle Apps. I used:
64 bit. Fast CPUs. Lots of RAM (16 gigs). One terabye of disk space.
(Although last year, I used a slow 32 bit machine with only 3 gigs of RAM.)
Software downloaded from edelivery.oracle.com:
Redhat Linux operating system
Oracle Apps R12
CDs to install the OS.
You should also have a second machine to download the Redhat Linux OS and create the CDs.
You can also make a Windows/Linux dual boot machine, and put R12 on the Linux side. Using VM is another possibility, but I think even more complex.
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Partition The Disks:
I like to use GUI utilities to pre-partition my disks before the install. Then, just relabel the partitions when installing. gparted is good. With Windows, compmgmt works well, especially when you are making a dual boot machine.
/boot 100 megs. Formatted ext3
swap 8 to 16 gigs, consisting of multiple 2 GB partitions
/backupfat32 A 32 gig partition of formatted as FAT32. For any file transfers I might make to windows.
/ for all the rest. Formatted ext3
Of course, in a production system, this would be much more sophisticated.
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Install Redhat Linux:
Install every possible package on the CDs. No need to patch later.
When installing the OS, do not turn on the firewall, or SE Linux.
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Get the Networking Working:
I used a static IP.
R12 wants a fully qualified hostname so that the command, domainname, will work.
On my home system, I used the hostname: black.testrac.com. Even though I am not on the domain, testrac.com, my system works fine. This of course was not explained in the docs.
See my post: Getting Domainname To Work
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Set Kernel Parameters:
So that the Oracle database will run correctly, set the linux kernel parameters in the file:
/etc/sysctl.conf
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Check for the Required Packages:
Make sure you have ALL the R12 required packages before starting the R12 install. Download and install any extra or missing packages.
I had everything, expect:
numactl-devel-0.9.8.x86_64
downloaded it from:
http://rpm.pbone.net
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Make this link if it doesn’t exist!
ls -l /usr/lib/libdb.so.2
ls: /usr/lib/libdb.so.2: No such file or directory
ls -l /usr/lib/libgdbm.so.2.0.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 23812 Jun 5 2007 /usr/lib/libgdbm.so.2.0.0
ln -s /usr/lib/libgdbm.so.2.0.0 /usr/lib/libdb.so.2
ls -l /usr/lib/libdb.so.2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Dec 1 16:39 /usr/lib/libdb.so.2 -> /usr/lib/libgdbm.so.2.0.0
For more detail:
https://kr.forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=1017318
http://oracleajidba.blogspot.com/2011/07/error-while-loading-shared-libraries.html
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If you can access this package via metalink, add yet another package:
p6078836_101330_LINUX.zip
See:
http://www.onlinedbasupport.com/oracleebusinessbeginner/212-install-r1211-on-linux-54-x86-64.html
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Create Unix Users and Groups:
oracle dba
applmgr dba
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Decide on File Locations and Set Ownership:
I used:
mkdir /oappsinstall
owned by oracle:dba
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mkdir /oapps
chown oracle:dba /oapps/oracle
mkdir -p /oapps/oracle
chown oracle:dba /oapps/oracle
mkdir -p /oapps/applmgr
chown applmgr:dba /oapps/applmgr
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Environment Variables:
Put these environment variables in the .bash_profile of: root, oracle, applmgr
TMPDIR=/tmp
export TMPDIR
TMP=/tmp
export TMP
R12 is unlike traditional database installs. Usually with the traditional Oracle database install, you have to set a lot of environmental variables first for the unix user, oracle. Then you start the install.
Turns out the R12 apps installer actually creates scripts with all the environment variables that are then called at runtime. Dozens of environment files are created during the install!
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Download R12:
Download or copy the R12 .zip files to /download/oracleapps
Double check the md5sum for each file. Compare it to the csv file that you should have also downloaded.
If they all match, copy the .zip files to /oappsinstall
loop
{
in /oappsinstall
Unzip a single .zip
Then delete that .zip file
If prompted, overwrite any labels.
}
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Note that in the big picture, the install consists of two big aspects.
Oracle database node, owned by user: oracle
A huge Apps middle tier node, owned by user: applmgr
See my analysis of the file systems to get an idea how huge these are.
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Install Oracle Apps R12:
Install the sample database, the ORACLE_SID will be VIS.
It is important to login as: root
cd /oappsinstall/startCD/Disk1/rapidwiz
./rapidwiz &
Follow the screens.
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Screen title: Database node configuration
hostname: black
domainname: testrac.com
database os user and group: oracle dba
Base directory: /oapps/oracle/VIS
Screen title: Primary Applications node configuration
hostname: black
domainname: testrac.com
apps os user and group: applmgr dba
Base directory: /oapps/applmgr/VIS
Instance directory: /oapps/applmgr/VIS/inst
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Hopefully, the install will go fine, and you will get all green checks at the end. If not, double click the red x boxes, copy all the text, and save it to file. Google away on the error messages.
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After the installation is successful, you then get to administer the database and the apps tiers.
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That’s the big picture. Useful?
