Step By Step Instructions on Installing Oracle 10g Real Application Cluster (RAC) (10.2.0.1) 32-bit on  RedHat AS 3 x86 (RHEL3) / CentOS 3 x86 By Bhavin Hingu

Pre-Installation Task:

Installation Task:

Post-Installation Task:

• Pre-Installation Task

To create 2-node RAC, one would requre 2 machine with the following hardware installed on it.

Per Node:
1 GB RAM, atleat 8 GB of harddrive, 1 GHz CPU,
1 Firewire Controller,  1 Firewire Cable
2 NIC ethernet card ( one for public and another for private / interconnect network)

Per Cluster:
1 Shared Harddrive
1 firewire HUB (for cluster with more than 2 node)
1 Network HUB (for cluster with more than 2 node)
1 crossover network cable (for cluster with 2 node)
n number of  network cable for private network for internode communication (for cluster with n nodes where n >=3)
n number of network cable for public network (for cluster with n nodes where n >=3)

I sued the below hardware to build my 2-node rac.

Packages:

Before you start installing Oracle10g software, please make sure that you have the below packages installed on your Linux box,

make-3.79.1
gcc-3.2.3-34
glibc-2.3.2-95.20
compat-db-4.0.14-5
compat-gcc-7.3-2.96.128
compat-gcc-c++-7.3-2.96.128
compat-libstdc++-7.3-2.96.128
compat-libstdc++-devel-7.3-2.96.128
openmotif21-2.1.30-8
setarch-1.3-1
libaio-0.3.103-3

Please execute the below comand as root to make sure that you have this rpms installed. If not installed, then download them

from appropriate linux site.

rpm -q make gcc glibc compat-db compat-gcc compat-gcc-c++ compat-libstdc++ \
       compat-libstdc++-devel openmotif21 setarch libaio \

Perform this step on all the nodes.

           Configuring the Shared Disk Storage Device (Firewire):

Every node in the cluster must have access to the shared disk. So the shared disk must support the concurrent access to all nodes in cluster in order
to successfully build 10g RAC. I chose firewire Disk as a shared storage media because it is a cost effective solution ifyou just want to have hands-on
practice on 10g RAC without investing more money. After you install the Redhat LINUX AS 3 system into both the node, please goto the
http://oss.oracle.com/projects/firewire/files and  download the appropriate firewire kernel to support firewire HD. I downloaded and installed the below rpms.

[root@shree root]# uname -r
2.4.21-37.EL

kernel-2.4.21-27.0.2.ELorafw1.i686.rpm

[root@shree root]# rpm -ivh --force kernel-2.4.21-27.0.2.ELorafw1.i686.rpm

Also update the /etc/modules.conf file and add the below lines at the end of file. This will load the firewire kernel modules and drivers at every reboot.

           Memory and swap Space:

Oracle Documents says that you need at least 512MB of memory and 1024MB of swap space (Double the size of memory if you have
RAM larger than 2 gigs) to run Oracle  (9i and above)  Database on Linux. Well, I have managed to successfully run one 9i and 2
10g instances (one ASM and one regular) simultaneously on a single linux box with 512 MB of memory. You simply need to adjust
the init.ora memory parameter for that.

[root@shree root]# cat /proc/meminfo | grep Total
MemTotal: 515768 kB
HighTotal: 0 kB
LowTotal: 515768 kB
SwapTotal: 4192956 kB
VmallocTotal: 499704 kB

If you do not have enough Swap Space, you can add extra temporary swap space.

[root@shree root]# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda5 40662492 5226432 33370508 14% /
none 257884 0 257884 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hdb1 9621848 3341000 5792072 37% /backup
[root@shree root]# mkdir /swap
[root@shree root]# cd /swap
[root@shree swap]# dd if=/dev/zero of=extraSwap bs=1024 count=128000
128000+0 records in
128000+0 records out
[root@shree swap]# chmod 600 extraSwap
[root@shree swap]# ls -l extr*
-rw------- 1 root root 131072000 Nov 28 14:16 extraSwap
[root@shree swap]# mkswap extraSwap
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 131067 kB
[root@shree swap]# swapon extraSwap
[root@shree swap]# swapoff extraSwap

Kernel Parameters:

Oracle recommends that you set shared memory segment attributes as well as semaphores to the following values.
If not set, database instance creation will fail. I added the following lines to /etc/sysctl.conf file. Every OS process needs
semaphore where It waits on for the resources. For more on semaphore, please read the UNIX os documents.

 NOTE: If the current value for any parameter is higher than the value listed in this table, then do not change
              the value of that parameter.

                   To see the current setting in the kernel, please use the below command.

/sbin/sysctl -a | grep sem      -- for semmsl, semmns, semopm, semmni
/sbin/sysctl -a | grep shm      -- for shmall, shmmax, shmmni
/sbin/sysctl -a | grep file-max
/sbin/sysctl -a | grep ip_local_port_range
/sbin/sysctl -a | grep rmem_default

Please add/change the appropriate variables value in the /etc/sysctl.conf file as shown below.

          net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0

net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 1
kernel.sysrq = 0

kernel.shmmax = 2147483648
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
fs.file-max = 65536
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65536
net.core.rmem_default = 262144

net.core.wmem_default = 262144

net.core.rmem_max = 262144

net.core.wmem_max = 262144

kernel.hostname=shree.oracledba.org

kernel.domainname=oracledba.org

                  

            After adding these lines to /etc/sysctl.conf, please run the below command as root to make them enabled.

[root@shree root]# sysctl -p

You need OS “oracle” user account created which owns the Oracle software. Oracle Software installation
needs to be proceeds by this account. Oracle software installation (without Companion CD) requires 2.5 GB
of free space available for the ORACLE_BASE directory. Please make sure that the mount point where you

groupadd dba
groupadd oinstall
useradd -g oinstall -G dba oracle
passwd oracle

Setting Shell Limits for the Oracle User:

To improve the performance of the software on Linux systems, you must increase the following shell limits
 for the oracle user:

Add the following lines to the /etc/security/limits.conf file:

            oracle soft nproc 2047
            oracle hard nproc 16384
            oracle soft nofile 1024
            oracle hard nofile 65536

Add or edit the following line in the /etc/pam.d/login file, if it does not already exist:

                session required /lib/security/pam_limits.so

For the Bourne, Bash, or Korn shell,  add the following lines to the /etc/profile:

        if [ $USER = "oracle" ]; then
           if [ $SHELL = "/bin/ksh" ]; then
              ulimit -p 16384
              ulimit -n 65536
           else
              ulimit -u 16384 -n 65536
           fi
        fi
For the C shell (csh or tcsh), add the following lines to the /etc/csh.login.

       if ( $USER == "oracle" ) then
          limit maxproc 16384
          limit descriptors 65536
       endif

 Setup OS Environment:

Create the following symbolic links to put gcc296 and g++296 in the $PATH variable. These are required during the relink process of Oracle Software binaries.

		mv /usr/bin/gcc /usr/bin/gcc323
		mv /usr/bin/g++ /usr/bin/g++323
		ln -s /usr/bin/gcc296 /usr/bin/gcc
		ln -s /usr/bin/g++296 /usr/bin/g++           

Executing hostname should return the fully qualified name (hostname.domainname). Default setting is sufficent (localhost.localdomain) if you are installing for
experimental / learning purpose.

		[root@shree root]# hostname
		shree.oracledba.org

		   Unset the java environment Variable if any.
		unset JAVA_HOME

	   Also make usre that oracle user does not have any installation related veriables set by default. 

Creating Oracle Software Directories:

Asp per OFA, oracle base directory has the path: /mount_point/app/oracle_sw_owner where,
mount_point is the mount point directory for the file system that will contain the Oracle software. I have used
                     /u01 for the mount point directory. However, you could choose another mount point directory,
                     such as /oracle or /opt/oracle.

[root@shree root]# mkdir -p /9i
[root@shree root]# chown -R oracle:oinstall /9i
[root@shree root]# mkdir -p /u02/oradata/db920
[root@shree root]# chown -R oracle:oinstall /u02/oradata/db920
[root@shree root]# chmod -R 775 /9i
[root@shree root]# chmod -R 775 /u02/oradata/db920

 Setup Oracle User Environment:

If you have more than one Oracle software installed on the machine, then you might want to create .bash_profile
for each oracle home. For e.g, I have two oracle software installed on my machine. I have created .bash_profile9i
for my 9i server and .bash_profile10g for my 10g server. I leave .bash_profile to its default. If you are going to
install Only 9i, then no need to create extra profile file.

		export ORACLE_BASE=/9i
		export ORACLE_HOME=/9i/product/9.2.0
		export ORACLE_SID=db920
		export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:/lib:/usr/lib:/usr/local/lib
                export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.19
		export TNS_ADMIN=$ORACLE_HOME/network/admin
		export ORA_NLS33=$ORACLE_HOME/ocommon/nls/admin/data
		export ORACLE_TERM=xterm
		export PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin:/opt/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/java/bin:.
		export CLASSPATH=/9i/product/9.2.0/jdbc/lib/classes12.zip:/9i/product/9.2.0/JRE:/9i/product/9.2.0/jlib:/9i/product/9.2.0/rdbms/jlib:/9i/product/9.2.0/network/jlib:.

At this point you are ready to start Installing Oracle 9iR2.

Obtaining Oracle 9iR2 Base Software (9.2.0.1):

Goto otn.oracle.com and download the appropriate Oracle 9iR2 Software into the /tmp. Make Sure You have enough
space under this mount point. You can check this using df command. I downloaded following 3 files from OTN for my 32-bit Linux box
under the /tmp directory.

Obtaining Extra 9i patchsets:

Along with the base software (9.2.0.1) you also need to download and apply patchsets on top of the base release to fix most of the bugs
that comes with base release (9.2.0.1). Please download the below patches from the http://metalink.oracle.com. If you are installing for
experimental / learning purpose then you do not need to apply those patches.

p3006854_9204_LINUX.zip: This patch builds /etc/libwait.so and ld.so.preload files. The second file is used to load the module libeait.so on every boot of OS.
p2617419_10102_GENERIC.zip: This patch supply the opatch utility which is used to apply oracle patch.
p3095277_9204_LINUX.zip: This patch is required to upgrade the 9.2.0.1 database server to 9.2.0.4 server.
p3119415_9204_LINUX.zip: This patch fixes the linking error during the installation of intelligent agent file: ins_oemagent.mk

Applying p3006854_9204_LINUX.zip:

Installing Oracle 9iR2 Software

[root@shree root]# mount /mnt/cdrom
[root@shree root]# su - oracle
[oracle@shree oracle]$ echo $ORACLE_BASE
/9i
[oracle@shreeoracle]$ echo $ORACLE_SID
db920
[oracle@shree oracle]$ export DISPLAY=shree.oracledba.org:0.0
[oracle@shree oracle]$ /mnt/cdrom/runInstaller

• Post-Installation Task
  

Creating Backup of the root.sh:

Oracle recommends that you back up the root.sh script after you complete an installation. If you install other products
in the same Oracle home directory, then Oracle Universal Installer updates the contents of the existing root.sh script
during the installation. If you require information contained in the original root.sh script, then you can recover it from
the backed up root.sh file.

Configuring New or Upgraded Databases:

Oracle recommends that you run the utlrp.sql script after creating or upgrading a database to recompile all
PL/SQL modules that might be in an invalid state, including packages, procedures, and types. This is an optional
step but Oracle recommends that you do it during installation and not at a later date.

Oracle Documents