This tutorial was written due to my frustration on installing Oracle 9i on FC3. Basically 9i installation on RAS 1,2,3 RH 9, FC1, FC2 is documented fairly well but it is hard to find anything worthwhile on FC3; some people even suggested that installing Oracle 9i on FC3 is not possible. This HOWTO attempts to condense all my experience and findings with any such info peculiar to FC3, which was before scattered all over the web, into one concise but useful document.

I hope you will find this short tutorial useful.

If you need to install Oracle 9i on FC3, you should be aware of the following facts:

Also keep in mind:

I would like to thank Jean François for helping me out with the most tricky parts.

The latest version can be found at http://www.pagux.com/oracle9ionfedora3.html.

I rely on you, the reader, to make this HOWTO useful. If you have any suggestions, corrections or comments, please send them to me and I will try to incorporate them in the next revision.

Copyright 2005 Gaurav Prasad

This HOWTO is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. A copy of the license is available at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.

This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Use the concepts, examples and information at your own risk. There may be errors and inaccuracies, that could be damaging to your system. Proceed with caution, and although accidents are highly unlikely, the author(s) do not take any responsibility.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

All copyrights are held by their by their respective owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.

If you got Oracle 9i on a CD then mount it:

Otherwise download it from http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/oracle9i/htdocs/linuxsoft.html.

Extract all three files:

Don't forget the -I option or you will get errors during the extraction.

This command will expand the cpio archive to the Disk1 directory. Repeat the process for the other two archives.

Execute the following commands as root:

# groupadd oinstall
# groupadd dba
# groupadd oper
# groupadd apache
# useradd -g oinstall -G dba oracle
# passwd oracle

Set the password for user oracle.

The final destination of the software will be here:

# mkdir /u01 /u02
# chown oracle.dba /u01 /u02
# chmod 755 /u01 /u02

Add the following lines to the /etc/sysctl.conf file:

kernel.shmmax = 2147483648
kernel.shmmni = 128
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
fs.file-max = 65536
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000

Additionally the following lines can be added to the /etc/security/limits.conf file:

oracle soft nofile 65536
oracle hard nofile 65536
oracle soft nproc 16384
oracle hard nproc 16384

Adding lines into these files requires a reboot before the new settings take effect.

From Fedora Core TWO:

From the Fedora Core THREE subtree, get the compat-db package.

If you don't install GCC compat libraries as above you get a zillion linking errors.

Put gcc296 and g++296 first in your $PATH variable by creating the following symbolic links:

# 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++

Note that should you already have upgraded your system, GCC versions might be different.

Before running the installer, do the following in order to overcome some weird errors:

Execute the following commands as oracle User :

oracle@9iserver ~> xhost +localhost
oracle@9iserver ~> export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0

You can now connect to your desktop or optionally run the installation remotely, for instance using VNC.for instance running the installer from your Windows desktop

Start the graphical installation application:

Now carry with Graphical setup (if you are not sure choose Standard database). From here the rest of the installation process is obvious.

Now installation should proceed without any linking errors but you will get one error in the end:

Parameter "nodeinfo" = NO_VALUE
Agent Service Failed

In order to fix this, run the following for starting the wizard after setup has finished:

Now change into $ORACLE_HOME and run ./lsnrctl start.

Check that the process is running: