How to Install and Configure Oracle on Linux

Change to your staging directory and start the Oracle installer.

cd /home/oracle/orainst/orainst
./orainst /c

Select the custom install (see Figure 2). Read the preamble.txt file and press return to continue. Read the README.FIRST file and press return to continue. Select Install, Upgrade or De-install Software (see Figure 3). Select Install New Product—Do Not Create DB Objects (see Figure 4). Make sure the ORACLE_BASE and ORACLE_HOME environment variables are set correctly (see Figure 5). Press return to accept the defaults for your log files. It's a good idea to make a note of their locations, too. If anything goes wrong during the installation process, you may need to look at them. It is also a good idea to look at them even if everything works fine in order to learn more about the installation process (see Figure 6). Select Install from Staging Area (see Figure 7); make sure the staging area is set correctly. In my example, I used /home/oracle/orainst (see Figure 8). Select your language (see Figure 9). Press return to acknowledge the location of the root.sh post-install script. The default location is /u01/app/oracle/product/8.0.5/orainst/root.sh. Select the following products to install (see Figure 10):

Figure 14

At this point, the installer will begin copying the software. This is a good time to take a break, since this could take a while—how long will depend on the speed of your machine.

When the software installation process is complete, you should get a message that says “The requested action has been performed for selected products.” (See Figure 15) Press return to acknowledge the message, tab to Exit, then press return. tab to indicate Yes on the Confirmation and press return to exit the installer. The installer should exit with the message “Result: Success”.

Make the directory where the on-line documentation will be installed (mkdir /u01/app/oracle/doc). Link the directory to correct a bug in the install process:

ln -s /u01/app/oracle/doc /u01/app/oracle/product/8.0.5

Start the installer from your staging directory (./orainst /c). Select custom install. Click on OK to bypass the README files. Select Install, Upgrade or De-install software. Select Add/Upgrade Software. Press enter to acknowledge the environment variable setting for ORACLE_HOME. Press enter to acknowledge the location of the log files. Select Install from Staging Area. Press enter to acknowledge the path of the staging area. Select the appropriate language. Select Append to append to the root.sh script created during the software installation process. This is done because we haven't run the script yet, and we don't want to overlay the script created in the previous step. Press return at the Information screen, which gives the location for the root.sh script. Select the Intel LINUX Documentation and tab to install. Press return to begin the installation process. Press return to acknowledge the location of the on-line documentation (see Figure 16). Select the format (HTML or PDF) you want for the on-line documentation (see Figure 17). Once again, we're looking for the message, “The requested action has been performed for selected products.” Press return to acknowledge the message, tab to Exit, then press return. Select Yes from the Confirmation screen to exit the installer. Again, we hope to see the installer exit with a message of “Result: Success”.