The deal today is to install the last version of Oracle Database, which is the 11g Release 2 (11.2), on Solaris 10.

The first part of an instalation process should be to verify the requirements needed by the software we want to install.

So the question is :

What are the Oracle Database Preinstallation Requirements for Solaris 10 ?

And the answer comes from the official documentation from the Oracle Database Documentation Library :

Oracle Database Preinstallation Requirements (Oracle® Database Installation Guide 11g Release 2 (11.2) for Solaris Operating System)

Let’s sum up this document :

1. Obviously, download the software….
   • Go to http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/index.html and download the correct software according to your platform (Sparc or x86…), it’s only 2GB…
   • In my case, I am using a x86 platform so I have the following files :

     root@oracleserver:/oracle_sfw> ls -lh
     total 4588912
     -rw-r--r--   1 root     root        1.3G Dec 11 13:47 solaris.x64_11gR2_database_1of2.zip
     -rw-r--r--   1 root     root        959M Dec 11 13:49 solaris.x64_11gR2_database_2of2.zip
     root@oracleserver:/oracle_sfw>

2. Hardware Requirements
   • At least 1 GB of RAM
   • The swap size needed depends on the amount of RAM :
     

     RAM	Swap Space
     Between 1 GB and 2 GB	1.5 times the size of RAM
     Between 2 GB and 16 GB	Equal to the size of RAM
     More than 16 GB	16 GB

   • Disk space
     • At least 1 GB of available disk space in the /tmp directory
     • About 5GB for the software files
3. Run level Requirement
   • We must do the instalation in run-level 3 / milestone multi-user-server.
4. Software Requirements
   • Solaris 10 Update 6 (which is the 10/08 release)
   • The following packages :
     • SUNWarc
     • SUNWbtool
     • SUNWhea
     • SUNWlibC
     • SUNWlibm
     • SUNWlibms
     • SUNWsprot
     • SUNWtoo
     • SUNWi1of
     • SUNWi1cs (ISO8859-1)
     • SUNWi15cs (ISO8859-15)
     • SUNWxwfnt
     • SUNWcsl
   • Patches : it will depend on your architecture, SPARC or x86 :
     • For Sparc :
       • 120753-06: SunOS 5.10: Microtasking libraries (libmtsk) patch
       • 139574-03: SunOS 5.10
     • For x86 :
       • 120754-06: SunOS 5.10_x86 libmtsk
       • 119961-05: SunOS 5.10_x86: Assembler
       • 119964-14: SunOS 5.10_x86 Shared library patch for C++_x86
       • 137104-02
       • 139575-03
       • 139556-08
   • NOTE : If you are using the last release 10/09 (like me),there is nothing to do as all the packages and patches are already installed (if you chose the Entire Distribution MetaCluster).
5. Operating System Groups and Users Requirements
   • the Oracle Inventory group

     root@oracleserver:/> groupadd oinstall

   • the OSDBA group for Database Installations

     root@oracleserver:/> groupadd -g 502 dba

   • the OSOPER group for Database Installations

     root@oracleserver:/> groupadd -g 505 oper

   • the Oracle Software Owner User

     root@oracleserver:/> mkdir /export/home
     root@oracleserver:/> useradd -u 502 -g oinstall -G dba,oper -md /export/home/oracle oracle
     root@oracleserver:/> passwd -r files oracle
     New Password:
     Re-enter new Password:
     passwd: password successfully changed for oracle
     root@oracleserver:/>

6. Kernel Parameters Requirements
   • We have the followings requirements :
     

     Parameter	Replaced by Resource Control	Minimum Value
     noexec_user_stack	NA	1
     semsys:seminfo_semmni	project.max-sem-ids	100
     semsys:seminfo_semmns	NA	1024
     semsys:seminfo_semmsl	process.max-sem-nsems	256
     semsys:seminfo_semvmx	NA	32767
     shmsys:shminfo_shmmax	project.max-shm-memory	4294967295
     shmsys:shminfo_shmmni	project.max-shm-ids	100

   • Most of those requirements are already set after a fresh install of Solaris 10, except one, the project.max-shm-memory. To define it, we must define a project for the oracle user, or for the dba group which it belongs to :

     root@oracleserver:/> more /etc/project
     system:0::::
     user.root:1::::
     noproject:2::::
     default:3::::
     group.staff:10::::
     root@oracleserver:/>
     root@oracleserver:/> projadd  -K "project.max-shm-memory=(privileged,4G,deny)" user.oracle
     root@oracleserver:/>
     root@oracleserver:/> more /etc/project
     system:0::::
     user.root:1::::
     noproject:2::::
     default:3::::
     group.staff:10::::
     user.oracle:100::::project.max-shm-memory=(privileged,4294967295,deny)
     root@oracleserver:/>
     root@oracleserver:/>

     Let’s verify the new value :

     root@oracleserver:/> su - oracle
     Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.10      Generic January 2005
     Welcome to Sol10_Generic on baroja33
     $ id -p
     uid=502(oracle) gid=100(oinstall) projid=100(user.oracle)
     $ prctl -n project.max-shm-memory -i project user.oracle
     project: 100: user.oracle
     NAME    PRIVILEGE       VALUE    FLAG   ACTION                       RECIPIENT
     project.max-shm-memory
             privileged      4.00GB      -   deny                                 -
             system          16.0EB    max   deny                                 -
     $

7. Directories Requirements
   • Oracle Base Directory

     root@oracleserver:/> mkdir -p /u01/app/oracle
     root@oracleserver:/> chown -R oracle:oinstall /u01/app/oracle
     root@oracleserver:/> chmod -R 775 /u01/app/oracle
     root@oracleserver:/>

   • Oracle Inventory Directory (oraInventory)

     root@oracleserver:/> mkdir -p /opt/oracle/oraInventory
     root@oracleserver:/> chown -R oracle:oinstall /opt/oracle/oraInventory
     root@oracleserver:/>

8. oracle User’s Environment
   • the default file mode creation mask (umask) should be set to 022 : this is the default in Solaris (/etc/profile)
   • export the DISPLAY : the installation is going to be done with the Oracle Universal Installer (OUI), which is a grafical interface, by the oracle user. It means that if you are going to connect to the server remotely, you must export the display with your prefered method : the DISPLAY variable, a ssh connection with the -X option, etc…

And nothing more about the requirements, now that we are ready, let’s go with the installation (see Part 2 of 3).

Arnaud