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Oracle8i release 3 (8.1.7) installation on Red Hat Linux 7.1

Installation of Oracle8i server release 3 (8.1.7) on Red Hat Linux 7.1 can be easily done although this version is not certified by Oracle to run on Red Hat 7.x. In other words: do not use this combination for a production server!
There is this glibc issue again. Oracle needs glibc-2.1.3 but Red Hat 7.1 ships with glibc-2.2.2. You can use RedHat 6.2 instead.
Contents

1. Things you need before the installation

Before you start installing Oracle, you need to install the following packages:
  • jdk-1.1.8_v3 - Blackdown Linux port of Sun's Java Development Kit
    Get it at www.blackdown.org
  • Red Hat Linux 6.2 compatibility packages
    (compat-egcs, compat-glibc and compat-libs) - RedHat ships them on 7.1 distribution CDs

2. Pre-install actions

First of all, you need to install compat-glibc, compat-egsc, compat-libs and jdk-1.1.8_v3.
According to jdk documentation, install jdk under /usr/local. Now you should create symbolic link to the jdk because oracle expects to find it under /usr/local/java: 
# ln -s /usr/local/jdk118_v3 /usr/local/java
Create user oracle and needed groups: 
# groupadd oinstall
# groupadd dba
# useradd -g oinstall -G dba oracle
# passwd oracle
Create directories in which database files will reside. Oracle recommends OFA - Optimal Flexible Architecture (see oracle installation guide), but in this example everything will be installed under /home/oracle: 
# mkdir /home/oracle/product
# cd /home/oracle/product
# mkdir 8.1.7
# chown -R oracle.oinstall /home/oracle/*
Now login as user oracle and put these lines at the end of your .bash_profile: 
export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5
source /usr/i386-glibc21-linux/bin/i386-glibc21-linux-env.sh
export ORACLE_BASE=/home/oracle
export ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/product/8.1.7
export NLS_LANG=croatian_croatia.ee8iso8859p2
export ORA_NLS33=$ORACLE_HOME/ocommon/nls/admin/data
export PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin
First two lines modify your environment so that gcc and ld look for glibc 2.1.3 compatibility headers and libraries. (Read the RedHat RELEASE-NOTES for more information)
Since I am from Croatia, I use Croatian national language support (NLS_LANG, NLS_DATE_LANGUAGE, NLS_SORT and NLS_DATE_FORMAT). You should set these variables to suit your needs. Note that all other variables defined here are mandatory.

Listing of valid Oracle NLS Data parameters including supported languages, territories and storage character sets can be found here.

Now .bash_profile should be executed in order to initialize these variables: 
$ source /home/.bash_profile
or just log off and than back on as user oracle.
If you use some shell other than bash (tcsh, sh, ...) these variables should be set according to syntax of your shell and put in script that automatically executes at user login.

3. Running the installer

Oracle installer should be run from Xwindows by user oracle.
Start Xwindows and from terminal window mount Oracle 8i CD-ROM and start the installer: 
$ /mnt/cdrom/runInstaller
or if you have downloaded linux81701.tar from Oracle, untar it somewhere (e.g. under /tmp), and then run the installer: 
$ tar -xvf linux81701.tar -C /tmp/
$ /tmp/Disk1/runInstaller
Now installer should work and you can install the software. If you are installing oracle for the first time, I would suggest that you choose the typical option with pre-configured database, because creation of the database takes a very long time.

4. Running the database for the first time

In .bash_profile (if you use bash shell) for user oracle add variable ORACLE_SID=your_database_instance. Default value for instance is ORCL, so your line would look like this:

export ORACLE_SID=ORCL

Now we should set this variable for current session:

$ export ORACLE_SID=ORCL

alternatively, you can log off and than back on. Let's actually start the database now:

$ svrmgrl
SVRMGR> connect internal
SVRMGR> startup

I hope this helps. Anyway, if you have any questions or comments regarding this text, feel free to mail me at denis.klaric@in2.hr.
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