Oracle Applications DBA Blog

Installing Oracle Enterprise Linux

During the last years Oracle Open World when Oracle released the Oracle Enterprise Linux it took many of us by surprised. Though i had felt oracle would sooner or later venture into the OS market i did not expect it to happen so soon.
I had put up a post on Oracle Enterprise Linux when the OOW was in progress. Since then i was waiting get my hands on this product. Finally i did find a chance to install and evaluate Oracle Enterprise Linux.In the current post i am talking abut my experience with this new Linux offering from Oracle.

You can download a copy of the Oracle Enterprise Linux from
http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux

After you make the selection for the type of Linux you will get the following parts

• Enterprise Linux 4 update 4 for x86 (CD 1 of 8)
• Enterprise Linux 4 update 4 for x86 (CD 2 of 8)
• Enterprise Linux 4 update 4 for x86 (CD 3 of 8)
• Enterprise Linux 4 update 4 for x86 (CD 4 of 8)
• Enterprise Linux 4 update 4 for x86 Source (CD 5 of 8)
• Enterprise Linux 4 update 4 for x86 Source (CD 6 of 8)
• Enterprise Linux 4 update 4 for x86 Source (CD 7 of 8)
• Enterprise Linux 4 update 4 for x86 Source (CD 8 of 8)

If you do not want the source code and just need to install Linux you can do with downloading the first four parts only.These parts are in a zip format iso images so you may want to burn them on your CD or DVDs before you can proceed with the installation.

To start the installation you must set your server to boot up with the CD rom and insert the frist CD.
The first screen after you get after your server boots up with the Oracle Linux CD 1 will give you options either to do a text based installation or a graphical UI installation.



I selected the GUI installation, the next screen you get is the welcome message from Oracle Enterprise Linux installation.



Now select the language in which you want to do your installation in, remember this is not your OS default language.



Next make a selection for the type of keyboard you have on your server.



Next select the type of instillation you wish to have, most likely you will have to choose server if you are installation it on a server and plan to use it for Oracle Applications.



Now select the method you wish to use to create your disk partitions. You can either do it manually using fdisk or use a GUI based tool like disk druid.



I used disk druid and made the following partitions.
/
/usr
swap
/boot
/u01
/u02



Now select the file system where you want to install your boot loader. You can choose not install a boot loader also but in that case you would need to create a boot disk for your server to start up.



Next specify the hostname and domain name details of your server, also you can specify your DNS settings and you gateway information here.



Next is the firewall configuration settings, be sure to disable your firewall and SELinux if you plan to install Oracle Applications. The runInstaller will not be able to ping your database with the firewall on.At a later stage if you wish you can choose to enable your firewall.



Next you select the default language for your enterprise linux server.



Next select the time zone for your server.



Now select the OS packages you wish to install, again if you planning for Oracle applications it is important that you install all the development packages.



The installer will now prompt you to start the installation.



As a first step the installer first created and formats the partitions that you defiened using Disk Druid earlier.



The installation then starts which should take an approximate of 20-30 minutes based your server hardware configuration.



After the installation is complete the installer will ask you to reboot your server after removing any bootable disk from the  CDRom drives.



After the server boots up you must provide some post installation information, like time and date as well as your sound card test and display before you can start using your server.



As a part of your post installation step you are also asked to create a non system users to perform general system administration.



After you complete you post installation you can log in to your Oracle enterprise Linux as root or any other newly created  user.




The Oracle Enterprise Linux now loads up with a nice looking finilar interface ;)