IMPORTANT! NOTES ABOUT ORACLE 8i
Despite the release of some patches in December (which are part of this doc's install process), this product is still very buggy. Hopefully, Oracle 8i, release 2, which hasn't been released for Linux yet, will fix some of the problems. 

The machine I used to install Oracle
 Though Oracle recommends at least 256 megs RAM, I used a Pentium III 450 with 128 megs. Building the database took a long time on this machine, but it works.

What's in this doc
There are six parts:
RedHat initial install - Covers what is needed at minimum to install with RedHat 6.1, plus memory parameters recommended by Oracle and why you shouldn't use them.
Stuff you have to download before installing - You need the Java RunTime Environment and a patch before even proceeding with the installation.
Oracle pre-install - Setting up your users, groups, mount points and environment variables. 
Oracle install - Where you actually install the software.
Changing permissions and applying the patch -  Highly recommended you apply this patch.
Oracle post-install - Clean-up tasks and testing. 
I make no guarantees that the installation will work if you decide to just use part of these instructions vs. the whole thing.

Editorial comment about this document
I'm not a Linux guru, but I proceeded to put these pages up to help other lost soles like me. If you see something that makes you laugh hysterically here, do me a favor: When you're done laughing, drop a note to me, tbissett@fwn.fortwayne.com, and (kindly) let me know where I'm nuts. 

Why use Redhat?
Oracle used RedHat when they ported the server to Linux and will continue to use RedHat when developing. It likely will be the least hassle to install.

Redhat Initial Install
Install any way you would like, keeping the following steps in mind as you're doing it.

A. Partitioning
1) Make swap partitions (max. 128 mb ea.) equivalent to three times RAM installed.

2) Partition the drive to your preferences. I ignored the OFA-compliance and just made one mount point (/u01). You can also fake OFA by making four directories, but you won't gain any performance from this. You'll gain some performance by creating four distinct partitions (/u01, /u02, /u03, /u04) and you'll gain the most performance by having each of these mount points on four distinct drives, as Oracle recommends. 

B. X Windows
Love it or hate it, you have to have X Windows for Oracle 8i. The installer is now GUI-based. With Redhat 6.1, you can use Gnome or KDE. They both work fine right out of the box.

C. Install options
Will the Redhat WORKSTATION installation work? Yes.
Will the RedHat SERVER installation work? Yes.
Will the RedHat CUSTOM installation work? As long as you install the following packages:

• XWindows of some sort
• Development
• You can add other packages to suit your needs. 

• mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
• cd /cdrom/RedHat/RPMS

• rpm -ivh kernel-source-2.2.12-20.i386.rpm. This is the kernel source, so that we can recompile the kernel for new memory parameters. More on that later.

• cd /
• umount /cdrom

Oracle will run fine without changing any of the RedHat parameters. This is because nearly all the RedHat parameters are already above Oracle's recommendation.
(somebody, please correct me if I am wrong).

The only parameter you MIGHT have to worry about is the SHMMAX setting, and you should only worry about this one if your machine has more than 64 megs RAM, and you are really going to do some heavy database work. If you feel like you MUST change it (and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it), here's how:

WARNING!
Changing the kernel parameters requires recompiling the Linux kernel. If you have never done this, I highly recommend you get a good book that walks you through the process and all the 100+ different options when you run the configure script. If you aren't sure of some of them, choosing the wrong one may prevent you from booting your system! 

Changing memory params
1) Change to the directory listed below and edit the shmparam.h file. 

• cd /usr/src/linux/include/asm
• vi shmparam.h

3) Save the file. 

4) You're now ready to proceed with the process of recompiling the kernel. Recompile it, then continue below. 

1) Login as root and use a web browser to go to http://www.blackdown.org

2) Click on the downloads link.

3) Pick an FTP site that is geographically near you.

4) The file to look for is jre_1.1.6-v5-glibc-x86.tar.gz. Do NOT download a newer version and make sure you are downloading the file that begins with jre... and NOT the one that starts with jdk... This is the wrong file.

5) Download this file to /usr/local.

6) Open a terminal window. We'll now extract the file and create a symbolic link so the Oracle Installer can find it. Run the following commands:

• tar xzvf jre_1.1.6-v5-glibc-x86.tar.gz
• ln -s /usr/local/jre116_v5 /usr/local/jre

The oracle 8i patchset
These patches fix some critical problems in Oracle 8i for Linux. It is highly recommended you install these patches!

1) Use your web browser to go to http://technet.oracle.com.

2) If you haven't registered, do so now. It's free and and is a good site for getting help.

3) Click on the Software button.

4) On the "Select a Product" pulldown, select "8i Enterprise Edition," even if you are are installing the Standard edition. The patchset is the same.

5) Enter in your name and password when it asks.

6) Click on the appropriate product on the next screen.

7) Accept the license agreement.

3) Finally, the file you are looking for is linux_815patches.tgz

4) Save this file to root's home directory for now. We'll move it later.

Now that you have downloaded these files, it's time for the Oracle pre-install tasks.

Oracle Pre-Install
In this section, we create the necessary user groups and accounts which will ultimately manage the oracle software..

Set up Oracle account and group
The oracle account is what we will use to install software and start and stop the oracle database. It should not be used for day-to-day operations. The dba groups is for Database Administrators.

1) If you don't have a terminal window already open, open one now.

2) In the terminal windows, create your groups. 

• groupadd dba

• useradd oracle -g dba (sub number with dba group number from above)
• passwd oracle (to change password)

4) Remember the linux_815patches.tgz file we downloaded earlier? Let's move it to a directory within oracle's home directory now and change the permissions so oracle can run it later. Enter the following commands in a terminal window:

• mv ~/linux_815patches.tgz /home/oracle
• chown -R oracle.dba /home/oracle/linux_815patches.tgz

• mkdir /u01. (You can also fake the OFA-compliancy by mkdir /u01, /u02, /u03 and /u04.

• chown oracle.dba /u01 (run same command for /u02, /u03 and /u04 if you have them)

8) Log in as oracle.

Setting up the oracle user's environment
1) If you don't have a terminal window open, open one now.

2) If your Oracle CD isn't already in the CD drive, put it in now. If it doesn't mount automatically, you can use the following commands to mount it:

• su root (enter password)
• mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom (sub w/ your CD device locator).
• exit (to exit superuser privileges).

3) Verify umask is 022 by typing umask [enter]. If it is, great. If not, you'll need to put it in .bash_profile, which we edit in the next step. 

4) Use your favorite editor to edit the .bash_profile file in your oracle account's home directory. Put the following lines in this file: 

• ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/8.1.5; export ORACLE_HOME
• LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/u01/app/oracle/product/8.1.5/lib; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
• ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle; export ORACLE_BASE
• ORACLE_SID=ORCL; export ORACLE_SID
• ORACLE_TERM=vt100; export ORACLE_TERM
• ORA_NLS33=/u01/app/oracle/product/8.1.5/ocommon/nls/admin/data; export ORA_NLS33
• PATH=$PATH:/u01/app/oracle/product/8.1.5/bin; export PATH
• (optional) umask 022 (only if umask does not default to 022)

In my case, since I use US English, I'll put the following in my .bash_profile:

• NLS_LANG=american; export NLS_LANG

3) Log out, then back in as oracle. Open a terminal window again if one isn't open and type env to see if all the above variables now appear in your environment. 

4) Also make sure all the following paths are in your path statement, in addition to the Oracle path you specified above: /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin.

5) If everything isn't there, double-check your spelling, etc. in your .bash_profile. If everything is there, great! We're ready to install some software.

Oracle Install
Since we are using RedHat, we have to run a special version of the installer. If you do NOT use RedHat try running runInstall at the CD's root level. For RedHat, follow the instructions below.

1) If your CD isn't mounted when you log back in, use a terminal windows to mount it again with the following commands:

• su root (enter root password)
• mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
• exit (to exit superuser privledges).

• cd /mnt/cdrom/install/linux

• ./runIns.sh

4) Click the Next button.

5) Verify that the Source path says [cd mount point]/stage/products.jar

6) The Destination path should be the same as your $ORACLE_HOME environment variable.

7) Click Next.

8) At the Unix Group Name window, enter "dba" as the group, then click Next.

9) A window will now pop up asking you to run the orainstRoot.sh script. Here is how to do that:

• Open a new terminal window
• su root (enter your password)
• cd /tmp/orainstall
• ./orainstRoot.sh
• exit (to exit the SU privileges)
• exit (to close the terminal session)

10) Go back to that popup window that appeared and click the Retry button.

11) You will now get the Available Products screen. Select Oracle 8i 8.1.5.0.0 and click Next.

12) On the next screen, select Custom, then Next. It seems this is the only option that works halfway decently.

13) You will now be at the Available Product Components screen. You can pretty much leave it as is. The one option you may wish to deselect is Oracle Intermedia. It doesn't work too well yet, so why bother? You're choice, though. Click Next when you finished.

14) Now, the installer asks you if you want to create a database. Select No. Even though you select No, it will still try to create one later. We just choose No for now to get rid of a few extra windows. Click Next.

15) The Oracle Protocol Support window now appears. It will be blank, which is fine. TCP/IP is always installed, so don't worry about not seeing it as an option. Click Next.

16) Finally, we're at the Summary window, which lists everything you're about to install. Click the Install button.

17) I have noticed a bug where the installer might tell you that you don't have enough disk space to install everything. If you are sure you do, just hit OK on the warning(s).

18) The software begins installing! Woo-woo!

19) After files have been copied, you will get another pop-up asking you to run the root.sh script.

• Open a terminal window
• su root (enter password)
• cd $ORACLE_HOME
• chmod 744 root.sh (fixes the script to execute)
• ./root.sh
• Just hit Enter when it asks for the Path to your local bin directory
• exit (to exit superuser privileges)
• exit (to exit the terminal window)

21) The Oracle Database Configuration Assistant now starts (even though we told it not to earlier).

22) You will get an error message that starts with "JNLS Exception." Ignore it. Hit OK.

23) When the Database Configuration Assistant comes up, just hit the Cancel button.

24) Confirm that you want to exit at the next window.

25) You will now get a message saying one or more tools have failed. You can ignore this window. Hit OK.

26) Hit the Next button.

27) You are now at the End of Installation screen. Hit Exit.

28) Confirm that you want to exit.

29) Now, we change permissions on some files and apply the patch.

Changing permissions and patching Oracle 8i
Changing the permissions
This script will change permissions on certain files. Use the same terminal window that you used to apply the patch.

1) Run the following commands:

• cd $ORACLE_HOME/install/utl
• ./linux.sh

The patch
The version you just installed was Oracle 8i 8.1.5.0.0. This patch will take it to 8.1.5.0.2. Oracle strongly recommends applying this patch.

1) Do the following commands:

• cd ~
• tar xzvf linux_815patches.tgz
• cd linux_815patches
• ./linux_815patches.sh

3) It's time to create the database.

Create the Database
This is where we create the original database. This can take a long time. It took over an hour on my Pentium III 450.

1) In your teminal window, enter the following command:

• dbassist &

3) Select Create a Database and hit Next.

4) Select Custom and hit Next.

5) You can pretty much accept the defaults on the next four screens. Hit Next through them, stopping at the screen that asks you for the Global Database Name.

6) At this prompt, enter a name to identify this database. The name MUST be eight characters or less. Your SID should also be the same as you entered earlier in your environment variables.

7) Hit Next.

8) You can accept the defaults through the next six screens. Hit next until you get to the window that asks to Create database now.

9) Make sure Create database now is selected, then hit the Finish button.

10) Confirm that you want to proceed by hitting Yes.

11) Go get some lunch or watch TV. It's going to take a while.

12) When the database creation is finished, you will get a message saying so. Hit OK and proceed to the post-install tasks.

2) If you want to access the Oracle server with the GUI management tools from another PC, you will need to start the TNS listener. The default config works for most TCP/IP installations, but you may need to change it. It worked for us. 

• lsnrctl start

• svrmgrl
• connect internal
• startup
• quit

• cd $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin
• sqlplus (Connect as sys)
• @utlsampl.sql

6) You should now be able to create users tables etc. Your RDBMS is up and running!