Installation of Oracle Database 18.3.0 On-Prem for Linux

Hot on the release of Oracle Database 18.3.0 On-Prem for Linux, I got on the case with doing some installations. The first of which can be found here.

I few things to point out about these…

First, I’ve gone with a read-write Oracle home. I like the idea of the read-only home, but I’ve not played around with it enough at this point to commit.

The other thing is the Oracle home path itself. Currently I’m using “18.0.0”, rather than “18.3.0”. This feels a little strange to me, but I’m not sure how the Release Updates (RUs) will work out for this. I’m guessing what I’ll end up doing is creating a new Oracle home when a RU drops, then switch across to it, so it would be more appropriate to use 18.3.0, with a switch to 18.4.0 later. I’m still trying to decide how I want to play this. If you look at the SQL*Plus banner you will see this.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 18c Enterprise Edition Release 18.0.0.0.0 - Production
Version 18.3.0.0.0

So neither of these choices feel bad. 🙂

I usually post pictures of the installer, but I think this is sending the wrong message. IMHO you shouldn’t be installing this way, so this time I’ve made the break and only posted the silent installation.

In addition to the articles I’ve got some Vagrant builds for it (OL7, F28). The OL7 one also includes APEX and ORDS etc.

I’ve got a couple more things in the pipeline, which will probably come out tonight. We shall see.

Cheers

Tim…

ODC Appreciation Day : Silent Installation and Configuration (Automation) : #ThanksODC

Here is my entry for the Oracle Developer Community ODC Appreciation Day (#ThanksODC).

I’ve been mentioning automation a lot recently, both in relation to the cloud and on-prem. The OpenWorld announcements about the Autonomous Database service are not the first thing Oracle has done to ease automation of repetitive tasks. In fact, Oracle has quite a long history of making automation of installation and configuration easy.

I’m not sure what version introduced silent installations of the database, but I first wrote about them when using Oracle 9i (here), with the article changing a lot over the years. In addition to making installations faster, more repeatable and less error prone, they are also important these days if you are using a cloud provider for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), since using X emulation to perform tasks can be super-slow. Over the years I’ve also written about silent installations of WebLogic, Oracle Forms, ODI and OBIEE to name but a few.

In addition to installations, Oracle has made silent configuration possible too. Running the Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) in silent mode is pretty simple (here). WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) is a not always easy, but it is a really powerful way to script build processes for WebLogic servers (here). If you are using Enterprise Manager Cloud Control, you will find an API for pretty much everything, allowing you to script using EMCLI (here).

You can find a number of articles I’ve written related to silent installation and configuration using the links above, or grouped under this section of my website.

A good knowledge of this subject is important if you want to start checking out Docker, because you will be doing silent builds and configuration for everything.

When you are learning something new it is nice to use GUI screens, as they often feel a little simpler at first and sometimes give you a little more context about what you are doing. Once you’ve covered the basics you should really switch to scripting, as it will make you more efficient. When I first started to manage WebLogic servers I resisted the switch to using WLST for quite some time. It seemed a little complicated and I was in denial until Lonneke Dikmans persuaded me to try it. Once I got into it I never looked back! 🙂

To summarise the advantages of scripting your installations and configuration, they are:

  • Faster.
  • More reliable.
  • More repeatable.
  • Work fine on the cloud and in Docker.
  • Easily maintainable and can be version controlled.

If you’re not using this stuff already, do yourself a favour and give it a go. You will thank yourself!

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Database 12c Release 2 (12.2): Installation Articles

If you follow me on social media, you will know I’ve put out a few 12cR2 installation articles recently. It’s good motivation for me to read through the installation guides and see what’s changed, if anything, between versions. I quite like doing some of this nuts & bolts stuff. 🙂

If you’re interested, this is what I’ve done so far.

I always feel like I should stress a few things in relation to my install guides, or anyone else’s for that matter.

  • You should always read the installation manuals. I know it can be boring, but there is a bunch of stuff you should understand that I don’t include, because my intention isn’t to regurgitate the manual. Maybe you have a situation where something is relevant that other’s don’t care about.
  • The RAC articles are intentionally really basic. I avoid some of the job separation (users and groups) that you may want in your organisation. I keep the storage very simple. I avoid a lot of the possible topology variations. I would always consider these as a starting point for playing with RAC on a VM, rather than something you would consider a RAC “best practice”. Once you’ve got one of these running you can try variations. Don’t expect me to write a separate guide for all variations. Try it yourself.
  • I will make choices over my approach to make stuff suit the wider audience. For example I’ve tended to steer clear of ASMLib and the new “ASM Filter Driver” because a big chunk of my audience are sceptical of them and prefer to use UDEV. I’m happy to use either and if you are using Oracle Linux and UEK it really doesn’t make a great deal of difference. I think you should play with both and decide for yourself which you like. Remember, I’m not going to write multiple variations of the article.
  • The installation guides are all using interactive installations, but I rarely do these nowadays, preferring to use silent installations and silent database creations. I’m not sure how many people would be happy with a bunch of response files as their introduction to a new version. I think the GUI screens aid with understanding when you are new. You should definitely graduate to the silent stuff though! I’ve included the response files generated during each interactive installation.
  • I modify the installation guides over time as I learn more about the stuff. That’s true of all my articles, but don’t assume because I installed it this way today, that’s definitely the way to do it!

I guess what I’m saying is I’ve only done a handful of 12.2 installations, so I’m no guru. Keep that in mind and learn to think for yourself! 🙂

Happy installing!

Cheers

Tim…

APEX 5.1 Installations and Upgrades

APEX 5.1 was released for download a few days ago. I tried doing an upgrade against an installation on a VM at home and it worked fine, which was hardly surprising. 🙂

Officially I’m on holiday, but I figured I would upgrade all our Dev/Test installations while everything is quiet. Major version upgrades, changes in either of the first two numbers, require a full installation. There was no major difference between this and what I was doing for the 5.0 installations, so I just edited the existing article and altered the title.

Since all the apps at work use AD authentication, I tested that out against 5.1 too and it worked fine.

So it was really smooth sailing.

As I’ve mentioned previously, we’re a small scale user of APEX, so it’s relatively easy for me to upgrade and test our systems.

We’ll kick the tyres some more in the new year, then upgrade the live systems pretty soon.

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 23 and Oracle 11gR2/12cR1

A few months ago I mentioned doing some Fedora 22 installations. At the time I did some pre-emptive installations on the Alpha release of Fedora 23 also.

Now the final release of Fedora 23 is out, I’ve run through the articles again to make sure things are all ship-shape.

It’s pretty much as it was before, with the nice bonus that the “MATE Desktop” package group has been fixed. Happy days! 🙂

As always, installations of Oracle server products on Fedora are not a great idea, as explained here.

If you do like playing with this stuff, knock yourself out… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 22/23 and Oracle 11gR2/12cR1

linux-tuxAs always, installations of Oracle server products on Fedora are not a great idea, as explained here.

I was reading some stuff about the Fedora 23 Alpha and realised Fedora 22 had passed me by. Not sure how I missed that. 🙂

Anyway, I did a run through of the usual play stuff.

While I was at it, I thought I would get the heads-up on Fedora 23 Alpha.

The F23 stuff will have to be revised once the final version is out, but I’m less likely to forget now. 🙂

I guess the only change in F22 upward that really affects me is the deprecation of YUM in F22 in favour of the DNF fork. For the most part, you just switch the command.

#This:
yum install my-package -y
yum groupinstall my-package-group -y
yum update -y

#Becomes:
dnf install my-package -y
dnf groupinstall  my-package-group -y
dnf group install  my-package-group -y
dnf update -y

This did cause one really annoying problem in F23 though. The “MATE Desktop” had a single documentation package that was causing a problem. Usually I would use the following.

yum groupinstall "MATE Desktop" -y --skip-broken

Unfortunately, DNF doesn’t support “–skip-broken”, so I was left to either manually install the pieces, or give up. I chose the latter and use LXDE instead. 🙂 F23 is an Alpha, so you expect issues, but DNF has been in since F22 and still no “–skip-broken”, which I find myself using a lot. Pity.

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 21 : Oracle 11g and 12c Installations

Fedora 21 has arrived and it’s now delivered in three focussed flavours (Workstation, Server and Cloud). This of course resulted in the usual articles from me.

As always, read the warnings before you start down this path.

From an Oracle installation perspective, it’s almost identical to Fedora 20. I chose to use the server flavour and install the “MATE Desktop” package group. I suspect others may prefer to start with the workstation release. Either way it should be fine.

As I suspected, switching my main desktop from Fedora to the MacBook means I care significantly less about this release than before, but I still have some upgrades I’ll need to plug through.

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle WebLogic 12cR2 and ADF Runtime Installations…

The new versions of the WebLogic 12cR2 and ADF could not have come at a worse time for me. My top priority is learning about the 12cR1 version of the database. Second, is getting to grips with Cloud Control 12cR3. Third on the list is getting up to speed with the changes in WebLogic 12cR2 and ADF. Unfortunately, my personal priorities don’t quite match my work priorities, so WebLogic 12cR2 has moved up the list for a while. As a result, I did some installations last night.

I’ll have to play with this for a few days to get my head round it as I may be doing a test installation at work early next week.

A word of warning. I am a self-confessed WebLogic newbie. If you ask me questions about it I will be redirecting you to people who actually know what they are talking about…

Cheers

Tim…

Oracle Database 12c Virtual RAC Installation on Oracle Linux 6

I finally got my server problems sorted out yesterday, so I was able to do a 12c virtual RAC installation. You can see what I did here:

The setup is pretty much the same as the 11gR2 setup. So there’s no real drama at all.

With the basic installation articles out of the way I can start having a play with the functionality.

I’ve now got 12c running under VirtualBox on my server (Oracle Linux), desktop (Fedora 18), laptop (OS X) and desktop at work (Windows 7). If I can just get it running on my Nexus 4 and Nexus 7… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

 

Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 Installation…

I did an EM Cloud Control 12cR2 installation at work yesterday. The database repository was 11.2.0.3 on HP-UX and the middle tier was installed on RHEL 5.8. The installation was pretty much the same as the 12cR1 version. Over the next few days I’ll be testing out some of the features to decide if we can move across to it permanently.

Today I did two run throughs of single server installations on Oracle Linux 5.8 and 6.3. There are a couple of minor differences, but nothing to worry about. You can see what I did here:

The installations are a little small, so they are not too fast, but it’s good enough to test things out.

Cheers

Tim…

Update: It’s been a while since I used the 12c version, so I’ve had to relearn a few simple things. I thought I might as well write the down in case it helps others.