No candidate disks shown during installation of Grid

[vivek_k47]

Hi,
I came through till the point of installing the Grid Infrastructure by following the steps given in http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/11g ... ualbox.php
But during the ASM disk group creation step, the disks(DISK1...DISK5) dont come up as candidates.
Using # /usr/sbin/oracleasm listdisks shows all the disks.
I tried to change the ownership of the disks to 'dba' using #chown -R oracle:dba /dev/sd* and #chmod -R 777 /dev/sd*
I even tried #dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb1 bs=1024 count=100 (and /sdc1,/sdd1,sde1,sdf1)

[root@rac1 ~]# ls -ltr /dev/oracleasm/disks
total 0
brw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 8, 17 Aug 9 20:54 DISK1
brw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 8, 33 Aug 9 20:54 DISK2
brw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 8, 49 Aug 9 20:54 DISK3
brw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 8, 65 Aug 9 20:54 DISK4
brw-rw---- 1 oracle dba 8, 81 Aug 9 20:54 DISK5

how can i overcome this problem...im almost there..final stages...
Thanks.
Vivek

[Tim...]

Hi.

If you are using ASMLib you shouldn't have to mess with permissions. That is all done for you.

The most common problem with not seeing disks is because they have already been used for a previous installation. You need to make sure the disks are cleaned up properly before attempting a new installation or the discs will not be considered candidates.

http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/rac ... #asm_disks

Cheers

Tim...

[vivek_k47]

Hi Tim,
Thank you for the quick response.
I tried overwriting the header for the relevant partitions using the "dd" command.Then i removed and created all the ASM disks.
Still the disks are not available as candidate disks.

[root@rac1 ~]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm createdisk DISK1 /dev/sdb1
Marking disk "DISK1" as an ASM disk: [ OK ]
[root@rac1 ~]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm createdisk DISK2 /dev/sdc1
Marking disk "DISK2" as an ASM disk: [ OK ]
[root@rac1 ~]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm createdisk DISK3 /dev/sdd1
Marking disk "DISK3" as an ASM disk: [ OK ]
[root@rac1 ~]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm createdisk DISK4 /dev/sde1
Marking disk "DISK4" as an ASM disk: [ OK ]
[root@rac1 ~]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm createdisk DISK5 /dev/sdf1
Marking disk "DISK5" as an ASM disk: [ OK ]
[root@rac1 ~]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm scandisks
Scanning the system for Oracle ASMLib disks: [ OK ]
[root@rac1 ~]# /etc/init.d/oracleasm listdisks
DISK1
DISK2
DISK3
DISK4
DISK5

Any other way to solve this?
Thanks
Vivek

[vivek_k47]

Hi,
Solved it by changing the Discovery Path for the disks to "/dev/oracleasm/disks/*"
Thanks
Vivek

[Tim...]

Hi.

That is very unusual. If you are using ASMLib, the discovery string should default to the correct location. I've only ever had to alter the discovery string if I've not been using ASMLib.

Cheers

Tim...

[vivek_k47]

Hi Tom,
Ya its strange,but it worked(somehow).
After passing all the hurdles,i have reached the final stage of installing the Database.And then got a problem...
In the 'Typical install configuration' i provided all the details and got a message-' Insufficient disk space on this volume for the selected Oracle home'
I checked my Filesystem and found that i had only 900MB free space... .It has 9.1GB of data...
The only thing i can remove is the database software copied into /tmp which is 2.2GB .But even that would create a 3GB of free space and the required is 4.29GB.

[root@rac1 ~]# df -kh
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
9.5G 8.1G 946M 90% /
/dev/sda1 965M 24M 892M 3% /boot
tmpfs 1.5G 0 1.5G 0% /dev/shm

The rac1->Settings->Storage shows rac1.vdi->virtual size 25GB ,actual size 7.7GB
Help please.
Thanks
Vivek

[Tim...]

Hi.

Why do you have the Oracle software on the VM?

It would make much more sense to have that on the host machine and just use a shared folder to access it from the VM. Otherwise you will be wasting disk space with every VM you install.

Cheers

Tim...

[vivek_k47]

Hi,
Even by going with tha shared folder i have only 3.2GB free space.Can i increase it somehow..I dont want to start the installation all over again.

[Tim...]

Hi.

You can add a new virtual disk to the VM and use the logical volume management tool to add it to the logical volume.

http://www.oracle-base.com/articles/lin ... gement.php

Cheers

Tim...

[vivek_k47]

Hi Tim,
Everything is fine now.Installing database now,but the DBCA is stuck at 85%(30 mins till now).It says-'Clone databse creation in progress'. Still did not get to the script running step.
i checked $ srvctl config database -d RAC , $ srvctl status database -d RAC and SELECT inst_name FROM v$active_instances in both the nodes.The output is as specified by you in the steps.
What can i do now?

[Tim...]

Hi.

You seem to be having an awful lot of problems. The only times I've seen people have so many problems are when:

- They don't follow the steps I prescribe.
- They try to do the install on too low a spec machine. If you have allocated too much RAM to the VMs, the host OS will swap like crazy. If the host CPU is under-powered, it will max out when trying to do some of the operations.

Cheers

Tim...

[vivek_k47]

its ok now...after 45mins...

[vivek_k47]

while running the final script the follwing is generated:

Running Oracle 11g root.sh script...
The following environment variables are set as:
ORACLE_OWNER= oracle
ORACLE_HOME= /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1
Enter the full pathname of the local bin directory: [/usr/local/bin]:
The file "dbhome" already exists in /usr/local/bin. Overwrite it? (y/n)
[n]: y
Copying dbhome to /usr/local/bin ...
The file "oraenv" already exists in /usr/local/bin. Overwrite it? (y/n)
[n]: y
Copying oraenv to /usr/local/bin ...
The file "coraenv" already exists in /usr/local/bin. Overwrite it? (y/n)
[n]: y
Copying coraenv to /usr/local/bin ...
Entries will be added to the /etc/oratab file as needed by
Database Configuration Assistant when a database is created
Finished running generic part of root.sh script.
Now product-specific root actions will be performed.
Finished product-specific root actions.

Is this ok..i gave yes to all the options???

[Tim...]

Hi.

It makes no difference if you answer Y or N for this.

Cheers

Tim...

[vivek_k47]

ok.Then i have successfully installed RAC on my PC (i7-2670QM with 8GB RAM) and its really heavy on the CPU.
Thanks a lot for your step by step guide and your valuable inputs throughout my installation process.
im a bit amateur to the DBA field,hence a lot of doubts and problems.However thanks for your time and patience.
Vivek.