Preparing the Oracle environment

Check and update the System Requirements

The system requirements regarding the Oracle environment for each product provided on the Oracle Enterprise Edition CD-ROM are:

• A Pentium III or Pentium 4 based PC with at least 800 MHz processor, 512 MB of RAM and at least 10 Gigabytes of free disk space.
• If you only have 256 MB of RAM, make sure you have Windows manage at least 400 MB swap file (virtual memory).
• This machine MUST be running Windows 2000 with service pack 1 or (preferably) 2 installed. If you are running MS IIS, disable the web server (running on Port 80 by default) before starting the Oracle installation.
• At least 10 GB of free disk space:
• Space to download or copy source ZIP files: 1.5 GB
• Space to unpack source ZIP files: 1.5 GB
• Space to install Oralce Software: 2.0 GB
• Space for Oracle data files (varies): 2.0 to 5.0 GB
• The hard disk requirement for each Oracle8i product includes 15 MB which is required to install Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and Oracle Universal Installer on the partition in which the operating system is installed.
• If you choose to install Oracle online documentation (HTML), you need an additional 140 MB hard disk space.
• If you choose to install a starter database, you need an additional 320 MB hard disk space.
• If applicable, install and test your network hardware and software for your Oracle environment.
• Read the hard copy Release Notes, which may update this installation guide. (VERY important!)
• Insert the Oracle Enterprise Edition CD-ROM into your CD-ROM drive. The Autorun page automatically appears.
• If the Autorun page does not appear:
  1. Choose Start > Programs > Windows NT Explorer. The Windows NT Explorer starts.
  2. Click the CD-ROM icon.
  3. Click the autorun folder icon.
  4. Click autorun.exe.
• Tune the Kernel for Shared Memory

To prepare the Oracle environment for installation, you must tune the kernel so that it can use shared memory.

Step 1

Log in as the root user.

Step 2

Use a text editor such as vi to edit the /etc/system file, adding the following statements to the end of it:

set shmsys:shminfo_shmmax=8388608
set shmsys:shminfo_shmmin=1
set shmsys:shminfo_shmmni=100
set shmsys:shminfo_shmseg=10
set semsys:seminfo_semmns=200
set semsys:seminfo_semmni=70
set semsys:seminfo_semmsl=100

Save the /etc/system file.

Step 3

Reboot the system.

Create the Oracle Administration Account

As the root user, create a user account named oracle. Although this user account could be named something other than oracle, I recommend that you name the account oracle for consistency with other Oracle installations. You can create the oracle account using the Admintool or manually.

To create the oracle account, you must have the following information:

• The mount point for the Oracle installation directory.

  To decide this, you will need to know which partition has enough available space for the Oracle installation. Use the command df -k for information on free disk space. The partition you install Oracle onto should have 4.0 GB of available disk space.

• The User ID (UID) to assign to the oracle user (required for manual configuration of the oracle account).

  Open the /etc/passwd file. The third field of each line is the UID. The UID you assign to the oracle user must be unique. We recommend that you increment the highest of all of the UIDs by one.

• Using the Admintool to Create the Oracle Account.

  If you are planning your Oracle environment running the X Window System (OpenWindows or CDE), you should use the Admintool to create the oracle account as follows:

  Step 1 If the Admintool is not already running, start the Admintool by entering the following command: # admintool
  Step 2 If you are not in the Admintool: Users screen, select Browse > Users.
  Step 3 Select Edit>Add. The Admintool: Modify Users screen appears. Step 4 Fill out the form as follows:
  
  (a). Under User Name, type oracle.
  (b). Under Primary Group, type dba.
  (c). Select Create Home Dir.
  (d). Under path, type mntpoint/oracle/product/7.3.3. where mntpoint is the mount point for the Oracle installation that you have determined has at least 4.0 GB of available disk space.
  (e). Click OK.

Return to installing the Oracle database