part 5 -Updating and Configuring Linux installation

Updating and Configuring Linux installation the easy way with oracle-validated RPM

Load public Oracle yum server configuration: wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el5.repo. You need to be in the directory /etc/yum.repos.d

If you have set up everything, you should see something like this when you do the wget command:

-bash-4.1#  export http_proxy=http://<your proxy>

-bash-4.1#
-bash-4.1#
-bash-4.1# wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el5.repo
--2012-10-12 13:17:24--  http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el5.repo
Connecting to 10.159.32.155:8080... connected.
Proxy request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 3974 (3.9K) [text/plain]
Saving to: âpublic-yum-el5.repoâ

100%[======================================>] 3,974       --.-K/s   in 0.04s

2012-10-12 13:17:24 (106 KB/s) - âpublic-yum-el5.repoâ

-bash-4.1#

When you have the repo file, you need to change the .repo file. There is a number of entries for various Linux versions and you need to change the tag enabled=0 to enabled=1 for the Linux version you are running.

As I was running RHEL 5.4 I changed line:

[el5_u4_base]

name=Enterprise Linux $releasever Update 4 installation media copy ($basearch)

baseurl=http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/EnterpriseLinux/EL5/4/base/$basearch/

gpgkey=http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-el5

gpgcheck=1

enabled=0

and set the enabled to 1.

Then you can run

#yum update <optional>

#yum install oracle-validated

Which will start the actual update process.

The oracle-validated will run a number of rpms that do a number of things like:

• Creating user oracle and groups oinstall and dba (needed for database install)
•  Modifies kernel parameters in /etc/sysctl.conf
• Sets hard and soft shel resource limits in /etc/security/limits.conf
• And last but not least downloads and installs all the packages needed for oracle db 11g installation resolving dependencies between packages

For a successful example to complete install with oracle-validated rmp, see this blog entry:

http://gavinsoorma.com/2011/10/using-the-oracle-validated-rpm-to-install-oracle-11g-on-linux/

If you do not have access to Internet from the Eucalytus instance (aka my snafus)

For the wget command to work, I should have set the http proxy with a command like this:

export http_proxy=http://<ip address of corporate proxy>:<port>

I did not know at the first install (instructions on our intra wiki were hard to find) and had to adjust to manual method. It is similar to a situation where you do not have access to Internet from the eucalyptus instance.

So I needed to manually download via Firefox from: http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/ first to my windows machine and copy over the files with winscp.

Browse to right dir based on your linux version. For me it was: http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/EnterpriseLinux/EL5/4/base/x86_64/

Basic steps after this:

• Download a rpm starting with oracle-validated [e.g. oracle-validated-1.0.0-18.el5.x86_64.rpm] . The actual filename depends on your processor architecture etc. but on each directory there should be just one file starting with oracle-validated. Upload the file to the linux machine you are setting up. I did it with winscp. 
• Run rmp –Uvh oracle-validatedxxx.rpm. This failed due to the fact that some other dependencies were missing. The reporting from oracle-validated rpm is not very clear. The main missing pieces were the C++ compiler, its libraries and a few X libraries.  The c++ compiler is needed as the oracle DB and the database requires a number of GNU libraries. It seemed the distribution that my image was made did not have the correct versions that Oracle DB required.
• The main issues for me where for shared objects the rpm would not report what version and whether 32 or 64 bit version was needed - at least not for all entries.  Several times I ended up uploading both 32 and 64 bit versions and finally the compatibility libraries (starting with compat-libstdc++xxxx.rpm for example) – that is 4 different versions - until the error finally cleared. It was all trial and error.
•  Another issue that baffled me was that there is a report on missing libc.so but there was nothing with that name on the you repository. Finally I understood that I needed to upload glibc.so. This makes sense as the oracle db installer uses the GNU complier but it took me a while to realize the unmentioned g at the beginning of the reported file.

If you cannot get the oracle-validated to work, the third alternative is to manually create group oinstall and user oracle and let the database install fix the needed packages. (We will cover this bit in the DB install section)

You can create the needed group and user with:

[root@localhost mnt]#/usr/sbin/groupadd oinstall

And

[root@localhost mnt]# /usr/sbin/useradd -g oinstall  oracle

After this set the password for user oracle to whatever you like

[root@localhost mnt]#passwd oracle

And now the operating system is patched.