Oracle Home Oracle Application Server Tips by Burleson Consulting

All Oracle DBAs are familiar with the environmental variable called the Oracle Home.  The Oracle Home is the directory where the installer places all the product related files.  The Oracle Home must be unique for each instance installed on a server including the back-end Oracle database.  In the table above, the disk space requirements are for the Oracle Home directory so ensure that you place it on a mount point with sufficient space.  Throughout this book we will reference files using the $ORACLE_HOME environmental variable to identify files such as:

$ORACLE_HOME/opmn/bin/opmnctl startall

The specific file opmnctl is referenced under the $ORACLE_HOME of the instance the command is starting.  As we will see later, the installer will unset the ORACLE_HOME variable when it starts and ask you to define an ORACLE_HOME for each installation.

Ports

Each application server instance installed on the same server will be installed using unique ports.  This includes all components that listen on ports, such as OHS or Web Cache.  This could get complicated however, the installer checks ports before assigning them and will assign unused ports as needed.  When setting up the operating system you will need to ensure that enough ports are available to the installer and it will do the rest.  Each installation will end with a page that displays the instance and Application Server Control port used.  You should write this information down!  You can find the ports used by an instance in the Enterprise Manager web site under the PORTS link or in the $ORACLE_HOME/install/portlist.ini file.

One port that must be available to install the infrastructure is port 1521, which is the Listener port for the database.  That port can be shared with another Oracle database but it must be available.

Documentation

This chapter will provide you with the information you need to install the Oracle Application Server 10g.  If you are planning to use the application server in a production environment, I recommend that you also review the Installation Guide and the Release Notes.  These documents can be reviewed on OTN or in the /docs directory on Disk1 of the installation disks.

Operating System Setup

This section has sometimes been a problem area for installing Oracle?s application server.  In Oracle Application Server 10g, the installer has been greatly improved to include checking the OS to ensure it is properly setup for the install.  If the installer reports that the OS is not configured properly, cancel the install and fix the problem.  You must install all OS patches the installer identifies as missing. The information presented below is current as of this writing, however it is always best to consult the Installation Guide and README document for your operating system.

Solaris 8,9
HP-UX 11.0
* JDK 1.4.1.05 or higher, to include all patches from the HP JDK download site.
* Sept 2002 Quality Pack (QPK1100 B.11.00.58.5) or higher
* Patches
* PHKL_27813
* PHSS_26559

HP-UX 11i
* JDK 1.4.1.05 or higher, to include all patches from the HP JDK download site.
* Dec 2001 Consolidated Patches (Dec01GQPK11i_Aux_Patch B.03.02.06) or higher.
* Patches
* PHKL_25212
* PHKL_25506
* PHKL_27091
* PHKL_28089
* PHSS_24638
* PHSS_26263
* PHSS_26792
* PHSS_26793

Linux RH 2.1 AS/ES

* Kernel 2.4.9-e.25 or greater
* Gcc-2.96-108.1 or greater
* Pdksh-5.2.14-13 or greater
* Openmotif-2.1.30
* Sysstat-4.0.1
* Compat-glibc-6.2-2.1.3.2
* Libstdc++-2.96-108.1 or greater

Linux RH 3.0 AS/ES

* kernel 2.4.21-4-EL or greater
* glibc-2.3.2-95.3 or greater
* gcc-3.2.3-20 or greater
* setarch-1.3-1 or greater
* pdksh-5.2.14 or greater
* openmmotif21-2.1.30-8 or greater
* gnome-libs-1.4.1.2.90-34.1 or greater
* compat-glibc-7.x-2.2.4.32.5
* compat-gcc-7.3-2.96.122
* compat-libstdc++-7.3-2.96.122
* compat-gcc-c++-7.3-2.96.122
* sysstat-4.0.7

UnitedLinux 1.0

* SP2a
* Kernel 2.4.19 or greater
* Glibc-2.2.5-179 or greater
* SP3
* Kernel 2.4.21
* Glibc-2.2.5-213
* Gcc_old-2.95.3
* Pdksh-5.2.14
* Openmitif-2.1.30MLI4
* Sysstat-4.0.3
* Libstdc++-3.2.2-38

Windows

      TBA

No Data Yet on Windows

Now that we have our install plan ready and know our operating system requirements, it is time to install the application server.

Installing the Application Server

At this point we are going to walk through the installation of the Oracle Application Server 10g using Redhat AS 2.1.  All installations follow the same methodology with some operating system specific variations. 

Preparing the Operating System

As mentioned above, you must ensure that the operating system is up to date and meets the minimum requirements before starting the installation.  This step is the one most often skipped and the reason for most of the installation problems.  For this example we are starting with a fresh install.  If you did not recently obtain your copy of RedHat 2.1 AS/ES, I recommend that you check the ISOs available for download from www.redhat.com as they periodically update the disks.

 

This is an excerpt from "Oracle 10g Application Server Administration Handbook" by Don Burleson and John Garmany.