SUMMARY: hints for running the oracle universal installer[tm]

I'm summarizing even though no one asked, because the "Oracle
Universal Installer[tm]" makes me absolutely crazy and possibly this
will save some pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth once it hits the
google cache.  Once it's running, it's cake, but getting everything
set up to run it isn't as easy as it appears.

ANYWAY, these hints are from my clumsy installation procedure on
solaris 8, via the GUI installer.

Make an oracle user and group[s] you'll need this during the install.
Set up the .bashrc or whatever environment files are appropriate for
your situation.  Make the changes to /etc/system the installer needs.
Take note of the ones that are only necessary for the installation in
case you'd be better off changing them back once you're done.  Apply
patches, la la la.  This is why you get paid the big bucks, or why you
feel exploited because you don't.

Get your X setup [VNC/tunnels/etc] working.  I use the VNC package
from sunfreeware on the server and the VNCviewer on my win32 machine
to do this remotely.  I've had to set the stickybit on
/usr/local/bin/Xvnc *and* modify the shebang in
/usr/local/bin/vncserver to get everything to work.  If you're having
trouble this far, those are two things you may have overlooked.  Do
you have /usr/openwin/bin in your path?  is /usr/local/etc/sshd_config
setup to let you forward X?  have you run xhost?  The ONLY GUI app
I've ever used (aside from a webbrowser) in my career as a
perlninja/sysadmin/operations engineer is the Oracle Universal
Installer[tm].  These hints may be obvious, but some of us don't work
with windows much.  Wait, does emacs count as a GUI app? :)

Once you've got the archives downloaded, find a partition with some
room, then decompress them (cpio -imdv < oraclearchive.cpio)  Make
sure you have room.  If you don't install the starter db, you don't
need all three.  Don't install off of CDs, the installer will fail if
there's a disk swap.  If you burn the files to CD, I suggest you burn
the archive, not the decompressed directories.

Now, this is where the hair pulling starts.  The OUI[tm] is started
with a shell script called "runInstaller"  it has a lot of trouble
figuring out what directory it's running in.  My solution is to edit
it and include a hardcoded path to the installation directory.  It
works, it may not be the best thing to do, but I don't even try to run
it without hardcoding the path first anymore.

PITFALLS:

If you start runInstaller and you get the incredibly annoying error
message about java not being "found at bin/java, Hence the installer
can not continue" DON'T PANIC.  java is INDEED installed on your
system, and going "javasoft.com and installing JRE 1.3.1 or higher"
isn't going to help you!  The real problem is that the installer just
can't run it from your TMP directory.  Check the permissions and make
sure that the installer can access
/tmp/orainstBLAH_blah-timestamp-99-1001  I read somewhere that the
installer uses a variety of different java versions in the course of
the install, and the whole thing seems like a nightmare that I don't
want to get involved in, so just make sure that your temp directory is
available to the installer.

WHEN AN INSTALLATION FAILS, THE INSTALLER DOESN'T CLEAN UP.  Make sure
to keep /tmp (or whatever dir you're using) free of these garbage
directories so the installer has the 400MB it needs.

I encountered a new and incredibly annoying error the last time I did
an install, which was caused by improper permissions on /var/opt (i
had drwx------ and of course, needed drwxr-xr-x)

Once it's running, it's just like Windows[r]: next > next > next and
you're done :)

Honestly, installing Oracle is such a pain because of the crappy
installer [or my own incompetance paired with useless error messages
and a bloated, clunky, and unnecessarily flashy installer) that I've
actually considered driving down to Oracle [5 minutes away!] and
shaking my fist at the buildings from the parking lot.  I know you can
use a response file instead, but I never could get that to work, so
this is how I do it... I hope it helps :)

cheers, Wil.

---
neko wa kowai
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