Installing Oracle 11g on Ubuntu 14.04

Had to install Oracle 11g on a new Ubuntu VM today. Used the instructions below from THIS site:

Installing Oracle 11g R2 Express Edition

For the installation of Oracle 11g R2 Express Edition (XE), a couple of additional Linux packages are required. These packages can be installed by executing the following statement.

$ sudo apt-get install alien libaio1 unixodbc

The next step is to download the Oracle 11g R2 Express Edition from the Oracle website. Make sure you select the Linux x64 version from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/products/express-edition/downloads/index.html. After the download is completed, open the terminal and navigate to the download directory. In my case this can be done by executing the following statement.

The next step step is to unzip the downloaded file. To do this, execute the following command.

$ unzip oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm.zip

A new directory (Disk1) is added to the Download directory. Navigate to this directory:

$ cd Disk1

Now we have to convert the Red Hat package (rpm) to a Debian package. This may be done using the alien command. The -d parameter is used to inform alien that a Debian package should be generated. When the -scripts parameter is toggled, alien will try to convert the scripts that are meant to be run when the package is installed and removed.

$ sudo alien –scripts -d oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm

This step may take a while, while this statement is executing we can do the following steps. Open a new terminal window for these steps.

The Red Hat package, relies on the /sbin/chkconfig file, which is not used in Ubuntu. To successfully install Oracle XE we use a simple trick. Start by creating a custom /sbin/chkconfig file by executing the following statement.

$ sudo gedit /sbin/chkconfig

Copy and paste the following into the editor:

#!/bin/bash
# Oracle 11gR2 XE installer chkconfig hack for Ubuntu
file=/etc/init.d/oracle-xe
if [[ ! `tail -n1 $file | grep INIT` ]]; then
echo >> $file
echo ‘### BEGIN INIT INFO’ >> $file
echo ‘# Provides: OracleXE’ >> $file
echo ‘# Required-Start: $remote_fs $syslog’ >> $file
echo ‘# Required-Stop: $remote_fs $syslog’ >> $file
echo ‘# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5′ >> $file
echo ‘# Default-Stop: 0 1 6′ >> $file
echo ‘# Short-Description: Oracle 11g Express Edition’ >> $file
echo ‘### END INIT INFO’ >> $file
fi
update-rc.d oracle-xe defaults 80 01
#EOF

Save the file and close the editor. Now we have to provide the file with the appropriate execution privileges.

$ sudo chmod 755 /sbin/chkconfig

After this, we have to create the file /etc/sysctl.d/60-oracle.conf to set the additional kernel parameters. Open the file by executing the following statement.

$ sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.d/60-oracle.conf

Copy and paste the following into the file. Kernel.shmmax is the maximum possible value of physical RAM in bytes. 536870912 / 1024 /1024 = 512 MB

# Oracle 11g XE kernel parameters
fs.file-max=6815744
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range=9000 65000
kernel.sem=250 32000 100 128
kernel.shmmax=536870912

Save the file. The changes in this file may be verified by executing:

$ sudo cat /etc/sysctl.d/60-oracle.conf

Load the kernel parameters:

$ sudo service procps start

The changes may be verified again by executing:

$ sudo sysctl -q fs.file-max

This method should return the following:

fs.file-max = 6815744

After this, execute the following statements to make some more required changes:

$ sudo ln -s /usr/bin/awk /bin/awk
$ mkdir /var/lock/subsys
$ touch /var/lock/subsys/listener

Close the second terminal window and return to the first terminal window. The rpm package should be converted and a new file called oracle-xe-11.2.0-2_amd64.deb have been generated. To run this file, execute the following command:

$ sudo dpkg –install oracle-xe_11.2.0-2_amd64.deb

Execute the following to avoid getting a ORA-00845: MEMORY_TARGET error. Note: replace “size=4096m” with the size of your (virtual) machine’s RAM in MBs.

$ sudo rm -rf /dev/shm
$ sudo mkdir /dev/shm
$ sudo mount -t tmpfs shmfs -o size=4096m /dev/shm

Create the file /etc/rc2.d/S01shm_load.

$ sudo gedit /etc/rc2.d/S01shm_load

Copy and paste the following in the file. Note: replace “size=4096m” with the size of your machine’s RAM in MBs.

#!/bin/sh
case "$1" in
start) mkdir /var/lock/subsys 2>/dev/null
touch /var/lock/subsys/listener
rm /dev/shm 2>/dev/null
mkdir /dev/shm 2>/dev/null
mount -t tmpfs shmfs -o size=4096m /dev/shm ;;
*) echo error
exit 1 ;;
esac

Save the file, close the editor and provide the appropriate execution privileges.

$ sudo chmod 755 /etc/rc2.d/S01shm_load

Configuring Oracle 11g R2 Express Edition

If you have successfully installed to Oracle 11g R2 Express Edition server, it’s time to configure the server. To start the configuration of the server, execute the following command and follow the “wizard” in the terminal. Default values are shown between brackets for each question.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure

Now it is time to set-up some environmental variables. Open the /etc/bash.bashrc file by executing the following statement:

$ sudo gedit /etc/bash.bashrc

Scroll to the bottom of the file and add the following lines.

export ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe
export ORACLE_SID=XE
export NLS_LANG=`$ORACLE_HOME/bin/nls_lang.sh`
export ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH

Save the file and close the editor. To load the changes, execute the following statement:

$ source /etc/bash.bashrc

To validate the changes you can execute the following statement.

$ echo $ORACLE_HOME

This statement should result in the following output.

/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe

After this step it is recommended to reboot the machine. After the reboot is completed, you should be able to start the Oracle server using the following command:

$ sudo service oracle-xe start

Configure your instalation such as a password, port, etc.

After that open your oracle through browser http://YOUR-IP-ADDRESS:PORT/apex/

That’s all! Thank you for reading my note. If you found any trouble please don’t hesitate to contact me or leave me a comment!