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System Requirements

Completing a quick, successful installation depends on the local system satisfying the software dependencies and space requirements for Oracle software. This chapter describes the requirements for installing Oracle8i on Sun SPARC Solaris and any restrictions with this release. Before starting the installation, verify that your system meets the requirements described in this chapter

• Installation Overview

• System Installation Requirements

• Solaris and Installation-Specific Issues and Restrictions

Installation Overview

Installing Oracle8i involves the following steps:

1. Satisfy Prerequisites: Make sure the local system satisfies the hardware, software, memory, and disk space requirements for the products you want to install. These requirements and restrictions are described in this chapter.

2. Pre-Installation: Make sure the UNIX environment is properly set up and complete the pre-installation tasks for the products you want to install. See Chapter 2, "Pre-Installation".

3. Install: Use the Oracle Universal Installer provided on your software CD-ROM to install Oracle products. See Chapter 3, "Installation".

4. Post-Installation: Create database objects, establish the user environment, and configure the installed Oracle products for the local system. See Chapter 4, "Post-Installation".

5. Client Installations: If you want to install client tools, applications, and client interfaces not included with the Oracle8i Release 3 (8.1.7) CD-ROM, check the requirements and instructions in the documentation for those products.

Product Installation Categories and Installation Types

There are three categories of products included with Oracle8i Release 3 (8.1.7) for Sun SPARC Solaris.

• Oracle8i Enterprise Edition

• Oracle8i Management and Integration

• Oracle8i Client

Each category of products consists of multiple installation types. An overview of these product categories and types follows in Table 1-1. For descriptions and version numbers of individual software products included on the Oracle8i Release 3 (8.1.7) for Sun SPARC Solaris CD-ROM, refer to Appendix A, "Oracle8i Products".

Table 1-1 Oracle8i Product Installation Categories and Types

System Installation Requirements

Verify that your system meets the requirements described in the following sections before you install Oracle8i Release 3 (8.1.7) products.

• Hardware Requirements

• Disk Space Requirements

• Operating System Software Requirements

• Additional Product-Specific Installation Requirements

Hardware Requirements

To install Oracle8i products included with this release, your Sun SPARC Solaris system must meet the minimum hardware requirements listed in Table 1-2.

Table 1-2 Hardware Requirements

To determine the amount of RAM memory installed on your system, enter the following command:

$ /usr/sbin/prtconf | grep size

To determine the bytes of swap space currently configured on your system, enter the following command and multiply the BLOCKS column by 512:

$ swap -l

Disk Space Requirements

The Oracle Universal Installer allows you to choose your installation category and type as described in Table 1-1. Your choices will determine how much disk space you will need as shown in Table 1-3, Table 1-4, and Table 1-5. Disk space requirements do not account for the size of your database. A production Oracle database server supporting many users requires significantly greater disk space and memory.

Table 1-3 Disk Space Requirements for Oracle8i Enterprise Edition

Table 1-4 Disk Space Requirements for Oracle8i Client

Table 1-5 Disk Space Requirements for Oracle8i Management and Integration

Temporary Disk Space Required by the Oracle Universal Installer

The Oracle Universal Installer requires up to 75 MB of space in the /tmp directory. If you do not have enough space in /tmp, set the environment variable TMP_DIR to point to a directory with sufficient space.

Operating System Software Requirements

To install Oracle8i products included with this release, your Sun SPARC Solaris system must meet the operating system requirements listed in Table 1-6.

Table 1-6 Operating System Software Requirements

http://sunsolve.sun.com

Operating System

To determine your current operating system information, enter the following command:

$ uname -a

Operating System Patch

To determine which operating system patches are installed, enter the following command:

$ showrev -p

Operating System Packages

To determine which operating system packages are installed, enter the following command:

$ pkginfo -i [package_name]

If you enter pkginfo -i, all installed packages are listed.

Window Manager

To determine if your X-windows system is working properly on your local system, enter the following command:

$ xclock

If a clock is not displayed on your screen, X-windows is not configured correctly. See "DISPLAY" for instructions on configuring X-windows.

Required Executables

To determine if you are using the correct system executables, enter the following commands:

$ /usr/bin/which make
$ /usr/bin/which ar
$ /usr/bin/which ld
$ /usr/bin/which nm

Each command should point to the /usr/ccs/bin directory. If not, add 
/usr/ccs/bin to the beginning of the PATH environment variable in the current 
shell. See "PATH" for instructions on setting the PATH variable.

Online Documentation Requirements

To view online documentation included with the Oracle8i CD-ROM, use a web browser such as Netscape Navigator 4.0 or higher running on a UNIX system. To view PDF documents, you need Adobe Acrobat Reader version 3.0 or higher.

Additional Product-Specific Installation Requirements

This section provides product-specific information in addition to hardware and software requirements provided earlier in this chapter. For descriptions of these products, see Appendix A, "Oracle8i Products".

Oracle8i and Options

Table 1-7 Restrictions, Requirements, and Installation Tasks for Oracle8i and Options

Tools and Precompilers

Table 1-8 Restrictions, Requirements, and Installation Tasks for Tools and Precompilers

Networking and System Management Products

All network products require the underlying software and operating system libraries for the supported network. The network software must be installed and running prior to installation of Net8 products. Refer to operating system and third party vendor networking product documentation for more information. Net8 Release 8.1.7 products require Oracle8i Release 3 (8.1.7).

Table 1-9 Restrictions and Requirements for Networking and System Management Products

Oracle Advanced Security

Oracle Advanced Security is an add-on product to the standard Net8 Server or Net8 Client. It must be purchased and installed on both the server and the client.

Oracle Advanced Security release 8.1.7 requires Net8 release 8.1.7 and supports Oracle8i Enterprise Edition. Install Oracle Advanced Security on each server and client where Oracle Advanced Security is required.

Table 1-10 describes requirements for authentication protocols supported by Oracle Advanced Security. See the Oracle Advanced Security Administrator's Guide for additional information.

Table 1-10 Supported Authentication Methods and Requirements

Software Requirements for Legato Storage Manager

Legato Storage Manager is a restricted-functionality version of Legato NetWorker. For information on the software requirements for Legato Storage Manager, see Requirements for Legato Storage Manager, in Appendix B.

Solaris and Installation-Specific Issues and Restrictions

The following issues and restrictions can affect the installation or use of Oracle8i on Sun SPARC Solaris. Check the Release Notes that accompany this release and the README files in the $ORACLE_HOME/relnotes directory before using Oracle8i. For Release 3 (8.1.7), the README files are uncompressed and linked to the top-level HTML file in the doc directory. README files for other products on the Oracle8i CD-ROM are in the doc or admin/doc directories for the respective products.

Using Hummingbird Exceed

If you are using Hummingbird's Exceed X-windows emulator while installing and using Oracle8i, set the window manager to run in "Native" mode so that Microsoft windows functions as the window manager. See your Exceed documentation for instructions on configuring the window manager.

Re-Installing Oracle8i Release 3 (8.1.7)

If you re-install Oracle8i Server into an ORACLE_HOME where Oracle8i Server Release 3 (8.1.7) is already installed, you must also re-install any product options, such as Oracle Partitioning, that were enabled before you began the re-installation.

New ORACLE_HOME

Oracle Corporation recommends that you install Oracle8i Release 3 (8.1.7) products into a new ORACLE_HOME. Do not install Oracle8i Release 3 (8.1.7) into an ORACLE_HOME directory that already contains Oracle products.

If you must install Oracle8i Release 3 (8.1.7) into an ORACLE_HOME that contains 8.1.5 products, remove the 8.1.5 products with Oracle Universal Installer before beginning the new installation.

Backing Up the root.sh Script

After the successful installation of Oracle8i, back up the root.sh script. If you install another product category (such as Oracle8i Management Infrastructure) into the same ORACLE_HOME, Oracle Universal Installer will delete the content of the root.sh script during the course of the installation. If you require the original root.sh script, you can recover it from the root.sh.save file.

Java Runtime Environment (JRE)

The JRE certified for use with Oracle8i is used by Oracle Java applications such as the Oracle Universal Installer and is the only one supported to run with these applications. Customers should not modify this JRE, unless it is done through a patch provided by Oracle Support Services.

The inventory can contain multiple versions of the JRE, each of which can be used by one or more products or releases. The Installer creates the oraInventory directory the first time it is run to keep an inventory of products that it installs on your system as well as other installation information. The location of oraInventory is defined in /var/opt/oracle/oraInst.loc.

Products in an ORACLE_HOME access the JRE through a symbolic link in $ORACLE_HOME/JRE to the actual location of a JRE within the inventory. Customers should not modify the symbolic link unless it is done through a patch provided by Oracle Support Services.

The Solaris patches listed in Table 1-11 and Table 1-12 are required or recommended for JRE 1.1.8_10 and can be obtained from:

http://sunsolve.sun.com

Table 1-11 Solaris 2.6 (5.6) Patches for JRE 1.1.8_10

Table 1-12 Solaris 7 (5.7) Patches for JRE 1.1.8_10

Table 1-13 Solaris 2.6 (5.6) Patches for JDK 1.2.2

Table 1-14 Solaris 7 (5.7) Patches for JDK 1.2.2

Character Mode

Installation can no longer be performed using character mode. However, you can configure the Oracle Universal Installer to perform a non-interactive installation of Oracle products. The Installer can be run in non-interactive mode directly from your system's X-windows console or via an X-terminal or PC X-terminal on a remote system. For more information on the non-interactive installation of Oracle products, see "Non-Interactive ("Silent") Installation and Configuration".

Upgrading and Migrating

It is possible to migrate an Oracle7 database, release 7.1.4 or higher, or upgrade an Oracle8 database, release 8.0.3 or higher, to Oracle8i Release 3 (8.1.7). To migrate from an Oracle7 database lower than 7.1.4, you must first upgrade to an Oracle7 database, release 7.1.4 or higher, and then use the Oracle Data Migration Assistant to migrate to Oracle8i.

If you are upgrading an existing system, there are issues that exceed the scope of this manual. See Oracle8i Migration for details on upgrade and migration procedures.

File Systems

Oracle8i Server must be able to verify that file writes have been made to disk. File systems that do not support this verification are not supported for use with Oracle databases, although Oracle software can be installed on them.

Optimal Flexible Architecture

Optimal Flexible Architecture (OFA), Oracle's standard set of configuration guidelines for Oracle databases, is supported, but not enforced, by the Oracle Universal Installer. The starter database included with the Typical installation type of Oracle8i Enterprise Edition is created under a single mount point.

Solaris 2.3, 2.4, and 2.5

Solaris 2.3, 2.4, and 2.5 are not supported for use with Oracle8i Release 3 (8.1.7). You must be using Solaris 2.6 or Solaris 7. See Table 1-6 for details of operating system and patch level requirements.

Very Large Files

Oracle8i Release 3 (8.1.7) includes native support for files greater than 2 GB. Check your shell to determine whether it will impose a limit.

To check current soft shell limits, enter the following command:

$ ulimit -Sa

To check maximum hard limits, enter the following command:

$ ulimit -Ha

The file (blocks) value should be multiplied by 512 to obtain the maximum file size imposed by the shell. A value of unlimited is the operating system default and is the maximum value of 1 TB. See Table 1-15, "Oracle File Size Limits" for Oracle-specific file size limits. The db_block_size parameter is defined in the $ORACLE_HOME/dbs/initsid.ora file.

Table 1-15 Oracle File Size Limits

Oracle Parallel Server Restriction

Because all Oracle databases on a cluster linked in Parallel Server mode must match the word size of the Cluster Group Services executable, they must all run only a 32-bit executable. Mixing word sizes of parallel server executables, even across different databases, will not work in 8.1.x. This restriction does not apply to Oracle executables that are not linked in Parallel Server modes.