Installing Java
The Java installation is straightforward. You already have a download (I hope!) called jdk-6u26-linux-x64-rpm.bin (don’t go downloading anything more up-to-date than that, either!), sitting in, say, the /home/oracle/Desktop directory.
To install it, you simply become the root user and issue this command:
sh /home/oracle/Desktop/jdk-6u26-linux-x64-rpm.bin
That produces a lot of screen activity, like so:
At the end of its work, the script asks you to press [Enter], after which it will try taking you to a website where you can register your use of the software. It’s perfectly OK, however, to shut the browser down and forget all about registration. Once the thing says it’s ‘Done’, the software is installed and will function correctly, whether you’ve registered or not.
Installing WebLogic
The final component to install is the WebLogic application server. I again assume that you’ve downloaded a file called wls1032_generic.jar in the /home/oracle/Desktop directory. (Note that we’re installing version 10.3.2, because anything later than that will produce errors).
You perform the install as the oracle user by typing the following command:
java -jar /home/oracle/Desktop/wls1032_generic.jar
Make sure you don’t try running this as root! There will be a lot of ‘extraction’ activity to begin with, but eventually, you’ll see the WebLogic installer wizard appear. Again, here’s a set of screen captures to show you what to do:
[nggallery id=6]
The trickiest part of the entire installation is trying to persuade the darn’d thing that you don’t want security updates! If you let it, it will continually loop round asking you the same thing over and over: the trick is to not mind that, having unchecked something, it continues to display a check mark. Ignore that and click [Next] when you can and you’ll eventually come good!
Anway, at this point, you’ve got a small database that can act as a Grid repository; and you’ve got an application server functioning that can run Java applications. All that remains to do is to install the Grid Control application itself… so read on!
Very well done article Howard.
I’ve yet to use grid control, having learned to hate the existing DBConsole ever since it came out with 10G, I’m thinking it would only increase my level of frustration with it.. (I still install the java OEM on my 10G database servers, haven’t been able to find it for 11G yet) However, like you suggest, any DBA these days should get familiar with it, so I am going to take the plunge.
I have a couple of thing to think about though, before I take this on:
I can quite likely run GC from my workstation easily enough, I just got a new one and it’s fairly hefty workstation with a xeon 2.4 dual quad core processor and 12gb ram and a couple of TB’s on two drives, running windows 7 64bit. This however, would restrict me to the windows version, (which I’m assuming works just fine) but my preference is to have it on a separate machine.
I could either (a) create a VM within the virtual box app I have on my machine for GC or (b) use one of the physical workstations I have at my disposal, usually a P4 with 2-4GB ram, but it would be 32 bit. In fact I have one such machine with SuSE enterprise server 9 Linux on it running an Oracle 10Gr1 database on it I used as an experimental Oracle on linux test machine some time ago (we are a windows shop, until I can convince them otherwise)
I like linux, and don’t get the chance to use it as often as I would like, so installing GC on linux appeals to me. However at this time I can’t see this being much more than a one time install, so I’m more likely to just download an install distro iso file and install it locally. While your kickstart server looks appealing, I don’t think I really need it right now. Your recommendation for a 5.x install of one of the centos or SL distros is what I would do, but do these have any specific advantages or disadvantages over using Oracle Linux?
Were I to run GC in a virtual machine within my workstation, getting back to Oracle offerings, I see they have VM templates for grid control. I want the simplest path to having GC up and running as soon as possible, my last go around trying to install Oracle VM on a bare metal workstation in my spare time tells me your method is probably the preferred one here.
“do these have any specific advantages or disadvantages over using Oracle Linux?”
Big disadvantage: no support. (Whether that’s an issue or not, I’ll let you decide!)
Grid control doesn’t like encountering non-supported O/S: you can’t administer a non-supported O/S from it, for example. But that’s a matter of what O/S you run your database servers on and is therefore a separate issue. The actual problem is simply that if you run Grid Control itself on anything other than a ‘proper’ distro, you won’t get Oracle support should anything go belly-up.
It doesn’t have to be Oracle Linux, though: SLES is supported; so is Red Hat itself. Just not Centos or Scientific (which I always think is a shame, but is really quite understable).
I am jealous of your workstation specs, incidentally! (Apart from the Windows 7 bit, obviously!!) Still making do with 8GB and an ancient quad core here…
Can you please repair broken link to Palmerstone shell script
Very good tutorial congratulations
I may be mistaken, but I don’t think there’s any broken links in this article. There were, I think, deliberately no links to Palmerston in it, because it’s not intended that you would download it directly. You’re supposed to do a kickstart O/S build, using a kickstart script generated by my configurator tool. That script will include a download of the Palmerston script, but it’s *local*: you’re supposed to have built a kickstart server and put Palmerston on *that*. The whole point of Palmerston, after all, is to avoid Internet downloads at the point of performing an O/S install.
Of course, there’s then the issue of how you get hold of Palmerston for that kickstart server -but that’s covered in the article on how to build a kickstart server in the first place, and I’ve checked that that works.
If you *really* want to download the file directly, there’s a link under the ‘Downloads’ option on the site banner. I checked that works, too.
But, unless I’m much mistaken, I don’t think there’s a link to Palmerston in this article itself that’s broken… and that’s by design. (Give me the specifics if you spot otherwise, of course!)
Thanks for the kind words, too.