Fixing Screen Resolutions

So now you’re logged in as root -and you’re probably looking at a screen that’s displaying 800×600 pixels. That is actually too small to run the Oracle Universal Installer correctly, so we have to bump it up a bit. Trouble is, if you look in System > Preferences > Display you’ll find that you’ve only got two resolutions listed -and one of them is actually worse (i.e., smaller) than we’ve currently got! So this isn’t the fix we require.

The real answer is to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions, which are a set of drivers that make the virtual machine behave more like a real one, including having a decent set of display options.

Installing the guest additions is easy provided you used my Kickstart file to build your VM. If you didn’t, you will probably be missing the correct kernel-devel files needed to have the guest additions compiled properly: you’ll have to fix that up yourself before you can proceed.

Otherwise, just click the VirtualBox Devices > Install Guest Additions menu options:

This will ‘insert’ a virtual CD containing the “guest additions” for the virtual machine -which include a new video driver for better screen resolutions. As that virtual CD gets inserted, it should cause this dialog to appear:

If you click [OK] at this point, followed by [Run], a terminal window will automatically open and various bits of configuration will take place:

As you see, everything installs fine. So now you press [Enter] and then log out. Logging out causes the X server to re-start, so the graphics pick up on the fact that new drivers exist. As soon as you log out, therefore, you should see the screen resolution improve dramatically:

(You can’t tell from these thumbnails, of course! But if you click on the one above, you’ll see it opens as a much larger image than any thumbnail before it manages to do).

Actually, you might find the new screen resolution a bit too big! If that’s true, log back on as root and use System > Preferences > Display to pick a more suitable resolution. 1024×768 is the usable minimum -and what I’ll be using from this point.

Incidentally, you might take this opportunity to right-click the ‘VBOXADDITIONS…’ CD icon which will still be displayed on your desktop: select Eject from the context menu and it will disappear.

Preparing to Install Oracle

At this point, your virtual machine build is complete and you’re logged onto it as root. All that remains by way of preliminaries is to get the Oracle software itself copied over to our new server, along with the Gladstone configuration script. This is where our Apache web server comes in handy once more!

Launch Firefox and type in these addresses in turn, choosing to save the files when prompted. Save them wherever you like, but I always save to the Downloads directory, which happens to be the default:

• http://192.168.0.37/gladstone.sh
• http://192.168.0.37/linux.x64_11gR2_database_1of2.zip
• http://192.168.0.37/linux.x64_11gR2_database_2of2.zip

Obviously, replace that IP address with the actual IP address used by your virtual Apache server.

Once all the files are downloaded, open a new terminal window and issue these commands in turn:

• unzip Downloads/linux.x64_11gR2_database_1of2.zip

• unzip Downloads/linux.x64_11gR2_database_2of2.zip

• rm Downloads/*.zip

• chmod 775 Downloads/gladstone.sh

• Downloads/gladstone.sh

The first two commands unpack each of the Oracle software downloads and create a /root/database directory as they do so. The third command simply deletes the zip files once they’ve both been unpacked -you only need the unpacked software, not its compressed file sources:

The fourth command makes the gladstone.sh file executable. You can achieve the same thing in a GUI fashion by running the Nautilus file browser (Applications > System Tools > File Browser), right-clicking the relevant file, selecting the Properties tab and checking the ‘Allow executing file as program’ box.

Running Gladstone

The last command shown above actually invokes the Gladstone shell script. You’ll immediately see this sort of thing appear in the terminal window:

Hopefully it’s pretty obvious that you type a ‘y’ to proceed and then press [Enter].

Gladstone only handles the preparation for the installation of Oracle 10g Release 2 or 11g Release 2: I suggest you stick with 11g for now (10g doesn’t have a very long life ahead of it) and thus type in option 2.

You’ll remember that, currently, we are logged on as root and that no other users exist on the system. Well, this is the point at which we correct that:

If you just press [Enter] at this point, a user called “oracle” will be created for you. I happen to prefer logging on to my Oracle servers as ‘myself’, so I’m choosing to create a user called hjr here… you fill in whatever you fancy at this point. The usual rules of Unix/Linux username nomenclature applies, however: no more than 32 characters, and preferably don’t start it with a number.

A new user needs a new password, so type in one when prompted (preferably make it a bit subtler and less easy to guess than my example of password !!)

When you eventually come to install Oracle, it will suggest creating a ‘starter database’ -and Gladstone is asking you now what you expect to call the database then. This sets the ORACLE_SID environment variable so that you will, eventually, be able to connect to that database without having to spell it out each time. In other words, you’re specifying at this point what you want the default database connection to be. You don’t have to stick to this name when it actually comes time to create a database, but it’s easier all round if you do. Gladstone, by default, will create an environment variable that says lindb is the default database name -just type in something else if you don’t like that idea. Keep it under 8 characters in length and don’t start it with a number, though (Oracle’s database naming rules, not mine!)

Gladstone at this point starts downloading the various software packages that are considered necessary prerequisites for Oracle’s own software. This part of the process can get a bit messy:

You’ll probably see a lot of these ‘someone else is already holding the yum lock’ messages. The O/S’s own automatic update process is running in the background and Gladstone’s attempt to download new software has to wait its turn. Be patient, though, and you should see something like this:

Somewhere in that lot, you can see Gladstone’s progress bar (at this point, showing 3 or 8 downloads achieved). You can also see Gladstone importing appropriate GPG keys (a security mechanism designed to stop ‘unsigned’ software being installed in error). So, Gladstone is working in the background and, if you give it enough time, will eventually get to this point:

The thing needs the server to reboot and if you press [Enter] now, that’s exactly what will happen. When the server comes back up, log in as the oracle user you just created (i.e., NOT as root). We’re now finally ready to perform the Oracle software installation itself.