Oracle Database 12c was recently announced (On June 1 2013) to be Generally Available for customers to use. I created a new Oracle Linux 6 virtual box, virtual machine and installed Oracle 12c Release 1 on it. So i’ll blog about the steps i used, with screenshots, in a 3 part blog series. This first one is this post, where i’ll document the steps i followed to create the Oracle Linux 6 – 64 bit virtual machine (In the next 2 posts i’ll document the process used to install the rdbms binaries and create the database).
Download Oracle Linux 6 Update 4
I downloaded Oracle Linux from https://edelivery.oracle.com/linux
Create a New VirtualBox Image
Start the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager from your program Menu
Click on “New”, you get the screen Below
Choose the Name as “OEL6” (Any name you want) and Type “Linux” and Version “Oracle (64 Bit)” as in the picture above, Click Next.
In the above screen, choose the file type to be “VDI”, Click Next.
Choose the file location and size in the screen above, Click Next.
Add the Oracle Linux ISO as a bootable Drive.
In the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager, click and Highlight the new virtual Machine “OEL6” that we created.
In the right hand side of the window you will see the details regarding this new image.
Now would be a good time to click on “System” and increase the memory allocated to the Virtual Machine to 2Gb and the Number of Processors to 2.
Then click on “Storage”, which brings you to the screen below.
Click on the icon pointed to by the Red Arrow in the Figure Above, to create a new Dvd Drive.
Choose the Oracle Linux 6 iso image that you just downloaded from edelivery.oracle.com.
This action will result in a new DVD drive being displayed in the storage screen, as in the Figure above. Click OK and return to the “Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager” main screen.
Install Oracle Linux 6 Update 4
In the Left panel of the Main Menu, Highlight your new Virtual Box image “OEL6”, and click on “Start”. It brings up the screen below
Hit Enter, it will Bring you to the screen below
In this screen i chose to skip the test of the media, tab to skip and hit enter.
In this screen i chose “English”, hit Enter
In this screen i chose “U.S English”, hit Enter
Choose “Basic Storage Devices” and in the next screen Choose “Yes Discard Any Data”
In the above screen, i left the hostname as “localhost.localdomain” and did not configure networking. (Configured these manually later).
It autodetects your timezone, click Next.
Enter a password for the root user and click Next
Choose “Use All Space” and click Next, Confirm “Write Changes to Disk”, Click Next.
I chose “Database Server” in the screen above. Keep in mind that once you do this, you do not get a GUI to login to the machine. All access has to be via the command line. If you want a GUI, you can choose “Basic Server”.
The above two screens appear when the installation is in progress, and as soon as the installation is complete.
Congratulations, you now have a OEL6 Update 4, 64 bit Virtual Box image !!!
Configure Networking and Hostname
At this point it would be best if you configure the virtualbox image to use a “Bridged Network”, so that it can communicate with a ULN server, to get the updates and required packages.
Follow the instructions from Setting Up Oracle Linux 6 with public-yum for updates to setup your image to receive packages from the oracle public-yum repository.
Login as root
Edit /etc/sysconfig/network, and change HOSTNAME=burl5vb2.us.oracle.com
Edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and add
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
IPADDR=192.168.56.101
BOOTPROTO=none
ONBOOT=yes
This sets up a static IP address and plumbs up eth0 after reboots.
Install Pre-requisite RPM’s (For a 12cR1 oracle installation)
Login as root
Run “yum update” (This will bring any new versions of installed packages that are available on public-yum)
Run “yum install oracle-rdbms-server-12cR1-preinstall” (This will install all the pre-requisite rpm’s, setup the oracle user, setup the oinstall and dba groups, update kernel parameter settings and security settings required for an oracle installation).
Most of the work is done, you are almost there.
Create Additional Hard Disks
I like to separate my binary and database installations into separate hard disks, so now i go ahead and create two additional hard disks.
Create two new hard disks in Virtual Box
From the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager, click on your Virtual Box Image “OEL6”
Click on Storage in the right hand side panel.
Click on the Hard Disk Icon next to “Controller SATA” pointed to by the Red Arrow
Click on “Create New Disk”
Choose “VDI” for hard disk file type
Choose “Dynamically allocated” for allocation type
Choose the proper File Location and File size as 10GB
Follow the above procedure and add a second hard disk (This one 20Gb) as shown below.
Now you should have two additional hard disks in this Virtual Box Image.
I will be using the disk OEL6-u01 as the device for the /u01 (10Gb) file system and OEL6-u02 as the device for the /u02 (20Gb) file system.
Now when you reboot the Linux virtual machine, OEL6-u01 will show up as /dev/sdb and OEL6-u02 will show up as /dev/sdc.
Partition, Format and Mount the hard disks
Once the devices are created and the VirtualBox Virtual machine has been rebooted, login as root.
Use the fdisk -l commands as shown above, to check that the disks /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc exist and are the correct sizes.
Partition the disks as shown above.
Format the disk /dev/sdb1 as shown above. Repeat the process for /dev/sdc1
Add the entries shown above to /etc/fstab so that the filesystems are mounted everytime you reboot the machine.
At this point, i shut down the virtual machine and switched it from using a “Bridged Network” to using a “Host Only” network.
Now we have a Oracle Linux 6 Virtual Machine that is ready for a Oracle 12c database Release 1 installation.
My next post will walk through the steps to install a single instance Oracle 12c Release 1 Rdbms Environment.
