Installing Oracle 11gXE on Mint and Ubuntu

Things have been a bit hectic lately. What with putting in a new kitchen, being insanely busy at work, and trying not to come out with embarrassing sheep jokes, I’ve ended up with quite a long list of things to do blog-wise.
Top of the list, until now, was installing the long-awaited Oracle 11gXE Release 2 onto one of my Linux machines.
Yes, the free version of Oracle’s RDBMS has finally had an upgrade from 10g and I really want to get my hands on it and have a good nose around.
As well as being based on the latest release of the RDBMS, the Express Edition has had one or two other improvements added. Maybe the most significant of these is that the limit for the amount of user data that XE can hold has been increased from 4GB to 11GB.
What I’m going to do here is :

• Go through the package conversion process
• Install the database using steps applicable both to Mint and Ubuntu ( and any other Debian based distro)
• Apply some finishing touches so that the menu items work as intended

Along the way, we’ll find out just why Oracle can’t speak English (and lots of other languages), where Mint has hidden the .bashrc, and how Aliens can be friendly.

Because I’m trying to cover both distros in this post, the installation process will be done entirely on the command line. Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds.

But first…a small morsel of Linux history. Debian, the distro upon which both Mint and Ubuntu are based, was named after a Deb. I had to mention that as this will cause my beloved to think that I’m writing about her ( again), and thus give me enough time to finish writing this !

What are we waiting for then ? Let’s get going.

Before you install – counting the bits

In fact, the experience of constructing flat-packed kitchen units will stand me in good stead for this installation. This is because, whilst XE is available for both 32 and 64-bit windows, Oracle have seen fit to release only a 64-bit version for Linux.
This immediately presents me with a bit of a problem because all of my Linux installs are 32-bit.
If you’re not sure whether your current installation is 32 or 64-bit, simply open a terminal and issue the command :

uname -i

If the output of this command is x86_64, the you’re good to go. If it’s i686, then you’re going to need to install a 64-bit version of your OS before you go any further.
For my part, I’ve taken one of my machines and installed a 64-bit version of Linux Mint 11.

Getting the required Linux packages

We need two packages for this installation – libaio1, which Oracle uses, and alien, which will allow us to convert Oracle’s rpm package to a Debian package, which we can then install.
Oracle’s supported Linux distros are based on Red Hat so there is no Debian package available at the time of writing. Some kind soul may eventually build one ( as happened for 10gXE), but for now, we’ll just have to make do and mend.
So, open Terminal and type :

sudo apt-get install alien libaio1

The next step is to get the Oracle package itself. Rather than go to a repository, we need to go to the web page. Oh, how Windows.
Anyway, point your browser to the 11g Express Edition Download Page. and select Oracle Express Edition 11g Release 2 for Linux x64.
If you haven’t already got an account, you’ll have to create one, but it doesn’t cost anything and you’re unlikely to get loads of spam filling up your inbox as a result.
Save the file ( the default of the Downloads directory is as good as any) and away you go.
Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of a 301 MB file called oracle-xe-11.2.0.1.0.x86_64.rpm.zip

RPM to DEB…with nothing up your sleeves

The next step is to unzip the downloaded file :

unzip oracle-xe-11.2.0.1.0.x86_64.rpm.zip

The output for this command should be something like :

Archive:  oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm.zip 
   creating: Disk1/ 
   creating: Disk1/upgrade/ 
  inflating: Disk1/upgrade/gen_inst.sql  
   creating: Disk1/response/ 
  inflating: Disk1/response/xe.rsp   
  inflating: Disk1/oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm  

The unzipped rpm is in the Disk1 sub-directory. Now all we need to do is to use alien to magically transform the ugly rpm into a beautiful deb. Look, she’s standing behind me right now, so I had to write that.

cd Disk1
sudo alien --scripts oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm

It’ll probably take a while, but eventually, you should get the following message :

oracle-xe_11.2.0-2_amd64.deb generated

Re-arranging the furniture

Before we play with our shiny new deb file, we need to do a bit of sorting out.
Whilst Red Hat and Debian are both Linux, there are some variations in where stuff is kept. We need to make sure that these bits and pieces are accessible when we’re running the installation.
I know this because I blithely ignored any of these precautions before I ran this the first time with, as they say, hilarious results.
So, the following steps are definitely required if your flat-packed database is to be transformed into an all-singing all-dancing Oracle Instance.

chkconfig

For this particular tip, I’m indebted to a certain Dude who mentioned this in his installation guide for the XE11 beta on Ubuntu.

First off, check to see if you’ve got a chkconfig file under the /sbin directory.
If not, then you need to create the chkconfig file as follows :

cd /sbin
vi chkconfig

The contents of the file ( taken from the above link, complete with comments) should be :

#!/bin/bash
# Oracle 11gR2 XE installer chkconfig hack for Debian by Dude
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

Now set the appropriate permissions on the file :

sudo chmod 755 chkconfig

When you list the file, you should see…

ls -l chkconfig
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 611 2011-11-20 15:12 chkconfig

Offer a silent prayer of thanks to the inestimable Mr Dude ( well, I assume it’s Mr from the name), and move on to…

Awk

But we’ve already got awk. I mean, this is Linux. Awk is always there. Except, apparently, when it’s somewhere else.
In this case, Red Hat keeps awk under /bin whereas Debian puts it under /usr/bin.
There is, fortunately, a simple fix – just create a symbolic link to /usr/bin/awk in /bin :

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/awk /bin/awk

If you check, you should now see an entry for awk in the /bin directory :

cd /bin
ls -l awk
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 2011-11-20 15:49 awk -> /usr/bin/awk

There is one more minor glitch to take care of, but to do this, we need to do the installation first.

Targeting your Memory – avoiding ORA-00845

Just before we get onto that, I’ve added this new bit here.
Between Mint 11 (which is what I used for this installation) and Mint 13 (Maya), something has changed.
This also applies to Ubuntu 11.10 ( and possibly 11.04) and earlier.
Whatever Debian based OS you’re running, it’s worth checking that the shared memory is mounted where Oracle expects to find it.
To do this …

df -k

If the output contains a line like this

Filesystem     1K-blocks     Used Available Use% Mounted on 
...
none             3571460   624088   2947372  18% /dev/shm 

…then you’re good to go – you have shared memory mounted on /dev/shm.

If it’s not there, then you’ll need to add it to avoid needless pain and obscure Oracle Error messages (mainly ORA-00845 :MEMORY_TARGET not supported on this system).
I’ve posted the necessary steps for this, which you can find here.
NOTEI’d especially like to thank Gil Standen for the tip on this one (see his comment below).

Installing Oracle

For this bit, it’s probably a good idea to be connected as root.

sudo su -

If the $ prompt has suddenly become a # you can congratulate yourself on having been bestowed God-like powers. You are now root.
A point to note here is that su – takes you to the home directory of the user you’re switching to ( in this case /root), so you need to cd back to the directory containing the .deb file ( in my case /home/mike/Downloads/Disk1).
NOTE – stay connected as root for these next few steps. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to re-join us other mere mortals.
OK, deep breath…

dpkg --install ./oracle-xe_11.2.0-2_amd64.deb 

At this point you should get output similar to the following :

Selecting previously deselected package oracle-xe. 
(Reading database ... 141714 files and directories currently installed.) 
Unpacking oracle-xe (from ./oracle-xe_11.2.0-2_amd64.deb) ... 
Setting up oracle-xe (11.2.0-2) ... 
Executing post-install steps... 

 Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/oracle-xe ... 
   /etc/rc0.d/K01oracle-xe -> ../init.d/oracle-xe 
   /etc/rc1.d/K01oracle-xe -> ../init.d/oracle-xe 
   /etc/rc6.d/K01oracle-xe -> ../init.d/oracle-xe 
   /etc/rc2.d/S80oracle-xe -> ../init.d/oracle-xe 
   /etc/rc3.d/S80oracle-xe -> ../init.d/oracle-xe 
   /etc/rc4.d/S80oracle-xe -> ../init.d/oracle-xe 
   /etc/rc5.d/S80oracle-xe -> ../init.d/oracle-xe 

You must run '/etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure' as the root user to configure the database. 

Processing triggers for ureadahead ... 
ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot 
Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ... 
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index... 
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ... 
Processing triggers for python-gmenu ... 
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/desktop.en_GB.utf8.cache... 
Processing triggers for libc-bin ... 
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place 
Processing triggers for python-support ... 

If you want to start over

From this point on, if, by some chance, you get to a point where you’ve got an intractable error, or realise you’ve missed a step, or simply decide that you really are better off with MySQL after all, you can uninstall Oracle with the following steps :

 /etc/init.d/oracle-xe stop 

Now remove the package…

dpkg --purge oracle-xe 

And finally, tidy-up…

rm -r /u01/app 
rm /etc/default/oracle-xe 
update-rc.d -f oracle-xe remove 

Assuming you’re still raring to go, before you run the final configuration, it’s time for that other bit of tidying up I mentioned earlier.

Lock

the /etc/init.d/oracle-xe that has just been created will be looking for a directory called /var/lock/subsys. On Debian distros this is located in /var/lock.

grep /var/lock/subsys /etc/init.d/oracle-xe

You should see this :

	touch /var/lock/subsys/listener 
	touch /var/lock/subsys/oracle-xe 
			touch /var/lock/subsys/listener 
		touch /var/lock/subsys/oracle-xe 
    if [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && rm -f /var/lock/subsys/listener 
	rm -f /var/lock/subsys/oracle-xe 

Easiest way to fix this is :

sed -i 's,/var/lock/subsys,/var/lock,' /etc/init.d/oracle-xe

Now to when you check again…

grep /var/lock/ /etc/init.d/oracle-xe

	touch /var/lock/listener 
	touch /var/lock/oracle-xe 
			touch /var/lock/listener 
		touch /var/lock/oracle-xe 
    if [ $RETVAL -eq 0 ] && rm -f /var/lock/listener

Configure Oracle

Now, finally, we’re ready to roll. When you run the configuration, you’ll be prompted for

The HTTP Port for Application Express (default is 8080)
The port for the listener (default is 1521)
A password for SYS and SYSTEM
Whether you want XE to start at boot time

Where appropriate, you can just press Enter to accept the default.

/etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure

Oracle Database 11g Express Edition Configuration 
------------------------------------------------- 
This will configure on-boot properties of Oracle Database 11g Express 
Edition.  The following questions will determine whether the database should 
be starting upon system boot, the ports it will use, and the passwords that 
will be used for database accounts.  Press <Enter> to accept the defaults. 
Ctrl-C will abort. 

Specify the HTTP port that will be used for Oracle Application Express [8080]: 

Specify a port that will be used for the database listener [1521]: 

Specify a password to be used for database accounts.  Note that the same 
password will be used for SYS and SYSTEM.  Oracle recommends the use of 
different passwords for each database account.  This can be done after 
initial configuration: 
Confirm the password: 

Do you want Oracle Database 11g Express Edition to be started on boot (y/n) [y]:n 

Starting Oracle Net Listener...Done 
Configuring database...Done 
Starting Oracle Database 11g Express Edition instance...Done 
Installation completed successfully.

You’ll notice that I decided not to have XE startup on boot. I can make any number of technical justifications for this, but Deb just gives me a withering look and tells me it’s because I’m a control freak.

If you are similarly afflicted, do not despair. Once the installation is complete, you will have an option on the desktop menu to allow you to start the database ( assuming you’re condition is not acute and you prefer to start the database from the command line).
NOTE – OK, that’s quite enough of the power trip. You can disconnect from the root account now.

Anyway, the last thing we need to do is setup the environment variables and then we can get on to the database.

Look, Oracle even provides a handy script to do this for us – /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/bin/oracle_env.sh. I mean, what could possibly go wrong…

Help ! Oracle can’t speak Welsh

It’s English isn’t any better… y posiblimente, no hablo Espanol.
I should probably explain this from the beginning.
When I run the script, I get…

sh /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/bin/oracle_env.sh 
export: 3: KINGDOM.AL32UTF8: bad variable name 

Time to take a closer look.

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

The offending line is the NLS_LANG setting, for which another script is called – nls.lang.sh in the same directory.
The script builds the NLS_LANG value by identifying the appropriate character set and then doing a lookup on locale.
You can follow through what it’s doing as follows :

locale charmap
UTF-8
echo $LANG
en_GB.UTF-8

In the script, the locale charmap output ( UTF-8 in my case) gets resolved to AL32UTF8.
The $LANG value then gets transformed as follows :

echo $LANG |sed 's/[.@].*$//'
en_GB

The script then does another lookup to get the first half of the NLS_LANG value then outputs the concatenated string …

case $locale in 
…
en_gb) nlslang='ENGLISH_UNITED KINGDOM';;
…
esac

# construct the NLS_LANG 
# 
NLS_LANG=${nlslang}.${charset} 

echo $NLS_LANG 

Can you spot where the problem might be ?
Yes, because it’s outputting a string with a space in it but not enclosing it in quotes, instead of returning ENGLISH_UNITED KINGDOM.AL32UTF8, it returns simply KINGDOM.AL32UTF8.

Having looked through the script, you may well encounter this problem if your $LANG starts with any of the following :

af_ZA (South Africa) – Note to Wayne – you don’t have this problem in Australia
ar_AE (United Arab Emirates)
ar_SA (Saudi Arabia)
cs_CZ (Czech Republic)
cy_GB(Wales) – just in case someone was getting smug
en_BW(Botswana)
en_HK( Hong Kong)
en_NZ( New Zealand)
en_ZA(South Africa)
en_ZW(Zimbabwe)
es_AR( Argentina)
es_BO(Bolivia)
es_CL(Chile)
es_CO (Colombia) – yes German, even you
es_CR(Costa Rica)
es_DO (Dominican Republic)
es_EC(Ecuador)
es_GT(Guatemala)
es_HN(Honduras)
es_MX(Mexico)
es_NI(Nicaragua)
es_PA(Panama)
es_PE(Peru)
es_PR(Puerto Rico)
es_SV(El Salvador)
es_US( US Spanish)
es_UY(Uruguay)
es_VE(Venezuela)
gv_GB(Isle of Man)
kw_GB( Cornish)
mi_NZ(Maori New Zealand)
nl_NL( The Netherlands)
pt_BR(Brazil)
sr_YU( Serbian)
zh_CN(China)
zn_HK( Hong Kong – Chinese)
zh_TW(Taiwan)

Given that this file is always run on the machine you are on, the simplest thing to do is to just edit the oracle_env.sh script and hard-code your NLS_LANG setting ( putting it in quotes)….

export ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe 
export ORACLE_SID=XE 
export NLS_LANG='ENGLISH_UNITED KINGDOM.AL32UTF8' 
export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH 

If you now re-run the script, all the environment variables should now be set :

 sh /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/bin/oracle_env.sh 
echo $ORACLE_HOME 
/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe 
echo $ORACLE_SID 
XE 
echo $NLS_LANG 
ENGLISH_UNITED KINGDOM.AL32UTF8 
echo $PATH 
/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/bin:/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/bin:...

At this point, you can go running off to play with your lovely new database. However, it’s probably worth doing a bit of housekeeping first.
Deb’s eyes have just lit up at the mention of housekeeping and she’s started dropping hints about me running the hoover round so I’d better make this quick.

Set environment variables on startup

Rather than having to run the oracle_env.sh script every time you want to play with Oracle on the command line ( and to ensure that the desktop menu items work), it’s a good idea to just call the script from your .bashrc. You’ll probably want to add it to the oracle user’s .bashrc as well.
At this point, Mint users ( at least, the newer ones like me) will be wondering why they can’t find a .bashrc in their home directory.

Apparently, Mint abandoned individual users having their own .bashrc as standard some years ago and instead, simply uses the system-wide file which is at /etc/bash.basrc

Ubuntu users do have their own .bashrc in their home directory but, as with Mint, it executes after the /etc/bash.bashrc

Rather than mess around with multiple .bashrc changes for both myself and oracle, I’ll just add the following to the end of /etc/bash.bashrc

. /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/bin/oracle_env.sh

If you’re an independent minded soul, and do go down the route of setting up a .bashrc in your own home directory, make sure that it’s executable before you start another terminal session :

chmod a+x .bashrc 

What’s on the Menu ?

NOTE – as stated previously, I’m doing this on Mint. More to the point, I’m still on a Gnome 2.3 desktop. The steps here should be pretty much the same on Unity/Gnome 3/KDE/ Xfce but I can’t make any promises.

Update – you can find instructions for setting up the menu on XFCE here.

Whilst you’ve been doing all of that hacking around in terminal, there have been some changes to your Applications menu. Also, your desktop has acquired a new icon with the snappy name oraclexe-gettingstarted.desktop

There are a couple of things you now need to do to before you can go happily clicking on these options.

The desktop icon

Right-click the file on the desktop and select the Permissions tab.
Now check the box to “Allow executing file as program”.
Close the window.

You will notice that the icon has transformed into the familiar Oracle beehive and is now called
Get Started With Oracle Database 11g Express Edition.

Getting the Menu Options to work

Before you take this invitation, there’s one more bit of tidying up, for which you’ll have to return to the command line. Well, you could do this via tools in the Administration menu but I’m trying to keep things generic here.
So, once more unto the terminal dear friends, we need to make both ourselves and oracle members of the DBA group that was created as part of the installation :

sudo usermod -a -G dba oracle 
sudo usermod -a -G dba mike 

Just to check everything has gone according to plan :

sudo grep dba /etc/group 
dba:x:1001:oracle,mike 

Red and Green should not be seen…unless you’re installing Oracle on Mint

Getting onto the database

Finally, with the database up and running, click on the Getting Started icon.
After a bit of thought on the part of your browser (well, Oracle actually), you should see something like this :

Ooohh, that looks a bit different. But it does prove it’s working

Speeding up startup

Once the novelty wears off, you may begin to tire of the fact that Oracle seems to take an inordinate amount of time to start, and you’re never quite sure when it has actually started.
The reasons for this are connected with the order in which XE starts various components. If you want to tweak this ( and add a desktop notification to boot), head over to this post.

SQLDeveloper

If you want to have a play with Oracle’s own (free) IDE, you can install it on your system by following these instructions.

APEX5

If you want to get up-to-date with the latest version of APEX, installation instructions can be found here.

Acknowledgement

There’s a pretty good tutorial on XE installation by Alexander Penev here, which I used as a starting point. If you have any issues with these steps, it may well be worth a look.

I’d love to stay for a while, but domestic drudgery calls.