Tag Archives: Oracle Linux

October 14, 2026

Building an Oracle 26ai Database Server from Scratch #JoelKallmanDay

By Rich Soule

In 2014, while teaching Oracle Database Administration courses at Austin Community College, I wrote a series of blog posts on how to create an Oracle Database server: Oracle Database 12c on Oracle Linux 6, so my students could build their own practice database servers.

Now, as the Director of Consulting Services in the Oracle Technologies division of Talan, I was recognized as an Oracle ACE. Part of the ACE program is promoting Oracle at Conferences (I presented two sessions at ODTUG’s Kscope26 conference in Colorado this year) and doing things like blogging. Blogging helps me maintain my ACE status (although I’ll have more than enough points from presenting at conferences this year).

Since I’ve been a bit sporadic about blogging lately, I thought I’d get back into the swing of things by putting out my complete step-by-step instructions for building an Oracle Database server on your own machine. Note that these days, you no longer really have to do this. You can simply go to Oracle Cloud and obtain a pre-configured database server. If you just need “the database” and don’t want to do anything at the operating system level, then an Oracle Autonomous Database is for you. However, there are several limitations associated with an Autonomous Database (which is essentially a pluggable database within a database maintained by Oracle for you) that are completely removed if you opt for an Oracle Base Database instead. With an Oracle Base Database, you get direct access to the operating system, and you could, for example, potentially attempt to do all of the examples within Tom & Darl’s incredibly awesome book Expert Oracle Database Architecture. (One of my presentations at Kscope this year was basically “Read this book, do all the examples while understanding what’s happening, and you’ll be a much better Oracle Database developer.”) That said, messing around with an Oracle Base Database on Oracle Cloud could possibly get you into a state where the automated patching tools and other things that Oracle does for you might not work. If you are just playing around, you could always blow away the database and create a new one if you mess it up too much.

However, if you would like to build a practice database server from scratch on your own machine, and along the way, learn much more about how an Oracle Database server is built, then this series of blog posts is for you.

A note about my philosophy when it comes to Oracle Database servers and the rules I like to follow.

  1. Ease of understanding, especially during a crisis, is important
  2. Less configuration is, almost certainly, better configuration
  3. The more you understand how, and why, and where the Oracle database does its things, the better you can respond in an emergency situation

As an example, when I make my post about the systemd services that I create for Oracle backups, you’ll notice that the entirety of the RMAN backup configuration is entirely within the system command. This means that if there are changes to be made, I go to the one place where my backup is configured and just address changes there. The ‘traditional’ approach of a cron job (1) that calls a script (2) that calls RMAN (3) with another file for the RMAN commands (4) spreads “How are backups done?” all across your OS in different files in different directories.

As I get time, I’ll be adding posts for each of the items below (almost certainly in order as I do these steps on my own new Talan laptop) and linking them from here.

Building an Oracle 26ai Database Server

  1. Install Oracle VirtualBox & VirtualBox Extension Pack
  2. Download Oracle Linux ISO
  3. Create Linux Virtual Machine
  4. Log in as root & Improve Quality of Life
  5. Disable selinux
  6. Disable firewalld
  7. Update /etc/hosts
  8. Install Guest Additions Into Virtual Machine
  9. Install Oracle Linux 9 EPEL & Oracle Software Repos
  10. Install rlwrap
  11. Install Oracle Database Preinstall RPM
  12. Install Oracle JDK
  13. Install Nginx (optional)
  14. Set oracle OS user password
  15. Create Oracle directories
  16. Initial Oracle login and quality of life improvements
  17. Install autoupgrade
  18. Create autoupgrade download keystore
  19. Download Oracle Database with autoupgrade
  20. Download Oracle APEX with patch (if available)
  21. Download ORDS
  22. Create Oracle software home with autoupgrade
  23. Configure read only home (poorly named)
  24. Create Oracle container database with pluggable
  25. Create listener
  26. Install ORDS
  27. Install & Patch Oracle APEX
  28. Set APEX internal workspace password
  29. Enable APEX network services
  30. Create and enable an APEX resource manager plan
  31. Turn on database flashback
  32. Create systemd services for database and ORDS
  33. Create systemd backup service
  34. Configure APEX static images (CDN or local)
  35. Install mkcert for signed certificates
  36. Configure Nginx
  37. Disable annoying password stuff in APEX

A note about the Joel Kallman Day tag on this post:

Joel was a really nice person who dedicated his life to being a good and kind person. He did so much for the Oracle APEX community and for his family. Those of us who knew him still really miss him.

My last correspondence with Joel was this:

                Got a few minutes to chat? Trying to help a CIO find a good APEX hire? - me
                          
Sorry, on medical leave. - Joel

                No problem at all. Sorry, I didn't know. Here's to a speedy recovery! - me

That speedy recovery never came, and the world is at a loss because of it.

Technician servicing Oracle server rack with labeled equipment and hardware
A technician services an Oracle server rack beside components prepared for deployment.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Code, Linux, Oracle APEX, Oracle Database, ORDS, systemd

February 12, 2024

Oracle Database 19c Release Notes Doc Bug (Jan 2024)

By Rich Soule
What DALL-E thinks “Oracle Database Release Notes Documentation Bug” looks like

Update: In Feb 2024 Oracle updated the release notes to fix most of the below! They still have the un-needed export of the CV_ASSUME_DISTID, but they did add the steps about patching with the 19.22 patch during install and updating opatch. Thanks!

In January 2024, Oracle released a new version of the Oracle 19c release notes. They also released the 19.22 patchset for Oracle Database. The great news is that with the 19.22 release, Oracle has finally got the Oracle Database on-premises install on Oracle Linux 9 stuff knocked out. It works ‘out of the box’ now. However, if you look at the release notes and navigate to the section entitled “Known Issues and Bugs for Oracle Linux 9 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9“, and then navigate to the 19.22 subsection, you’ll see this:

And, well… It’s not really that simple. If you didn’t have 35 years of experience reading Oracle release notes, you might take that statement at face value. Things won’t go well for you if you did. Instead, you have to peer up at the 19.21 section to see the following steps (but of course you are installing 19.22, not 19.21, so you don’t need to pay attention to that section, right?):

Single-instance Oracle Database (19.21):

  1. Set the environment variable CV_ASSUME_DISTID to OL8 ($export CV_ASSUME_DISTID=OL8).
  2. Unzip the 19.3.0.0.0 Oracle Database gold image.
  3. Copy the OPatch utility version 12.2.0.1.40 or later from My Oracle Support patch 6880880 by selecting the 19.0.0.0.0 release.
  4. Install Single-instance Oracle Database with $ 19.3 on-prem_db_ image/runInstaller -applyRU <19.21 DBRU Patch 35643107 location> -applyOneOffs <19.21 MLR 35954820,19.21 OCWMLR patch 36022515 location>

That’s quite a bit different than the 19.22 section that says “No additional patches are required for installing Oracle Database 19c Release 19.22 on Oracle Linux 9 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9“.

Having just done a lot of testing of this on Oracle Linux 9, here’s what (in my opinion) the release notes should actually say in the Single-instance Oracle Database (19.22) section:

Single-instance Oracle Database (19.22):

  1. Unzip the 19.3.0.0.0 Oracle Database gold image to your ORACLE_HOME location (for example /u01/app/oracle/product/19.0.0.0/dbhome_1).
  2. Download the OPatch utility version 12.2.0.1.40 or later from My Oracle Support patch 6880880 by selecting the 19.0.0.0.0 release.
    $ cd /u01/app/oracle/product/19.0.0.0/dbhome_1
    $ rm -rf OPatch
    $ unzip -q /usr/local/src/oracle/patch_downloads/p6880880_122010_Linux-x86-64.zip
  3. Install Single-instance Oracle Database with
    $ /u01/app/oracle/product/19.0.0.0/dbhome_1/runInstaller -applyRU <19.22 DBRU Patch 35943157 location> -applyOneOffs <19.22 OCW Patch 35967489,19.22 OJVM Patch 35926646 location>

Some things to note:

  • With 19.22 you don’t need to modify the $ORACLE_HOME/cv/admin/cvu_config file or export the CV_ASSUME_DISTID environment variable to get the install to work correctly.
  • Even though you can now select the 19.0.0.0.0 “Release” of OPatch, you’ll actually get a version that is 12.X (see image below).
  • The OJVM patch is optional, but I like to see my opatch lspatches command look very clean (see below).
$ opatch lspatches

35926646;OJVM RELEASE UPDATE: 19.22.0.0.240116 (35926646)
35967489;OCW RELEASE UPDATE 19.22.0.0.0 (35967489)
35943157;Database Release Update : 19.22.0.0.240116 (35943157)

I’ve asked Oracle Support to log a doc bug against the release notes, once I get the bug number I’ll update this post with it.

Good luck with your 19.22 on Oracle Linux 9 installs!

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , | posted in Code, Linux, Oracle Database

November 16, 2022

Directly Upload Files to Oracle Support

By Rich Soule

After watching a client move a file from their Linux database server down to their Windows box and then use their browser to upload the file to Oracle Support, I remembered that there was a more efficient way to do this. I was confident that I had this post in my blog already, but lo and behold, I hadn’t.

So today I fix that:

Let’s say you have an SR number 3-111222333444 and you need to upload a big zip file name zipfile.zip and you use email@blah.com to log into Oracle Support. The below command will get the file directly from your Linux box to Oracle Support.


curl -T "zipfile.zip" -u "email@blah.com" https://transport.oracle.com/upload/issue/3-111222333444/

Happy Linuxing!

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

Leave a comment   |  tags: | posted in Code, Linux

July 9, 2020

Too many audit logs? xargs to the rescue!

By Rich Soule

After watching a client pipe the results of a find command into a text file, and then edit the text file to add rm in front of each line and then turn the text file into a script and run it… I knew I needed to add this here.

Sometimes you have too many audit logs and rm *.aud returns the following:

-bash: /bin/rm: Argument list too long

If so, we can use xargs to remove them all:

find . -type f -name '*.aud' | xargs rm

Happy Linux’ing.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , | posted in Code

October 6, 2015

Command line editing with bash

By Rich Soule

I use Oracle Linux just about every day. I teach Oracle classes using Oracle Linux and work with a whole bunch of Oracle servers which, more often than not, use Oracle Linux (or sometimes Redhat Linux which is basically very similar to Oracle Linux). The vast majority of the time these systems are set up to use bash (From wikipedia: The name itself is an acronym, a pun, and a description. As an acronym, it stands for Bourne-again shell, referring to its objective as a free replacement for the Bourne shell. As a pun, it expressed that objective in a phrase that sounds similar to born again, a term for spiritual rebirth. The name is also descriptive of what it did, bashing together the features of sh, csh, and ksh.) as the default shell for users.

While teaching my classes, I frequently type commands while my students watch and it’s not unusual for me to make typing mistakes. I often bang the BACKSPACE key a bunch of times while removing a single word, or worse yet, I hold it down to erase and entire line and start all over again. Every time I did this I would think “I used to know how to do this better.”

Today I looked it up a book that I have sitting on my bookshelf, (I last read it in 1995), which I would highly recommend if you’re a Unix System Admin: Using csh & tcsh Type Less, Accomplish More. It’s a really great book if you are going to be using a Unix shell all day every day interactively. I read it way back when I was learning Unix and it made a huge difference in my productivity with interactive ‘shelling’. These days I’m mostly only working with Linux to get Oracle systems set up and configured correctly, so I’m usually sticking with the default shell… which is bash.

I tested out some of the things in the book and they work a bit differently in tcsh than they do in bash. Since I’ve become (largely by default) a bash user, here goes:

Remove the entire command line in bash with CTRL-u or CTLR-w

[oracle@multitenant ~]$ This is a command line that I want to erase

Type CTRL-u or CTRL-w (as an aside, CTRL-w in tcsh erases a single word) and voila:

[oracle@multitenant ~]$

Sometime I only mess up the last word…

Remove the last word typed in bash with ESC BACKSPACE

[oracle@multitenant ~]$ env | grep ORALCE

Oops! Messed up that ORACLE. Type ESC BACKSPACE and voila:

[oracle@multitenant ~]$ env | grep

Now I can correctly add ORACLE to the above without having to use backspace six times.

Reuse part of the previous commands arguments with !$, !^, !*

Often we’ll look at the contents of a file and then decide we want to edit it.

[oracle@multitenant ~]# cat /etc/oratab

Hmmm…. I see something I want to change, so rather than typing vi /etc/oratab I can just do the following:

[oracle@multitenant ~]# vi !$

!$ uses the last argument from the previous command, !^ uses the first argument from the previous command, and !* uses all arguments from the last command, so actually any of those would have worked in the example above. Remember that above I have two parts in the line I’m typing; The first is the actual command (cat) and then the second is the argument (/etc/oratab).

Hopefully this (along with the CTRL-r post from earlier) will help a few folks become just a bit more efficient in their day to day operations!

2 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in Code, Linux

July 3, 2015

CTRL-r is your friend!

By Rich Soule

You already knew that the up and down arrows in a Linux terminal window allow you to navigate through previously typed commands, but did you know that you can also search through your command history?

CTRL-r is great for finding those commands that are a bit tedious to type.

When you type CTRL-R in a terminal window your whole prompt turns into this strange looking text:

(reverse-i-search)`':

As you type characters the first command in your history, starting from the most recent and working back towards the top will be displayed.

Let’s say you’ve typed the following list of commands:

sqlplus / as sysdba
rman target "'/ as sysbackup'"
ls
ls -als

At a command prompt you type CTRL-r and then type s. Your prompt will now look like this:

(reverse-i-search)`s': ls -als

And the s in the als will be highlighted. What you’ve done here is found the first s in your command history.

If you type Enter right now, you’ll rerun that command.

Things get more interesting when you start typing more letters. Instead of typing just s, type sq and you’ll get the following:

(reverse-i-search)`sq': sqlplus / as sysdba

Hitting Enter will rerun that sqlplus command.

What if you want to find something that you typed earlier than the last command that matched? Just type CTRL-r again. Each time you press CTRL-r you’ll find older and older strings that match. If you have a short search string (just s for example), then it’s not unusual to find that string in a single command multiple times. Once you’ve exhausted all the matches in one command, you’ll reach back into your history to find another that matches.

What if you want to find the last thing that you found with CTRL-r?

Start a new search (or just use backspace to remove any characters you’ve started typing) and press CTRL-r again. Let’s say that you used rm as your last successful search and retrieved the rman command from the above list of commands. You then ran a few more commands and decided to run rman again… Just type CTRL-r twice. The first CRTL-r says “I want to search through my history”, the second CTRL-r says “Remember the last successful search I used? I want that one again.”

What if you don’t want to run the command you found, but instead you just put the command at your prompt so you can edit it? Instead of hitting Enter after you find a command, just press Esc. This dumps the text of the command into your terminal at a command prompt.

Here’s where things get really cool… If you use rlwrap for various Oracle commands like sqlplus, rman, etc. (See this post to install rlwrap, and this post to configure the aliases to use with rlwrap) then CTRL-r will also work in those commands too!

Want to find the last alter user command that you ran? In sqlplus just type your good friend CTLR-r and start typing alter. You probably won’t have to actually type all the letters in alter and soon you’ll have the following:

(reverse-i-search)`al': alter user dbsnmp identified by oracle_4U account unlock;

Technically CTRL-r finds the spot in your history where the command you found lives, so once you’ve found a command, you can use the up and down arrows to cycle through the commands that are near that command. What was that command that I typed right after I did that alter user command? Just press the down arrow key and you’ve found it!

There are a few idiosyncrasies with CTRL-r. First it is case sensitive so you’ll have to remember if you used SELECT or select. Second it can be kind of easy to get it into a strange place with the characters you are searching for if you start typing characters that are not actually in your command history CTLR-r will beep at you a bunch and you may or may not be able to use the backspace key to get back to where you want to be… Just use Esc to get out of the CTRL-r search and try again.

Also you may want to give CTRL-r more history to work with. If you’d like to do this you’ll need export two different environment variables, HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE.

I added the following to my .bash_profile file in my home directory:

# Let's give the history command and CTRL-r more to work with!
export HISTSIZE=10000
export HISTFILESIZE=10000

CTRL-r has saved me much typing over the years, I hope it helps you too!

1 Comment   |  tags: | posted in Code, Linux

April 30, 2014

Helping others

By Rich Soule

Part of this series of posts: Oracle Database 12c on Oracle Linux 6

One of my students at ACC suggested that I put this document up for sale on Amazon.

Instead I’ve decided to do the following:

  • Please consider opening an account on Kiva.Kiva is a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions, Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create opportunity around the world.If you use the below link you can get $25 to lend to others to get you started. I’ll also get $25 to lend to others. Technically the $25 to lend is a limited time offer, so you and I may not get this ‘bonus’ money to lend.http://www.kiva.org/invitedby/richard4068

 

I couldn’t have done it without you… < Previous Post

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Other

April 30, 2014

I couldn’t have done it without you…

By Rich Soule

Part of this series of posts: Oracle Database 12c on Oracle Linux 6

I made this document because I’ve seen folks struggle with some of the concepts in the document. Of course this document wasn’t created in a vacuum. Various blogs, the Oracle forums, a ton of Google searches and a lot of trial and error went into this document. To those that helped me in some way with the content in this document, thanks!

 

Oracle Database 12c on Oracle Linux 6 – Step 31: Enjoy a frosty beverage! < Previous Post – Next Post > Helping others

3 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Code

April 30, 2014

Oracle Database 12c on Oracle Linux 6 – Step 31: Enjoy a frosty beverage!

By Rich Soule

Part of this series of posts: Oracle Database 12c on Oracle Linux 6

31-01

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! Open a frosty beverage of choice and pat yourself on the back. You deserve it!

 

Oracle Database 12c on Oracle Linux 6 – Step 30: Install the VirtualBox guest additions in the VM < Previous Post – Next Post > I couldn’t have done it without you…

3 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Code

April 30, 2014

Oracle Database 12c on Oracle Linux 6 – Step 30: Install the VirtualBox guest additions in the VM

By Rich Soule

Part of this series of posts: Oracle Database 12c on Oracle Linux 6

30-01

Select Devices -> Install Guest Additions… from the VirtualBox menu. You’ll have to use the right Ctrl key to release the mouse to do so.

30-02

Click Cancel.

30-03

Right-click the desktop and select Open in Terminal.

30-04

Type the following commands, pressing Enter after each.

su - 
root (at the Password: prompt)
export KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/`uname –r`
cd /media/V [TAB]
./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

Note:

Those are back ticks which are probably next to the 1 key on your keyboard, not forward ticks in the export command. The Tab key will autocomplete commands for you. When we type cd /media/V the shell will complete the name of the Virtualbox Guest Additions CD for you. It’s much easier than typing it. If you’d like to use the Tab key to autocomplete the second command, you’ll have to type up to the L in Linux before it will work because there are other commands in that directory that start with VBox. You can always hit the Tab key twice to see what the shell will be able to autocomplete based on your search path.

30-05

You should see output with all green OKs.

Note:

If you get a failed message it’s most probably because your kernel doesn’t match the kernel sources which usually means that your yum update kernel-uek-devel command from earlier didn’t work correctly. Recheck your commands from Step 9 to make sure you did everything correctly.

30-06

Select System -> Log out oracle… from the menu.

30-07

Click Log Out.

30-08

Press Enter and type oracle in the Password field.

30-09

Right click the Guest Additions CD and select Eject.

30-10

Your window should now resize to fill the whole screen!

Note:

We could actually do this step a lot earlier and get the nice widescreen if we want. It was just a bit harder to do screen captures for me so I stuck this at the end. This must be done AFTER the reboot in step 18 though…

Oracle Database 12c on Oracle Linux 6 – Step 29: Create a Link to SQL Developer and Database Connections < Previous Post – Next Post > Oracle Database 12c on Oracle Linux 6 – Step 31: Enjoy a frosty beverage!

4 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Code, Linux