4 Oracle Real Application Clusters Postinstallation Procedures

This chapter describes how to complete the postinstallation tasks after you have installed the Oracle Database 11g release 2 (11.2) with Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) software.

This chapter contains the following topics:

Required Postinstallation Tasks
Recommended Postinstallation Tasks
Oracle Configuration Manager Postinstallation Configuration for Oracle RAC

Note:

This chapter describes only basic configurations. Refer to Oracle Database 11g Administrator's Guide for UNIX Systems, and the product administration and tuning guides for more detailed configuration and tuning information. Refer also to Oracle Database Installation Guide for your platform, for additional postinstallation configuration information.

4.1 Required Postinstallation Tasks

You must perform the following tasks after completing your installation:

Download and Install Patch Updates
Configure Oracle Products
Relocate Instance-related Memory-mapped files from OCFS2 Using Symbolic Links

4.1.1 Download and Install Patch Updates

Refer to the My Oracle Support Web site for required patch updates for your installation.

Note:

Browsers require an Adobe Flash plug-in, version 9.0.115 or higher to use My Oracle Support. Check your browser for the correct version of Flash plug-in by going to the Adobe Flash checker page, and installing the latest version of Adobe Flash.

If you do not have Flash installed, then download the latest version of the Flash Player from the Adobe web site:

http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer

To download required patch updates:

Use a Web browser to view the My Oracle Support Web site:

https://metalink.oracle.com
Log in to My Oracle Support.

Note:
If you are not a My Oracle Support registered user, then click Register for My Oracle Support and register.
On the main My Oracle Support page, click Patches & Updates.
In the Patches section, click Simple Search.
Specify the following information, then click Go:
- In the Search By field, select Product or Family, and then specify RDBMS Server.
- In the Release field, specify the current release number.
- In the Patch Type field, specify Patchset/Minipack.
- In the Platform or Language field, select your platform.
In the Results list, find the latest patch set for Oracle Database.

Patch sets for Oracle databases are identified in the Description column as Product:Patchset x.x.x.x PATCH SET FOR ORACLE DATABASE SERVER.
In the Patch column, click the number of the patch that you want to download.
On the Patch Set page, click View README and read the page that appears. The README page contains information about the patch set and how to apply the patches to your installation.
Return to the Patch Set page, click Download, and save the file on your system.
Use the unzip utility provided with Oracle Database 11g release 2 (11.2) to uncompress the Oracle patch updates that you downloaded from My Oracle Support. The unzip utility is located in the $ORACLE_HOME/bin directory.

4.1.2 Configure Oracle Products

Many Oracle products and options must be configured before you use them for the first time. Before using individual Oracle Database 11g release 2 (11.2) database products or options, refer to the manual in the product documentation library which is available in the DOC directory on the Oracle Database installation media, or on the OTN Web site.

4.1.3 Relocate Instance-related Memory-mapped files from OCFS2 Using Symbolic Links

If you install Oracle RAC on a standard local file system, then this section does not concern you.

On Linux, if your Oracle RAC installation is created on OCFS2, and the version of OCFS2 that you are using is earlier than 1.4.1. then you must complete the following task to continue to use that version.

On OCFS2 versions earlier than 1.4.1, you must relocate the healthcheck files (*.dat) that typically reside in $ORACLE_HOME/dbs to a local file system, and create symbolic links to it from the original path. This is required as these OCFS2 versions for Linux do not support shared writable map access that the Oracle software uses to manipulate the healthcheck files.

To relocate the files:

Stop the Oracle Database instance.
Move the $ORACLE_HOME/dbs/*.dat files to a directory on a local file system.
Create symbolic links from the $ORACLE_HOME/dbs directory to the *.dat files on the local file system.
Restart the Oracle Database instance.

4.2 Recommended Postinstallation Tasks

This section explains the tasks that Oracle recommends you perform after completing an installation.

Recommended Database Postinstallation Tasks

4.2.1 Recommended Database Postinstallation Tasks

Oracle recommends that you complete the following tasks after installing Oracle RAC:

Back Up the root.sh Script
Set the Oracle User Environment Variables
Recompile all PL/SQL modules
Set Up User Accounts

4.2.1.1 Back Up the root.sh Script

Oracle recommends that you back up the root.sh script after you complete an installation. If you install other products in the same Oracle home directory, then the Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) updates the contents of the existing root.sh script during the installation. If you require information contained in the original root.sh script, then you can recover it from the root.sh file copy.

4.2.1.2 Set the Oracle User Environment Variables

On each node, in the installation owner user profile file (in this example, oracle), set the environment variables ORACLE_BASE and ORACLE_HOME, and ORACLE_SID; also add ORACLE_HOME/bin to the path environment variable.

For example:

export ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle
export ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/11.2.0/dbhome_1
export PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin
export ORACLE_SID=sales1

If the environment variables ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_SID are not set, and you try to use SQL*Plus or other tools, then you receive an error message requesting that you set these variables.

4.2.1.3 Recompile all PL/SQL modules

Oracle recommends that you run the utlrp.sql script after creating or upgrading a database. This script recompiles all PL/SQL modules that might be in an invalid state, including packages, procedures, and types. This is an optional step but Oracle recommends that you do it immediately following installation, not at a later date.

Complete setting up the Oracle software owner user account environment (for example, oracle), as described in "Set the Oracle User Environment Variables" in the preceding section.
Start SQL*Plus, as follows:
```
$ sqlplus "/ AS SYSDBA"
```
Run the utlrp.sql script, where Oracle_home is the Oracle home path:
```
SQL> @Oracle_home/rdbms/admin/utlrp.sql
```

4.2.1.4 Set Up User Accounts

For information about setting up additional optional user accounts, refer to Oracle Database 11g Administrator's Guide for UNIX Systems.

When you complete these procedures, you are ready to perform the initial configuration tasks described in Chapter 5, " Configuring the Server Parameter File in Oracle Real Application Clusters Environments".

4.3 Oracle Configuration Manager Postinstallation Configuration for Oracle RAC

If you have installed Oracle Configuration Manager, then you must run a script to create a database account to collect database configuration collections. You must create this account in both Connected and Disconnected modes. The database account stores the PL/SQL procedures that collect the configuration information, and the account owns the database management system (DBMS) job that performs the collection. After the account has been set up, as login privileges are no longer required, the account is locked.

To configure the database for configuration collection, run the following script:

$ORACLE_HOME/ccr/admin/scripts/installCCRSQL.sh collectconfig -s SID -r\ 
SYSDBA-USER -p SYSDBA-PASSWORD

The script installCCRSQL.sh creates an Oracle Configuration Manager user and loads the PL/SQL procedure into the database defined by the ORACLE_SID. You can also specify the database SID by using the -s option in the command line, as in the following example, where the SID is orcl:

$ORACLE_HOME/ccr/admin/scripts/installCCRSQL.sh collectconfig -s orcl

For Oracle RAC, you must run the database script against only one instance, such as the local instance on which you performed installation. However, Oracle Configuration Manager must be installed in all instance homes.