Installing Oracle 12c Release 2 Database on a Proxmox Container

Obviously nobody could beat Tim to getting the comprehensive installation instructions out first, but here are my notes for installing it on a proxmox container environment which is what I use as my research platform. Some of the calls used are from or based on Tim’s prior 12cR1 installation article – thanks Tim.

NOTE – this post is just a guide and is based on my environment – you will likely need to make changes to suit your own environment.

Environment

root@billy:~# pveversion
pve-manager/4.4-12/e71b7a74 (running kernel: 4.4.40-1-pve)

Host Preparation

Some of the activities required involve changing linux parameters but these can’t be applied inside a proxmox container – you’ll see errors like these if you try:

[root@db12cr2 ~]# sysctl -p
sysctl: setting key "fs.file-max": Read-only file system

Instead you have to do these at the host level – and only if you think they are relevant and that those settings wouldn’t upset all of your other environments running on that host. I haven’t tried but you could potentially just tell the GUI installer to ignore the warnings relating to these entries and not make these changes at all especially if you’re only using it for small scale research purposes.

As root on the proxmox host, run the following:

echo "fs.file-max = 6815744" >>/etc/sysctl.d/98-oracle.conf
echo "kernel.panic_on_oops = 1" >>/etc/sysctl.d/98-oracle.conf
echo "net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 2" >>/etc/sysctl.d/98-oracle.conf
/sbin/sysctl -p

Create And Prepare The Container

I use Centos 7 as the template for most of my activities and these notes are based around that.

pct create 130 u01:vztmpl/centos-7-default_20160205_amd64.tar.xz -rootfs 60 -hostname db12cr2 -memory 10240 -nameserver 192.168.1.25 -searchdomain oramoss.com -net0 name=eth0,bridge=vmbr0,gw=192.168.1.1,ip=192.168.1.130/24 -swap 10240 -cpulimit 4 -storage local

You’ll have your own way of getting the installation files to be available to the container but I do it by adding a mount point so I can access the area where all my software is:

vi /etc/pve/nodes/${HOSTNAME}/lxc/130.conf

…and add this:

mp0: /mnt/backups/common_share,mp=/mnt/common_share

Start And Enter The Container

pct start 130
pct enter 130

Install Additional Packages

I’m going to use the Oracle Preinstall package but there are still a few things to add:

yum install gcc-c++ wget openssh-server -y

gcc-c++ is not necessary according to the 12cR2 installation manuals, but the GUI installer complains during the prerequisite checks if it’s not there.

wget is needed to download some files and it’s not on the Centos 7 template.

openssh server is to allow me to login remotely via SSH for the GUI install later.

Get OpenSSH To Autostart

systemctl enable sshd.service
systemctl start sshd.service
systemctl status sshd.service

Install Oracle Preinstall Package

#Get the Oracle Linux 7 repo - this works for Centos 7.
cd /etc/yum.repos.d/ 
wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-ol7.repo

#The following stops GPG Key errors:

wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle-ol7 -O /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-oracle
#Update everything
yum update -y
#Install the preinstall package
yum install oracle-database-server-12cR2-preinstall -y

Configure System Limits

echo "oracle soft nofile 1024" >>/etc/security/limits.d/oracle-rdbms-server-12cR2-preinstall.conf
echo "oracle hard nofile 65536" >>/etc/security/limits.d/oracle-rdbms-server-12cR2-preinstall.conf
echo "oracle soft nproc 16384" >>/etc/security/limits.d/oracle-rdbms-server-12cR2-preinstall.conf
echo "oracle hard nproc 16384" >>/etc/security/limits.d/oracle-rdbms-server-12cR2-preinstall.conf
echo "oracle soft stack 10240" >>/etc/security/limits.d/oracle-rdbms-server-12cR2-preinstall.conf
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echo "oracle soft memlock 134217728" >>/etc/security/limits.d/oracle-rdbms-server-12cR2-preinstall.conf

Change Password For “oracle” User

passwd oracle
   <<set a password>>

Create Oracle Home Directory

mkdir -p /u01/app/oracle/product/12.2.0.1/db_1
chown -R oracle:oinstall /u01
chmod -R 775 /u01

Modify The Profile Of “oracle” User

echo "# Oracle Settings" >>/home/oracle/.bash_profile
echo "export TMP=/tmp" >>/home/oracle/.bash_profile
echo "export TMPDIR=\$TMP" >>/home/oracle/.bash_profile
echo "export ORACLE_HOSTNAME=db12cr2.oramoss.com" >>/home/oracle/.bash_profile
echo "export ORACLE_UNQNAME=cdb1" >>/home/oracle/.bash_profile
echo "export ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle" >>/home/oracle/.bash_profile
echo "export ORACLE_HOME=\$ORACLE_BASE/product/12.2.0.1/db_1" >>/home/oracle/.bash_profile
echo "export ORACLE_SID=cdb1" >>/home/oracle/.bash_profile
echo "export PATH=/usr/sbin:\$PATH" >>/home/oracle/.bash_profile
echo "export PATH=\$ORACLE_HOME/bin:\$PATH" >>/home/oracle/.bash_profile
echo "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=\$ORACLE_HOME/lib:/lib:/usr/lib" >>/home/oracle/.bash_profile
echo "export CLASSPATH=\$ORACLE_HOME/jlib:\$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/jlib" >>/home/oracle/.bash_profile

Create Software Directory And Copy Files Over

mkdir -p /u01/software
cp /mnt/common_share/linuxx64_12201_database.zip /u01/software
unzip linuxx64_12201_database.zip
rm /u01/software/linuxx64_12201_database.zip

Run The Installer

Log in as the “oracle” user

cd /u01/software/database
./runInstaller

Install the software and a database by running through the GUI screens and following the instructions. The installer complains on the prerequisite checks screen about some of the kernel memory parameters (rmem%, wmem%) which you can ignore.

Configure Auto Start

Follow these instructions from Tim to setup auto start using the runuser method – make sure you change the ORACLE_HOME to be 12.2.0.1 not 12.1.0.2 that is mentioned.

Now reboot the container and it should return with the database automatically started.

Check Oracle Database Auto Starts

[oracle@db12cr2 ~]$ sqlplus /nolog

SQL*Plus: Release 12.2.0.1.0 Production on Thu Mar 2 14:16:53 2017

Copyright (c) 1982, 2016, Oracle. All rights reserved.

SQL> conn sys/Password01 as sysdba
 Connected.
 SQL> show sga

Total System Global Area 3221225472 bytes
 Fixed Size 8797928 bytes
 Variable Size 687866136 bytes
 Database Buffers 2516582400 bytes
 Redo Buffers 7979008 bytes
 SQL>

Conclusion

All pretty painless and relatively quick. I’ll take a dump of the container next in order to use it as a template for building future containers.