Installing Oracle 11gXE in Linux Mint Mate 12

I followed this article, and it helped a lot!

http://mikesmithers.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/installing-oracle-11gxe-on-mint-and-ubuntu/

Note that, Oracle 11g XE Does not support debeian based package installers, hence I ran into many difficulties, but eventually managed to install successfully.

Installing Oracle XE 11g Release 2 was extremely successful in Debian Squeezy OS.

These are the basic steps I followed.

1. First download and unzip the RPM.
   
   unzip oracle-xe-11.2.0.1.0.x86_64.rpm.zip


2. Convert the RPM to DEB.

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

3. Install this Lib. In Debian Squeeze, I had to add an entry to the /etc/sources after having searched for the libaio1 from the net for debian. 

  sudo apt-get install alien libaio1

4.  Create the chkconfig file.

      cd /sbin

      vi chkconfig

#!/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

sudo chmod 755 chkconfig

5.  sudo ln -s /usr/bin/awk /bin/awk



6. 

Now you need to set the shared memory file system which oracle uses

mount -t tmpfs shmfs -o size=2048m /dev/shm

df-h should return the below result
shmfs           2.0G  1.2M  2.0G   1% /dev/shm



if this failed unlink /dev/shm

sudo unlink /dev/shm
sudo mkdir /dev/shm
sudo mount -t tmpfs shmfs -o size=2048m /dev/shm


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

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

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


10.

sudo usermod -a -G dba oracle

sudo usermod -a -G dba mike


11. Make sure these environment variables are set for all users

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

You can execute the script given by oracle, located in:
/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/bin/oracle_env.sh

or add the above line to the of /etc/bash.bashrc



Note: when you switch to oracle user:
i.e. su - oracle, make sure the environment variables are still set.

12. /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure

If oracle didnt start successfully, i.e if you didn't get the output shown in the end of this blog, do the following

su - oracle

./u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/bin/lsnctrl

start


These are the only changes I made in the sequence mentioned above.
Oracle started successfully, and was able to connect and create tables etc etc.



byorn@boogy /etc/init.d $ sudo ./oracle-xe status LSNRCTL for Linux: Version 11.2.0.2.0 - Production on 23-SEP-2012 18:16:47 Copyright (c) 1991, 2011, Oracle. All rights reserved. Connecting to (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=IPC)(KEY=EXTPROC_FOR_XE))) STATUS of the LISTENER ------------------------ Alias LISTENER Version TNSLSNR for Linux: Version 11.2.0.2.0 - Production Start Date 23-SEP-2012 18:16:18 Uptime 0 days 0 hr. 0 min. 29 sec Trace Level off Security ON: Local OS Authentication SNMP OFF Default Service XE Listener Parameter File /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/network/admin/listener.ora Listener Log File /u01/app/oracle/diag/tnslsnr/boogy/listener/alert/log.xml Listening Endpoints Summary... (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=ipc)(KEY=EXTPROC_FOR_XE))) (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=boogy)(PORT=1521))) (DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=boogy)(PORT=8080))(Presentation=HTTP)(Session=RAW)) Services Summary... Service "PLSExtProc" has 1 instance(s). Instance "PLSExtProc", status UNKNOWN, has 1 handler(s) for this service... Service "XE" has 1 instance(s). Instance "XE", status READY, has 1 handler(s) for this service... Service "XEXDB" has 1 instance(s). Instance "XE", status READY, has 1 handler(s) for this service... The command completed successfully


Note: When I restarted my machine, oracle failed because df-h didnt show me the newly created shared memory file system.
For that i shut down oracle completely, and executed the steps in 6. and started again, all went fine.