Installing Oracle XE Database on CentOS

Once you satisfy the login requirements for Oracle’s site, you can download their “Express” Database, which from their License Agreement for that DB sofware, can only be run/used in the following manner:

Any use of the Oracle Database Express Edition is subject to the following limitations;
1. Express Edition is limited to a single instance on any server;
2. Express Edition may be installed on a multiple CPU server, but may only be executed on one processor in any server;
3. Express Edition may only be used to support up to 11GB of user data (not including Express Edition system data);
4. Express Edition may use up to 1 GB RAM of available memory.

We offer a number of 1GB+ RAM VPS Plans and once you’ve downloaded the Oracle Express DB distriubtion .zip file, the following describes getting it installed and running on a CentOS 5.9 64-bit VPS.

1) Install and ensure Prerequisites

yum install libaio bc flex

You also need to have twice as much RAM configured as Swap space to the CentOS system. So if you have a 1GB RAM VPS, then Oracle XE’s installer requires that you need (at least) 2GB of Swap configured to the system.

A quick way to add Swap space is to use a “swap file” in the filesystem, commands like:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/swap.file count=2000000 bs=1024
chmod go= /var/swap.file
mkswap /var/swap.file
echo "/var/swap.file swap swap defaults 0 0" >> /etc/fstab
swapon -a

2) Download oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm.zip and unzip to /usr/local/src

cd /usr/local/src
unzip oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm.zip
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


3) Install the .rpm

rpm -ivh oracle-xe-11.2.0-1.0.x86_64.rpm

4) After the RPM is installed, you need to run /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure, during which you need to supply the inital SYS DB User’s password.

/etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure

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

5) After install, configure the Oracle environment for your relevant users on the CentOS system

First, set the required Oracle environment variables, use the oracle_env.sh the script that’s installed by the RPM to /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/xe/bin

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

To set these environment variables permanently for users, add the following to the .bashrc or .bash_profile of the users you want to access the environment:

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

6) You can use the Oracle s/ware (SQL*Plus) from the Linux command line with:

sqlplus /nolog

SQL> connect sys/your-SYS-Password as sysdba
Connected.
SQL>

7) Enable remote access for the DB

To enable and allow remote access to the Oracle XE GUI, run the following command from SQL*Plus, connected as the SYS user:

SQL> EXEC DBMS_XDB.SETLISTENERLOCALACCESS(FALSE);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.


You should now be able to access the Oracle 11g XE Home Page GUI at:

http://your-VPS-IP-Address:8080/apex

Replace your-VPS-IP-Address above with your IP or hostname as required.

Log in as SYSTEM using the password you supplied in the above ‘configure’ step.

You now have a running Oracle XE database installed and usable from the command-line (sqlplus) and the Web.

Any customers who’d like us to install this Database software are welcome to contact us to do that for them.

FYI,
Richard.