1. Grid Infrastructure Installation and Upgrade Guide
  2. Configuring Operating Systems for Oracle Grid Infrastructure on Linux
  3. Guidelines for Linux Operating System Installation
  4. About the Oracle Database Preinstallation RPM

About the Oracle Database Preinstallation RPM

If your Linux distribution is Oracle Linux, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and you are an Oracle Linux support customer, then you can complete most preinstallation configuration tasks by using the Oracle Database Preinstallation RPM for your release.

Oracle Database Preinstallation RPMs are available from the Oracle Linux Network or available on the Oracle Linux DVDs. Using the Oracle Database Preinstallation RPM is not required, but Oracle recommends you use it to save time in setting up your cluster servers.

When installed, the Oracle Database Preinstallation RPM does the following:

  • Automatically downloads and installs any additional RPM packages needed for installing Oracle Grid Infrastructure and Oracle Database, and resolves any dependencies

  • Creates an oracle user, and creates the oraInventory (oinstall) and OSDBA (dba) groups for that user

  • As needed, sets sysctl.conf settings, system startup parameters, and driver parameters to values based on recommendations from the Oracle Database Preinstallation RPM program

  • Sets hard and soft resource limits

  • Sets other recommended parameters, depending on your kernel version

  • Sets numa=off in the kernel for Linux x86_64 machines.

Configure Oracle Database Preinstallation RPM only once on your operating system when you install Oracle Database or Oracle Grid Infrastructure for the first time on your system. For subsequent installations on the same system, do not install Oracle Database Preinstallation RPM again.

Do not install Oracle Database Preinstallation RPM on Oracle Engineered Systems, such as Oracle Exadata Database Machine. Oracle Engineered Systems include integrated system software that contain the required version of the operating system kernel and all software packages.

Note:

  • The Oracle Database Preinstallation RPM designated for each Oracle Database release sets kernel parameters and resource limits only for the user account oracle. To use multiple software account owners, you must perform system configuration for other accounts manually.

  • The Oracle Database Preinstallation RPM installs the X11 client libraries, but it does not install the X Window System server packages. To use graphical user interfaces such as OUI, configuration assistants, and Oracle Enterprise Manager, set the display to a system with X Window System server packages.

Parent topic: Guidelines for Linux Operating System Installation