Review the following restrictions for users created to own Oracle software.

• If you intend to use multiple Oracle software owners for different Oracle Database homes, then Oracle recommends that you create a separate software owner for Oracle Grid Infrastructure software (Oracle Clusterware and Oracle ASM), and use that owner to run the Oracle Grid Infrastructure installation.

• During installation, SSH must be set up between cluster member nodes. SSH can be set up automatically by Oracle Universal Installer (the installer). To enable SSH to be set up automatically, create Oracle installation owners without any stty commands in their profiles, and remove other security measures that are triggered during a login that generate messages to the terminal. These messages, mail checks, and other displays prevent Oracle software installation owner accounts from using the SSH configuration script that is built into the installer. If they are not disabled, then SSH must be configured manually before an installation can be run.

• If you plan to install Oracle Database or Oracle RAC, then Oracle recommends that you create separate users for the Oracle Grid Infrastructure and the Oracle Database installations. If you use one installation owner, then when you want to perform administration tasks, you must change the value for $ORACLE_HOME to the instance you want to administer (Oracle ASM, in the Oracle Grid Infrastructure home, or the database in the Oracle home), using command syntax such as the following example, where /u01/app/19.0.0/grid is the Oracle Grid Infrastructure home:

  $ export ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/19.0.0/grid

• If you try to administer an Oracle home or Grid home instance using sqlplus, lsnrctl, or asmcmd commands while the environment variable $ORACLE_HOME is set to a different Oracle home or Grid home path, then you encounter errors. For example, when you start SRVCTL from a database home, $ORACLE_HOME should be set to that database home, or SRVCTL fails. The exception is when you are using SRVCTL in the Oracle Grid Infrastructure home. In that case, $ORACLE_HOME is ignored, and the Oracle home environment variable does not affect SRVCTL commands. In all other cases, you must change $ORACLE_HOME to the instance that you want to administer.

• To create separate Oracle software owners and separate operating system privileges groups for different Oracle software installations, note that each of these users must have the Oracle central inventory group (oraInventory group) as their primary group. Members of this group are granted the OINSTALL system privileges to write to the Oracle central inventory (oraInventory) directory, and are also granted permissions for various Oracle Clusterware resources, OCR keys, directories in the Oracle Clusterware home to which DBAs need write access, and other necessary privileges. Members of this group are also granted execute permissions to start and stop Clusterware infrastructure resources and databases. In Oracle documentation, this group is represented as oinstall in code examples.

• Each Oracle software owner must be a member of the same central inventory oraInventory group, and they must have this group as their primary group, so that all Oracle software installation owners share the same OINSTALL system privileges. Oracle recommends that you do not have more than one central inventory for Oracle installations. If an Oracle software owner has a different central inventory group, then you may corrupt the central inventory.