How to install the O9i cluster DB on a PC

How to install and deploy Oracle Real Application Clusters on a single Linux
server with a minimal configuration (less than $1000 worth of hardware):

First of all to install Oracle cluster database you DON'T HAVE to have a cluster, but a
single PC may do as well (of course thi kind of installation will not be of
much use for a production DB). A minimal server that I HAVE TESTED is: Celeron 750 MhZ, 512 Mb of RAM, 2 IDE HD, Linux Suse 7.2

This document contains the steps needed to deploy a working Oracle 9i Database with a
minimal comment. For a complete discussion refer to Oracle documentation,
namely:

Oracle 9i administrator's reference part number A90347-02 Oracle 9i Linux release notes part number A90356-01 Oracle 9i Real Application Clusters Administration part numebr A89869-01

1. set up the partitions to user for Oracle software and the ones to use as raw devices for the cluster DB. Soppose you want to you use an HD mounted as the 3rd IDE device (/dev/hdc) for the cluster DB. Then you have to partition it with fdisk with a large extended partition (say hdc1). Create a large number of logical partitions inside hdc1 (say hdc5 till hdc20) of about 300 Mb in size (all of the same size for simplicity).
2. Real application clusters wants to store the DB strutures into raw devices or a cluster filesystem. Create the raw devices using the following command
   (as superuser):
   raw /dev/raw1 /dev/hdc5 raw /dev/raw2 /dev/hdc6 ... etc till /dev/hdc20 you will need to repeat these steps after every boot
3. Set up the Oracle user (already done with the Suse distribution), environment variables and mount point. Install Oracle software enterprise edition
4. Complete the installation with a custom install of the real application cluster option. This will add a directory called oracm under your oracle home, which contains the cluster manager software
5. edit $ORACLE_HOME/oracm/admin/nmcfg.ora, it contains 3 lines for the set-up of the cluster manager sofware: DefinedNodes=localhost CmDiskFiles=/dev/raw2 CmHostName=localhost
6. edit /var/opt/oracle/srvConfig.loc. It contains 1 line with the location of a raw device used to sync the cluster nodes: srvconfig_loc=/dev/raw1
7. start the cluster manager software (as superuser): $ORACLE_HOME/oracm/bin/ocmstart.sh
8. as the oracle user start the global cache service: gsd
9. you can now create a cluster db. to use the configuration assistant you need to set an extra environment variable: export THREADS_FLAG=native
10. start the configuration assistant: dbca expect some errors in the script the dbca generates, best is to review them before execution
11. after the db creation you'll be able to start two instances on the same DB, which means you will have a cluster DB!
12. the environment variable ORACLE_SID will determine the instance to which you can connect by means of a special syntax: SID.parameter=value this is used for example for paramters like instance_number, thread, etc also the parameter cluster_database must be set to true All these problems are normaly handled by the dbca.

NOTE: to set up a multi-node cluster you need to have at least: 2 PC with
SCSI controllers (one
of them must have a BIOS), at least 1 SCSI HD which is shared between the 2
PCs (it is
connected to the 2 controllers). Having all that, you can set up the raw devices on the PCs
and share them between the 2 installations of 9i RAC. The cluster manager
must be properly configured and started on both nodes in a similar, but extended, step (5).

Have fun,

Luca Canali
OCP-DBA

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