Re: OS groups for Oracle on Linux?

"Stan Brown" <stanb_at_panix.com> wrote in message news:9qfdqt$7k5$1_at_panix2.panix.com... [snip]
> Acording to my reading of the documnetation the "oracle" user should be
> primary group "ORAINVENTORY" (in my case oinstall). He should also be a
> member of the "ISDBA" group (in my case DBA). that is how I set it yup, and
> I then ran the oracle installer as this "oracle" user. However in the past
> I remeber the Oracle user needing to be (primary Ithink) group DBA.
>
> So, am I screwd? Install only took about 36 hours, so I'm not anxious to do
> it again :-)

You can probably recover the situation.

There is a document on Metalink (can't remember its ID) which says that, contrary to the installation notes, it's probably simpler, and harmless, to install everything under the "dba" group and completely ignore the oinstall group. It says (and I agree) that you only need the oinstall group if you have an organisation where the people who install the Oracle software are not DBAs. I can't imagine many sites where this is the case.

To resolve the problem, simply

    cd $ORACLE_HOME

    chown -R oracle:dba *

(as root). You may also want to check that the setuid bit is set on $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oracle. ie. the permissions are -rwsr-sr-x. If not, issue a

    chmod 7755 $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oracle

Finally, make sure that the default group for oracle is "dba" (check the passwd file, and make sure that the groupid field for oracle contains the groupid of the "dba" group). And for added peace of mind, make sure that oracle is defined as a member of the dba group by editing the /etc/group file and ensuring that the oracle userid is included in the list of userids defined to that group. (Not absolutely necessary though if his primary group is set up OK.)

Not sure if this will solve your ORA-28009 as I don't have access to an instance or the documention ATM to find out what that error-code means. But it should solve most installation woes.

Dave.

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