Re: ORACLE: proper location of PFILE on SuSE 8.1 Linux w/ 9iR2? (newbie q.)

Bob Hairgrove <rhairgroveNoSpam_at_Pleasebigfoot.com> schreef in berichtnieuws 3eb0249b.838966_at_news.webshuttle.ch...
| Hello,
|
| After about 3 or 4 attempts I have finally managed to install Oracle
| and have it start up at boot time!
|
| The most recent obstacle to success has me a bit puzzled ... although
| I was able to start the database and the listener by running dbca and
| netca (although I also had some trouble with the listener as well),
| the startup scripts couldn't find the initialisation file at boot time
| and therefore couldn't start the database. In my
| $ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbstart script there is the following command:
|
| PFILE=${ORACLE_HOME}/dbs/init${ORACLE_SID}.ora
|
| My ORACLE_SID is "orabob".
|
| However, dbca seems to have put my initialisation file in
| $ORACLE_BASE/admin/orabob/pfile/init.ora (not initorabob.ora)! There
| is another (sample) init.ora in $ORACLE_HOME/dbs, but the other one
| has all my parameters set from when I created the database. I then
| copied the existing init.ora (the one with the parameters set) to
| $ORACLE_HOME/dbs/initorabob.ora, and now everything seems hunky-dory.
|
| My questions: Did I leave something out when I created the database,
| or is this a glitch in the script? Should I leave the PFILE in
| $ORACLE_HOME/dbs, or should I edit the script to point to
| $ORACLE_BASE/admin/orabob/pfile?? From earlier work with Oracle 8.1.6
| on Windows NT I seem to recall that the latter location was not used
| by the production database except as a repository for scripts and log
| files, etc. ... the $ORACLE_HOME/dbs location seemed most appropriate
| somehow.
|
| Thanks!
|
|
| --
| Bob Hairgrove
| rhairgroveNoSpam_at_Pleasebigfoot.com

What Oracle is trying to do with dbca is to implement OFA, Oracle Flexible Architecture. It is described in the Installation Guide for a Unix platform. It is easy transferable to Windows (replace /u01 or so by D: or so and "/" by "\"). I am a big fan of OFA.
In my opinion you should not install any files of your own in the $ORACLE_HOME structure. So this can always be reconstructed form the orignial cd's and patches (thus it is important to keep a list of this). In OFA there is a $ORACLE_BASE/admin/<sid> structure for each db with subdirs bdump (background dump dest), udump, cdump, adump, create, pfile, arch and more if you want.
In OFA the init.ora file is in the pfile subdir, but Oracles default location is $ORACLE_HOME/dbs/init<sid>.ora. Today I find the best solution:
a. create init<sid>ora in the admin structure b. on Unix: create a symbolic link in the default location: ln -s $ORACLE_BASE/admin/<sid>/pfile/init<sid>.ora $ORACLE_HOME/dbs/init<sid>.ora c. on Windows: create %ORACLE_HOME%\dbs\init<sid>.ora with only one line: ifile=.. pointing to the real one in the admin structure. To make it complete:
The Oracle homes should then be $ORACLE_BASE/product/8.1.7 or 9.2.0 or so. To also keep the sqlnet configuration file out of the oracle software: create $ORACLE_BASE/admin/network/etc and log. Store the real tnsnames.ora, listener.ora and more if needed in the etc dir. Set TNS_ADMIN=$ORACLE_BASE/admin/network/etc. Because I found some situations where TNS_ADMIN was not used I always make symbolic links from each oracle home network/admin dir to these files. Works always and I have to maintain only 1 set in a multiple home environment Received on Wed Apr 30 2003 - 15:40:20 CDT