In this post, I will show you how I installed Oracle 11g r2 on CentOS6.6 in Silent Mode.

Assumption & Background

1. You have VM
2. You successfully installed CentOS6.6 on VM somehow (For download CentOS6.6 see below)
3. Download CentOS6.5 64bit
4. Download Oracle Databse Client 11g r2 64bit Linux (11.2.0.1)

Ready to install Oracle

• Now Copy linux_11gR2_client_x86_64.zip into your root home directory

Pre-conditions before run install

When you try to install oracle on linux environment, you need to check the followings

• Make sure you set Environment variables needed for Oracle installer.
• Oracle installer will use those Environment variables, when it install oracle database client.
• Make sure you installed required packages for the installer
• Set Target oracle installation path. For this post, it would be /home/oracle/app/product/11.2/client

Install packages for oracle installation

• yum -y update
• yum -y install unixODBC binutils* compat* gcc* glibc* ksh libgcc* libstdc* libaio* make* sysstat*

ADD HOSTNAME

• sed -i’’ -e “$a\YOUR_IP_ADDR my_local_machine_name” /etc/hosts or
• vi /etc/hosts and edit like “127.0.0.1 my_local_machine_name”

Oracle Environment Setting For This Oracle Installation (root user)

# Goup Add
groupadd oinstall
groupadd dba

# Create User
useradd -m -d /home/oracle -g dba -G oinstall oracle
passwd oracle

# Create Directory For Tablespace (Use this path to create tablespace data file)
mkdir -p /home/oracle/app/product/11.2/client

# Define Oracle Environment for oracle user
# Plain Text
# If you want to set global environment variables, use /etc/profile file 
# If you want to set user level environment variables, use /home/"user_name"/.bash_profile (most of cases the default user's folder name would be like this)
vi /etc/profile
export TMP=/tmp
export TMPDIR=/tmp
export ORACLE_BASE=/home/oracle/app
export ORACLE_SID=ORADB
export ORACLE_HOME=${ORACLE_BASE}/product/11.2/client
export TNS_ADMIN=${ORACLE_HOME}/network/admin
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:${PATH}
export SQLPATH=$ORACLE_HOME:${SQLPATH}
export NLS_LANG=American_America.AL32UTF8

# sed command
sed -i'' -r -e "/^# User specific environment and startup programs/a\export TMP=\/tmp\nexport TMPDIR=\/tmp\nexport ORACLE_BASE=\/home\/oracle\/app\nexport ORACLE_SID=ORADB\nexport ORACLE_HOME=\${ORACLE_BASE}\/product\/11.2\/client\nexport TNS_ADMIN=\${ORACLE_HOME}\/network\/admin\nexport LD_LIBRARY_PATH=\$ORACLE_HOME\/lib:\${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}\nexport PATH=\$ORACLE_HOME\/bin:\${PATH}\nexport SQLPATH=\$ORACLE_HOME:\${SQLPATH}\nexport NLS_LANG=American_America.AL32UTF8" /etc/profile

# check the modification result
cat /etc/profile

Unzip Files to /home/oracle and change ownership to oracle and give Read and Execute permissions to files

unzip -q linux_11gR2_client_x86_64.zip -d /home/oracle
chown -R oracle:dba /home/oracle
chmod -R 755 /home/oracle

Switch user that will install oracle instance

su - oracle

Use response file to install oracle instance in silent mode

# When we install oracle in linux, we use command runInstaller.
# Since I prefer to use CLI than GUI, I will use silent mode.
# That way I can install oracle database client without GUI (X Window, in this case)
# There would be two response files. One for databse client and another for listner.

# Copy responfile from "Directory_where_you_unziped_downloaded_files/response" directory. In my case /home/oracle/database/response
# There is _install.rsp file which can be used to install oracle instance.
cp /home/oracle/database/response/client_install.rsp /home/oracle/database/response/client_test_install.rsp

# Then I put some basic information needed for creating oracle instance.
# Plain Text (location of the file may be different if you unzip download file to different location)
vi /home/oracle/database/response/client_test_install.rsp 
UNIX_GROUP_NAME=dba
INVENTORY_LOCATION=/home/oracle/oraInventory
SELECTED_LANGUAGES=en,ko
ORACLE_BASE=/home/oracle/app
ORACLE_HOME=/home/oracle/app/product/11.2/client
oracle.install.client.installType=Administrator

# sed command
sed -i'' -r -e "s/^UNIX_GROUP_NAME=.*/UNIX_GROUP_NAME=dba/" /home/oracle/client/response/client_test_install.rsp
sed -i'' -r -e "s/^INVENTORY_LOCATION=.*/INVENTORY_LOCATION=\/home\/oracle\/app\/oraInventory/" /home/oracle/client/response/client_test_install.rsp
sed -i'' -r -e "s/^SELECTED_LANGUAGES=.*/SELECTED_LANGUAGES=en,ko/" /home/oracle/client/response/client_test_install.rsp
sed -i'' -r -e "s/^ORACLE_HOME=.*/ORACLE_HOME=\/home\/oracle\/app\/product\/11.2\/client/" /home/oracle/client/response/client_test_install.rsp
sed -i'' -r -e "s/^ORACLE_BASE=.*/ORACLE_BASE=\/home\/oracle\/app/" /home/oracle/client/response/client_test_install.rsp
sed -i'' -r -e "s/^oracle.install.client.installType=.*/oracle\.install\.client\.installType=Administrator/" /home/oracle/client/response/client_test_install.rsp

# Check the result
grep "^UNIX_GROUP_NAME=" /home/oracle/client/response/client_test_install.rsp 
grep "^INVENTORY_LOCATION=" /home/oracle/client/response/client_test_install.rsp 
grep "^SELECTED_LANGUAGES=" /home/oracle/client/response/client_test_install.rsp 
grep "^ORACLE_HOME=" /home/oracle/client/response/client_test_install.rsp 
grep "^ORACLE_BASE=" /home/oracle/client/response/client_test_install.rsp 
grep "^oracle.install.client.installType=" /home/oracle/client/response/client_test_install.rsp

Check Oracle install Pre-requisites

# The following will check whether your environment is good enough to install oracle instance.
# You must check log that oracle generate to see if there is critical errors that oracle can not continue install.
# Be aware that you do not have to satisfy all the Pre-requisites.
# You only need to satisfy requirement which is critical.
# Also At the end of each log, there are "INFO: Advice is blar blar". The one you are expecting is "INFO: Advice is CONTINUE" which is ready to install.
/home/oracle/client/runInstaller -silent -executePrereqs -responseFile /home/oracle/client/response/client_test_install.rsp

Run Installer (Silent Mode)

# When you create oracle instance, listener, and database, you need to run as oracle user who has belongs to oper group
# Make sure your oracle user have oper group
# If there is no critical errors. It will display some warnings and give you log path.
# Where the path is within your oracle installation path, not /tmp
# Then "tail -f log_file" to see the installation process.
# When it finished install, it will give you the following orders that you must run as root.
# Ex). /ORACLE/oraInventory/orainstRoot.sh
# Ex). /ORACLE/product/11.2/db/root.sh
# run those command and Ctrl-c to get out of the tail and switch to oracle user "su - oracle"
/home/oracle/client/runInstaller -silent -responseFile /home/oracle/client/response/client_test_install.rsp

# When installation finished, run the following as root and switch back to oracle user
exit 
/home/oracle/app/oraInventory/orainstRoot.sh
/home/oracle/app/product/11.2/client/root.sh

# If you have tnsnames.ora file to copy, then put it in your 
cp tnsnames.ora $TNS_ADMIN
chown oracle:dba $TNS_ADMIN/tnsnames.ora

# For manual creation, use the following sample.
su - oracle
cd $TNS_ADMIN
vi tnsnames.ora
# Use this sample. Note that I assumed that the server's database name is "ORADB" in this scenario.
# Server's Port number is 1521
# You can change your_hostname part to IP address of your server.
MYORA=
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS_LIST =
      (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = your_hostname)(PORT = 1521))
    )
    (CONNECT_DATA =
      (SERVICE_NAME = ORADB)
    )
  )
# Save the file

Connect to server database using SQLPLUS

# Check the connection using sqlplus
# Note, sqlplus will look for the names in tnsnames.ora file. So you need to write MYORA, not ORADB.
# That way sqlplus can parse all the information need for connecting to server.
# You should know at least one valid user account who has CONNECT privilege.
sqlplus user/password@MYORA

Cheers. Thanks for reading.