I am attracted to use OpenSuSE 11.1 (x86) because of attractive and nice desktop environment design. Beside OpenSuSe is one of RPM base Linux distro likes Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and of course its free. So I’ve installed OpenSuse 11.1 into my machine.

Since I am working in one of Oracle Certified Company, then I must have Oracle database installed into my machine to do some learning and testing. Why I am not just install Oracle database on RHEL or OEL since there are officially supported by Oracle? Hurm..why not I am doing some experiment since both OpenSuse and RHEL were RPM base.

Here the step by step to install Oracle 10g database on OpenSuse 11.1:

1. I assumed that OpenSuse 11.1 has been installed on your machine, and Oracle Database isntaller has been downloaded from Oracle website (database.zip).

2. Make sure required package was installed:

#rpm -q gcc gcc-c++ glibc libaio libaio-devel make openmotif openmotif-libs

and install the following package:

# zypper install libstdc++33

2. Create new group and user, in this case I am using “oracle” user:

# groupadd oinstall
# groupadd dba
# groupadd oper
# useradd -g oinstall -G dba oracle
# passwd oracle

3. Incase oracle user directory does not exist, create a new one and change owner to oracle:

# mkdir /home/oracle
#chown -R oracle.dba /home/oracle

4. Create directory to install oracle software, I am installed oracle in /u01 directory:

# mkdir -p /u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1
#chown -R oracle.oinstall /u01

5. Download and install orarun package and install. It will automatically configure environment and kernel parameter required by Oracle database.

# rpm -Uvh orarun.rpm

Although orarun has configured oracle environment automatically, but we need to change some parameter to meet our requirement. By default, orarun will not set ORACLE_BASE under /u01/app/oracle directory. So, we need to change it manually. Keep in mind that change environment in OpenSuse 11.1 was not like in RHEL. In RHEL we just make change in .bash_profile right? but not in OpenSuSe 11.1 hehe

6. Change ORACLE_BASE, ORACLE_HOME, ORACLE_SID and whatever parameter according to your plan and needs:

# vi /etc/profile.d/oracle.sh

and another one (by default ORACLE_BASE is set to /opt/oracle):

# vi /etc/sysconfig/oracle

7. Login to oracle user. Unzip your database.zip file. Then, don’t forget to change permission to “database” directory to avoid permission error.

# su - oracle
oracle@faiz:~> unzip database.zip
oracle@faiz:~> chmod -R 777 database

8. Before execute the runInstaller, don’t forget to export DISPLAY parameter since I always forget this step and get “Error: Can’t open display:” error:

oracle@faiz:~> export DISPLAY=:0.0

and one more thing edit file database/install/oraparam.ini to add “SuSE-11″ to [Certified Versions] line.

oracle@faiz-iproserv:~> vi database/install/oraparam.ini

9. Change directory to /home/oracle/database and ./runInstaller then follow step by step instruction by Oracle Installer.

If all parameter has been configured correctly, there are no reason for you to not install Oracle into OpenSuSE successfully.

*During installation, there are 1 Warning and 4 Waiting for verification. Just tick all the user verified box and proceed to isntallation.

mkdir -p /u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1