How to migrate to Oracle Linux and install Oracle Database

Oracle Database is an ORDBMS database system like MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MSSQL. Like MSSQL, Oracle Database is heavily geared toward enterprise use.
In this article, we will show you how to install Oracle Database and convert Centos to Oracle Linux. One advantage of Oracle Linux over other operating systems is that you can install update patches without having to restart the server, thanks to Ksplice.

Convert CentOS to Oracle Linux

First, we will convert our CentOS server to Oracle Linux. This is possible with CentOS versions 5, 6, and 7. To perform this conversion, we will disable some repositories and install a conversion tool:

# mv /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-clouding.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-clouding.repo.disabled
# mv /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Extras.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Extras.repo.disabled
# curl -O https://linux.oracle.com/switch/centos2ol.sh 
# sh centos2ol.sh
# reboot

Prepare the server for Oracle Database

We will comment out the lines for the tmp partitions in our fstab:

# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Mon Mar 16 16:34:17 2015
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk'
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info
#
LABEL=/ / ext4 defaults,noatime,nodiratime,journal_async_commit,data=writeback,nobh,discard 0 0
/swap/swapfile1 swap swap defaults 0 0
# none /tmp tmpfs nodev,nosuid,noexec 0 0
# none /var/tmp tmpfs nodev,nosuid,noexec 0 0

Once the lines have been commented out, we will restart our server.

Install Oracle Database

We will download "Oracle Database 12c Release 2" from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/downloads/index.html and proceed to install Oracle Database:

# yum install oracle-database-server-12cR2-preinstall
# mkdir /home/OraDB12c
# cd /home/OraDB12c
# unzip linuxx64_12201_database.zip
# passwd oracle

Now that we have everything we need to install Oracle Database, we will disconnect from the server as root and reconnect as oracle using the password we assigned in the previous step:

ssh -X oracle@185.166.214.13
~ cd /home/OraDB11g/database/
~ ./runInstaller

The commands above will open an installation wizard: