In addition to my first article Installation of OEL 7.2 I will show you how to add some ASM Disks and to configure the Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) 7.2 to be ready for oracle RAC 12c on OEL 7.2in this article. This is the second of

1. Installation of OEL 7.2
2. Add sharable ASM Disk Groups and Configuration of OEL 7.2 to be ready for Oracle Installation
3. Cloning the Node two a 2-Node-RAC
4. Install the GI software only
5. Patch and Configure GI
6. Installation of CDB with two PDB
7. Summary

The goal of this article based on the items

1. adding ASM Disks to the Virtual Machine (on HOST system)
2. configuration os OEL 7.2 (install packages, set new hostname, configure network devices, services, …)
3. configuration of the user oracle and grid
4. configuration of the asm disk groups

To make all these steps

• reproducible
• easy to run on different systems and
• to have a documentation what was changed on the system

I created two scripts A) and B)

A) A script to run on VBox HOST adding some ASM disks to the VM to fulfil step 1.

While it is very simple and short you will find the output and a short explanation to modify it in the attached pdf document. I add a windows BAT file – easy to make runable in Linux:

create-asm

The password to open the zip file = SConS

B) a script running inside the VM to fulfil step 2. to 4.

The script is more complex than A) and will call some sub-scripts. A detailed explanation how to call this script you will find in the pdf document. But you do not need to modify this script. You only need to set the variables at the end of file ./config/setup.cfg as described into the pdf. Thereafter you only need to start the main-script – that is all. All steps will be logged Depending on the internet access throughput and the power of your cpus for the VM the runtime of this script will be anything between 15 minutes and 1 hour.

If – for any reasons – an error will occur, you can restart by cloning the VM as described in Step 1. in the PDF at the end of this article.

postinstall_oel72

The password to open the zip file = SConS

After running the script you should to reboot the VM in order that all changes take effect.

I would like to pickup some issues to explain some technical information and some important differences between OEL 6 and OEL 7.2

1. systemctl  vs  chkconfig and service
   While in OEL 6 you can start and stop any service with command „service“ and disable / enable the service for different runlevel with „chkconfig“ they will no more working in OEL 7.2. You can start, stop, restart, enable, disable, etc. the service with „systemctl“
   The scripts for the services to start and run will be found in /etc/systemd
   Most of the scripts will have some optional arguments. Theses optional arguments can be set in files /etc/sysconfg/.  e.g. if would like to prevent any support for IPv6 you often can add an argument „-4“ to the script
2. /etc/udev/rules.d/99-asm-grid.rule
   Most of the examples of a ruleset file to set the permission for ASM Disks published in the internet will work on OS level, but the 12c Installer for Grid Infrastructure will through some warnings: Expressions like KERNEL==“sd?1″ are not valid, all ASM Devices must have a UUID, etc.
3. IPv6
   OEL 7.2 is working with IPv6 = ON per default
   In order to prevent working with IPv6 on the system it is not enough to set some parameters in sysctl. Some services will use IPv6 per default
   Remember: If you plan to set up a firewall you must set firewall rules for IPv4 as well as for IPv6. If every service if working with IPv4 only you can drop any IPv6 packet – in a first step
4. sysctl vs profiles
   As discussed by Georges in his article about stay-tuned-with-kernel-parameters I installed the OEL 7.2 profile to set some kernel parameters. For details please read articles describing all the details
5. /etc/sysconfig/network
   Besides the two minimum entries starting with OEL 7.2 and 12c the installer checks if you have the third parameter set: NOZEROCONF=yes
   The file should have at least the following entries

1
2
3

NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=OEL72Rac12cN01.scons.de
NOZEROCONF=yes

You can download the pdf file describing the run of Script A) and B) here

03-CONFIG-OEL-7.2.0.0.0

Have fun –

Rainer