Installing an Oracle 11.2.0.3 Database on an AIX system

It’s worth reading all the headings before beginning the installation process:

Hardware requirements

Min 1GB RAM (recommended amount is 2GB or more)

To find out the amount of installed RAM

Swap requirements

For 1-2 GB Physical RAM, 1.5 the amount of RAM
For 2-16 GB Physical RAM, the swap amount can be the same as the physical RAM
For systems with more than 16GB Physical RAM, 16GB of swap space is sufficient
Checking the size of the swap amount:

If the amount of swap space is insufficient, instructions showing how to increase its size are provided at the end of the page.

 

Disk requirements

A minimum of 1GB for /tmp.

Information about the system to be installed. Whether the operating system’s kernel architecture is 32 or 64 bit.

 

 

 

Operating system release

The digits on line 2 indicate that this is AIX V6 TL6 service pack 5, released on the 15th week of 2011.

 

The filesets that need to be installed for AIX 5L :

 

The filesets that need to be installed for AIX 6.1:

The filesets that need to be installed for AIX 7.1

Checking to see whether or not they have been installed:

Necessary patches:

If using the minimum os requirement’s TL (Technology Level) for AIX 6L as listed above then:
Install all AIX 6L 6.1 Authorized Problem Analysis Reports (APARs) for AIX 6.1 TL 02 SP1, followed by these AIX fixes:

These 6.1 fixes are present in the following TLs:

If you need to install a Service Pack, use the link below or the links at the end of the page

www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-aixservicepacks/#resources

 

Checking to see whether or not they have been installed

As the installed operating systems is AIX V6 TL6 Service Pack 5 released on the 15th week of 2011, this means that the patches have been installed.

 

Creating Users and Groups:

Kernel Parameters

Maximum number of PROCESSES (maxuprocs) 16384
ARG/ENV list size in 4K byte blocks (ncargs) 128
The values on your system shouldn’t be lower than the numbers shown above.

alternatively

to query

Asynchronous Input Output Processes

To activate “Asynchronous Input Output Processes”, run the rootpre.sh file in the AIX 5 database directory (active by default in AIX 6).

In AIX 5 and 6, the aio_maxreqs value is 65536.

To view the AIO processes

If many parallel queries are expected to be run simultaneously, it may be necessary to widen the UDP-TCP port.

 

The default values:

To widen the port range:http://sysdba.org/wp-admin/post.php?lang=en&action=edit&post_type=post&post=5005

To widen the port range:

To be added to the /home/oracle/.profile file:

The root.sh script in /…/database/rootpre is run as the root user.

Connecting using xmanager or similar software and running “runInstaller” in the /../database/ directory starts the installation process.

Installation and settings

Loading SSH

Installing bash and unzip

Download from ibm.com/systems/power/software/aix/linux/toolbox/ezinstall.html

Patch level and/or installed patches

To list installed patches

Installed filesets

Updating the server (futher details in the link below)

The path where images files are downloaded to is /usr/sys/inst.images

To update the system.

Guide for installing service packs at the IBM website

ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-aixservicepacks

ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-aixservicepacks/#resources

Fix Center

ibm.com/support/fixcentral/main/System+p/AIX

Disk/File System Tasks

Volume Group and File System information

Note: In order to mount automatically at startup, the /fs1 mount parameter in /etc/filesystems needs to be set to true.

The mount -a (or mount all) command should be used to mount volumes that have their mount parameters set to true.

umount /fs1 unmounts the volume.

Adding a 10GB storage are to the 10MB storage area.

This syntax creates a 10M read-only file system mounted on /fs2in volume group 00:

To delete the file system.

defragment

File system mount

Increasing the Swap size

Disk Performance

LVM and RAID1

There are 2 disks on the system, hdisk0 and hdisk1. hdisk0 is active in the “rootvg” volume group.

We’ll now add hdisk1 to the rootvg volume group and place both disks in mirror mode.

LVNAME	TYPE	LPS	PPS	PVS	LV STATE	MOUNT POINT
hd5	boot	1	2	2	CLOSED/SYNCED	N/A
hd6	paging	10	20	2	OPEN/SYNCED	N/A
hd4	jf2	40	80	2	OPEN/SYNCED	/

Entries in the output where the PPS is double the amount of PPS indicate that the mirroring is active.

This can be used in situations where there aren’t RAID controllers, however applying RAID 10 with this method would substantially decrease the database’s performance.

 

Mounting the CD

 

The fileset that the binary is from

Installed filesets

Detailed system information

Processor count

SMT (Simultaneous Multi-Threading)

Performance

Saving all of the configuration information under /tmp

Display

If you’ll be performing the installation over a network using a different machine, you’ll want to see what’s happening.

 

To do this use Display Config

Some problems that may be encountered

OS Kernel Version – This is a prerequisite condition to test whether the system kernel version is at least “6.1-6100.02.01”.

Expected Value

: 6.1-6100.02.01

Actual Value

: 1 6 oslevel: Error processing cache, return code 215./bin/sh[2]: oslevel:: not found

Details:

–

Kernel of proper version is not found on node “ibmaix6” [Expected = “6.1-6100.02.01” ; Found = “1 6 oslevel: Error processing cache, return code 215./bin/sh[2]: oslevel:: not found”] – Cause: Cause Of Problem Not Available – Action: User Action Not Available

OS Patch:IZ97457 – This is a prerequisite condition to test whether the patch “IZ97457” is available on the system.

Expected Value

: Patch IZ97457

Actual Value

: missing

Details:

–

PRVF-9809 : Proper OS Patch is not found on node “ibmaix6” [Expected = “IZ97457” ; Found = “missing”] – Cause: Required OS Patch is not applied. – Action: Apply the required OS Patch.

We get these errors while installing Oracle, but our current OS level 6100-06-05-1115 already contains these patches.

 

Resources

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-aixservicepacks/#resources

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/WikiPtype/AIX

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/install.112/e24335.pdf

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/install.112/e24332.pdf

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-aix_cmds/index.html?S_TACT=105AGX20&;S_CMP=EDU

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B16240_01/doc/em.102/e10953/app_platform_pkg_req.htm

http://ramses.smeyers.be/varia/aix/mirrorrootvg/

 

How to mirror an AIX rootvg

The following steps will guide you trough the mirroring of an AIX rootvg.

This info is valid for AIX 4.3.3, AIX 5.1, AIX 5.2 and AIX 5.3.

Make sure you have an empty disk, in this example its hdisk1

1. Add the disk to the vg via “extendvg rootvg hdisk1
2. Mirror the vg via: “mirrorvg rootvg”
3. Adapt the bootlist to add the current disk, the system will then fall to hdisk1 if hdisk0 fails during startup
4. do bootlist -o -m normal , this will list currently 1 disk, in this exaple hdisk0
5. do bootlist -m normal hdisk0 hdisk1
6. Run a bosboot on both new disks, this will install all software needed for boot on the disk:

a. bosboot -ad hdisk0

b. bosboot -ad hdisk1

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http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/aix/v6r1/index.jsp

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/aix/v7r1/index.jsp

—————————————————————————————————————–

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/aix/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.aix.commadmn%2Fdoc%2Fcommadmndita%2Fiscsi_intro.htm

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/aix/v6r1/advanced/print.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.aix.commadmn/doc/commadmndita/iscsi_intro.htm&;topicIndexId=t0_6_4_3_29&confirmed=true

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/aix/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.aix.baseadmn%2Fdoc%2Fbaseadmndita%2Fadd_iscsi_targets_odm.htm

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http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/index.jsp?topic=/p7eab/p7-placement-kickoff_8202.htm

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/index.jsp?topic=/p7hcd/fc2053.htm

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/index.jsp?topic=/p7hcd/fc2053.htm

 

AIX Best Practices

An explanation of the best practices after installing AIX can be found in the following link. It includes what the applicable practices are, why they are so and how to apply them.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/wikis/display/WikiPtype/AIXV53AdminBestPractice

– This page contains useful commands: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-dutta_cmds.html

– With every installation try to get the latest patches, but before applying the patches check online to see if any there have been any problems with them.

 

Hands-On tips

1. Adjusting the Paging Space

The suggested size of the paging space hd6 can be determined by the amount of RAM on the system and by using the following table.

Please note that these values are only an initial suggestion for the paging space size with the default system settings, you may be required to resize when necessary.

RAM (GB)	Paging Space Size
1 to 32GB	1/2 of total RAM (512MB to 16GB)
32 to 64GB	1/4 of total RAM (8 to 16GB)
64 to 128GB	1/8 of total RAM (8 to 16GB)

2. Increase the size of the Oracle fs. (for example: chfs -a size=+2G /var)

3. Arrange the size of the dump device, the sysdumpdev -K command enables sysdump.

4. Install open source programs such as OpenSSL, OpenSSH, BASH, GNU Screen, VNC, LSOF.

5. Before changing any file under /etc, first make a copy using cp -p.

6. Remove the default user limits:

vi /etc/security/limits

fsize=-1

7. If rootvg is the local (internal disk) check the bootlist by mirroring (mirrorvg rootvg).

8. Arrange the SCSI and hdisk attributes.

a) Through vio, do the following in Lpar:

chdev -a hcheck_interval=60 -a hcheck_mode=nonactive -l hdisk0 -P (requires a restart)

chdev -a hcheck_interval=60 -a hcheck_mode=nonactive -l hdisk1;

chdev -l vscsi0 -a vscsi_path_to=30 -a vscsi_err_recov=fast_fail -P (requires a restart)

chdev -l vscsi1 -a vscsi_path_to=30 -a vscsi_err_recov=fast_fail -P (requires a restart)

chpath -l hdisk0 -p vscsi1 -a priority=2 (hdisk0, should go from vscsi0)

chpath -l hdisk1 -p vscsi0 -a priority=2 (hdisk1, goes from hdisk1)

b) Physical SCSI (Fiber Channel)

chdev -l fscsi0 -a fc_err_recov=fast_fail -a dyntrk=yes -P

chdev -l fscsi1 -a fc_err_recov=fast_fail -a dyntrk=yes -P

9. Adjust the TimeZone, enable daylisgt saving, restart and set the datetime.

10. If a dns is present, set the ntp

11. Add a PS1 to /etc/profile

vi /etc/profile;

PS1=”$LOGNAME@$(hostname):\$PWD> ”

set -o vi

 

This is a list of the best practices for the time being.

– Information regarding the RAID levels that SAS cards support is available at the link below. This link applies to P710/730 servers.

 

For configuration information regarding other machines please check the relevant documentation.

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/index.jsp?topic=/p7hcd/fc2053.htm

 

– NIM (Network Installation Management) has a Linux version called NIMOL (Network Installation Management on Linux).

 

This is a guide on installing and configuring:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-install-aix.html#instlinim

 

– To increase bandwidth

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/aix/v6r1/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.aix.commadmn%2Fdoc%2Fcommadmndita%2Fetherchannel_consider.htm