Oracle installation on non-standard file systems

[Shivkumar]

Hi,

I have seen at most of the places that oracle was installed in the file system /u01, /u02 etc. Someone said it is due to some security standard published in the past.
Can someone let me know what was this security standard for installing oracle or other applications in non-standard file system ?

Thanks,
Shiv

[Hein van den Heuvel · Accepted solution]

Pick a name, any name. Oracle doesn't care. Actually, Oracle cares a little bit. Check out (google) OFA: Optimal Flexibile Architecture.

Pick a protection, any protection, Oracle doesn't care, but you should care.

The things that realy matter for the mount pount selection are the performance and availabilty characterics. Those had better meet the needs of the intended usage. The naming matters little or none and any requirements there can readily be resolved through (soft)links.

Hope this helps some,
Hein.

[Victor Fridyev]

Hi,

You can install ORACLE SW in any directory, which you prefer or have. Only take into account your future needs (patches or additional versions), which may require additional disk space. From my experience I know that it's not the best idea to build ORACLE_HOME under /usr or /var directory.

HTH

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Shiv,

No problem installing oracle and having the data any place you want.

Where I last worked we used /oracle2 /oracle3 and /oracle1 for data /oracle for binaries.

It is totally up to you.

SEP

[Bill Hassell]

Note that /u01, /u02, etc usually refer to data directories which is not where you install Oracle. The /u... directories are conventional names for the data (and other data-related) directories. To be consistent with SysV V.4 naming conventions, /opt is where optional software (such as Oracle) would be installed. If you need different versions, you could specify install directories of /opt/oracle9 and /opt/oracle10, etc.

About the only possible security problem (for HP-UX) would be to use /usr/local using the default permissions. /usr/local should never be used for large application software packages.

[Yogeeraj_1]

hi shiv,

allow me also to add the following:

It is always suggested that the Oracle File Architecture (OFA) standard be used, which would be $ORACLE_BASE/oracle. The datafiles should be placed in the subdirectory /oradata


In fact, OFA - A directory structure that allows you to easily maintain administration and upgrading tasks. The basic concept is to separate data, configuration files, and executables to allow you to run multiple versions of Oracle products.

hope this helps too!

kind regards
yogeeraj

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi Shiv,
Truly i dont see amything linked to something to do with security...
We for instance use /data as mount point for all concerns about data and in order to not be stuck do no refer to names so on severs you would have /data/mnt1 mnt2 mnt3 mnt4...and when a new data file system is needed it will be of course called mnt(n+1) and the DBa will create their data structure from here such as oradata etc...
What this has interesting is for backup purpose
in the policies we just have to mention once /data/*


All the best
Victor