Problems installing Oracle 8.1.1 on HPUX 11 32 bit system

[Henrique Silva_3]

Hello everyone.

We got a K420 with 512 MB memorty, one CPU, and the firmware only allowed us to install the 32 bit version of HPUX 11 ( we are looking to upgrade it ).

Installed all patches known to us, set up the kernel parameters, the OFA, environments BUT, when trying to install oracle from media or from the /disk1, /disk2 setup, we ALWAYS get the same errors. It does not matter if it is a typycal, minimum,custom install.

"Error in writing to file /opt/apps/oracle/product/8.1.7/javavm/admin/classes.bin
"
after making sure the file exists and is writable by oracle, we retry and get an error. We ignore it and go on, but then, have TONS of errors coming on the linking phase. The install finishes, but the database assistant fails when trying to create a starter database, saying that the ORACLE_HOME environment is not set correctly, which it is !!!!
I have installed every patch I can, free up enough disk space on /tmp ( over 500 MB ) double check kernel parameters, environments, changed source and destination locations on the many disks we have ( hfs file systems BTW ), but ALWAYS have the same problem.
when trying to copying the second oracle disk over to disk, we have a directory under stage that has no permissions and can not be copied.

My question here is. Could this be a media problem ? Why would it not be able to write to the classes.bin file in the drive ????

Any help here is appreciated.

Thanks,

Henrique Silva

[jok llamera]

how do you mount the CD?

joks

[Steven Gillard_2]

Lots of Oracle installation problems occur due to incorrect kernel parameters and/or patch levels. Can you start by posting the output to kmtune? The ones to focus on are maxdsiz, sem* and shm*.

Regards,
Steve

[Henrique Silva_3]

The cds were pfs mounted, as per installation instructions. I tried to install it using the cds at first, but after a coupe failures, I copied the contents to /disk1 and /disk2, but continue to get the same errors.

I am attaching the kernel parameters and a list of all patches installed on this server.

The kernel parameters are set as per installation instructions, but since this is a fresh install of hpux 11 32 bit from September 11, 2001 CDs, I am not sure about the patches. I installed a bunch of patches that oracle wants, and a buddy tells me that all the patches he could find regarding hpux 11 are installed, but the puzzle continues to be, WHY the classes.bin file can not be written to during installation. If it was media related, I would think you could not READ from it, as opposed to writing to a disk. BTW, I changed the target disk 4 times, and it always has the same problems.

another thing that leads me to believe that we might still be missing a patch, is that when I put a process on the background, it does not show the name of such process. When you do "jobs", it says "job name not known", but the job is running.

I think the install was the base hpux 11, and other modules were installed afterwards. Swap space is 1 GB and I have just added another 2 GB from a file system.

There are only 512 MB of ram on this server, but I am not getting any messages saying that the installation is failing for lack of disk space or ram. As a matter a fact, the installation finishes, if you ignore all the errors during the linking phase, but the big one is the "not being able to write to the classes.bin file "

Thank you,

Henrique Silva

[Henrique Silva_3]

these are the patches installed !!!

Henrique Silva

[Steven Gillard_2]

You look like you're patched fairly well up to date, but I have a couple of suggestions with the kernel parms:

- increase maxdsiz to 256MB at least
- increase maxfiles to 1024, and possibly maxfiles_lim to 2048
- reduce dbc_pct_max to 30 (~150MB buffer cache max), maybe lower depending on what other apps you are running.

Then try the installation again.

Cheers,
Steve

[Henrique Silva_3]

Thanks Steven.
I have created a new kernel with the new values and I am running yet another install !!!

If this does not work, we will install hpux 11 , full instead of the base and go from there. The reason we installed the base was the lack of disk space. We did not want to bother with volume groups, so we created a bunch of hfs file systems, and because we only got a 2 GB root file system, we could not fit everything plus the swap space there.

I was thinking of creating a 4 GB /dev/vg00 for installing the full hpux 11, patch it up, and go from there.

One thing I can not understand still, is WHY we get the error that oracle can not write to the classes.bin file during installation ? That is the first error we get and it seems to me that it goes bad from then on. The file exists, is writable by oracle, and we even chmod 777 on it, I moved it and tried the retry and it DOES crteate a new file, but still gives the error message back.
COULD IT BE THE MEDIA ????

Anyways, I will let you know in 45 minutes or so if we got this error again !!!

Cheers,

Henrique Silva

[Steven Gillard_2]

My guess would be that this error occurs because the installer process hits the soft maxfiles limit of 60 open files when it is trying to write this file.

Hopefully I'm right and it all works for you this time! :)

Regards,
Steve

[Henrique Silva_3]

close but no cigar :-((((

The install just failed with the same error message !!!!

I am puzzled here, and since I do not have another media to install from, I will rebuild the OS and order another media now, to see if we get it by early next week and try this again !!!!

ANY MORE IDEAS OUT THERE ????

Thanks,

Henrique

PS.: INSTALLING SYBASE IS MUCH, MUCH EASIER THAN THIS !!!! :-((

[Erik Trolle]

I remember a problem with the length of the full path names of the files, when installing Oracle from CD-ROM. Have forgotten the details, though, but an idea is to install under /8.1.7 rather than /opt/apps/oracle/product/8.1.7

[Henrique Silva_3]

Thanks Erik.

You must be thinking of the 8 character problem on the windows platform.

My ORACLE_BASE is /opt/apps/oracle and the
ORACLE_HOME is $ORACLE_BASE/product/8.1.7, as the OFA suggests !!!!

I can try ot simply changinf the ORACLE_BASE to /u1/oracle, and that will do, BUT, as of right now, we are reinstalling the OS on this server, and will use the full install of the hpux 11, as opposed to the base. I still beliece that we might have a problem with the MEDIA, but do not know how to verify it !!!!

Thanks for the suggestions,

Henrique Silva

[T G Manikandan]

Please check the below
Make sure you have the user
oracle
with group dba
all lower case.dba should be the primary group

Then make sure that you have proper permissions for the directory you are installing.
Also give the ownership of the home directoryi.e./opt/app to oracle and dba

chown -R oracle:dba /opt/app/...

Also try using chmod 777 /opt/app/...

[Henrique Silva_3]

TJ, oracle installation instructions say that oinstall should be the primary group for the oracle account and dba the second group.

That was all done. I did not have dba as the primary group, but it could write to that file, since we changed the permission to 777 after the error crept up !!!

Thanks,

Henrique

[T G Manikandan]

I had some problems before because I did not have dba as the primary group.
Just give it a try.

[Raju_6]

Oracle process unable to write because of lack of resource. Increase the swap space and try again.

Good Luck !
Raju

[Wodisch]

Hello Henrique,

Oracle 8.1.7 needed about 300MB of "maxdsiz", 400MB of free space in "/tmp", only five patches in addition to the "Core OS" CD-ROM, and about 400MB in swap-space (in total), so you seem to fine on these values.
Could you check your disk-space for the file-system you try to install Oracle into? The GUI is a plain lie about the amount of disk-space needed - have about 1.5GB free there, before you even start the installation!
The only other idea I have is to check your "ulimit" before you start the installation - it should "unlimited" or very, very big...

HTH,
Wodisc

[T G Manikandan]

Hello,
Did you check your syslog file for any disk problems?
Did you solve the problem?
What is the status?

Thanks
G Manikandan

[Henrique Silva_3]

Hello everyone.

We completely reinstall the OS, installing more options besides the minimum base install.

Installed all the patches, jdk 1.2, etc,etc, and are now, doing the oracle pre-install tasks and will try a new install today. We found one bad disk on a controller we could not access before, but nothing was being logged to the syslog, since we were not using anything on that bus chain.

Also, we got a new set of CDs to make sure there was nothing wrong with the media, and I will let you guys know later today what the status of this install is !!!

Thanks for all the help,

Henrique Silva