Installing Oracle Database is a time-consuming process, especially when done manually. There are plenty of resources on the web for accomplishing the process using Vagrant, Ansible, or other automated build tools. These are helpful and tend to work well, but in some cases, we’re not allowed to make use of this tooling. Having to install 19c and setup databases by hand can consume a lot of precious DBA time.

I compiled a long set of documentation after going through many database installations. There are several issues that can crop up during the installation due to either bugs in the software or error on the part of the DBA. It would be great if there was a simple shell script that handled all of the steps needed to prep the operating system for Oracle Database. A shell script is simple, easily changed, and very transparent to the end user. We can see step-by-step the various actions taken by the script and modify it as needed to suit our needs.

Over on my GitHub page, I created a simple shell script that automates the process of installing Oracle Database 19c on Oracle Linux 8. I tested this script against Oracle Linux 8.8 and have achieved success with it multiple times. The script assumes that you have a freshly installed operating system and that the oracle OS user has not yet been created. It truly takes care of the process from start to finish. The one pre-requisite that you must manually do is to download the Oracle Database ZIP installation media and place it on the server on which it is to be installed. I’m no lawyer, but I’m fairly certain from a legal standpoint that I would run into trouble if I were to package this software as a part of the provided install scripts.

Give the installation script a go and see if you find it helpful. If you run into any issues, feel free to let me know and I will work on improving the script to handle any edge cases that I have not yet personally encountered.

-Dustin