Part 3: Rac/Linux/Firewire – Software Requirements, Versions, etc.

Software Requirements, versions, etc

Advance notice for beginners out there. I’ve installed Linux probably 20-30 times over the last 10 years, and it’s gotten a lot easier, however, you’ll need to have some decent skill at kernel installations. I’ll outline what I did that finally worked, but I’ll also say that I tried getting this setup to work on a couple of other boxes before I ended up using the emachines ones. I think the kernel which the Linux Firewire team has compiled and patched to their liking is pretty finicky, hardware-wise.

RedHat 8.0

I can’t go into the details of installing Linux in this short article, and there are plenty of resources on the web to help you. You’ll need to get that up and running first, with the 1394 card in the box.

Oracle 9.2.0.1

Oracle is a beast to install, and challenging for the beginner. Luckily there are a number of resources on the web.

patch 9.2.0.2

This patch is a *REQUIRED* patch. The guys on the Linux Firewire project assure me that the Oracle Cluster Manager has a lot of bugs and won’t work straight out of the box from the 9.2.0.1 release. Here’s a little twist. Although this is an *OPEN SOURCE* project, and the source is all free, and you can download Oracle and play with it to your heart’s content, to download a patch, you need access to Oracle’s Metalink, which requires you to have a software license. Not much I can say here folks. Use your imagination on getting ahold of this patch. Maybe if you place nice, someone on an email list will post it temporarily for you or something. It’s 235M. 🙂

Click on the “patches” link along the left.

Search for patch 2632931

Also, take a look at this note:

Doc ID: Note:217811.1

Subject: ALERT: 9.2.0.2 Patchset for Linux Does Not

Apply Correctly in the RAC Environment

Type: ALERT

Status: PUBLISHED

Content Type: TEXT/PLAIN

Creation Date: 07-NOV-2002

Last Revision Date: 08-JAN-2003

Part 1 – Introduction