Oracle Installation Guide - Chapter 5

Appendix C: Installing Oracle on a Mac Oracle can be installed and used on a Mac, but this requires some setup work. There are many devoted Mac users today, yet the Mac platform is not supported by the major, modern DBMS vendors, including Oracle and SQL Server. If you find yourself in the situation where your home computer is a Mac, and you do not have a readily available Windows machine available for DBMS installation, you may need to install virtual machine software so that you can run Windows on your Mac. Using a Virtual Machine A virtual machine mostly behaves as any other application, but has some differences. The virtual machine has an application window that can be minimized and closed, the same as any other application. What makes a virtual machine different from an ordinary application is that an entire operating system is installed and executes inside of the virtual machine. The operating system running inside of the virtual machine, termed a “guest” operating system, runs as if it were to be on its own physical machine. This means we can install and use applications native to the guest operating system. Thus, once we are running a virtual machine, we are effectively running two operating systems at the same time – our machine’s operating system (termed the “host” operating system), and the guest operating system – and are using applications native to both operating systems at the same time. In our case, we are interested in running Windows as a guest operating system on our Mac. There are many virtual machines available for Macs; however, perhaps the two most popular are VirtualBox and Parallels. VirtualBox, available at http://virtualbox.org, is free to download and use. Parallels, available at http://parallels.com, costs money, but offers more features. Students have successfully used both to run both Windows and Oracle on a Mac in our BU program. Follow the steps below to install and use Oracle on your Mac: 1. Download and install your virtual machine of choice. 2. If you do not have a licensed copy of Windows, you will need to download one from the MSDNAA site. BU students are entitled to free, licensed copies of the latest versions of Windows through the MSDNAA site, and details on how to access this site are available in your course’s syllabus. 3. Install Windows inside of the virtual machine. 4. Proceed with the Oracle install instructions, starting from the beginning of this install guide, installing Oracle into the guest operating system. Note that Oracle offers a preconfigured VirtualBox image that comes with Oracle installed on Linux. The following URLs may be helpful to you to access this image: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/community/developer‐vm/index.html http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise‐edition/databaseappdev‐vm‐ 161299.html Page 64 of 76 Dual Booting Dual booting is another solution available to you if you have a modern Mac that runs on an Intel‐based processor. All new Macs run on Intel‐based processors, but older ones do not. Dual booting is a fairly simple concept. Normally when you power on your computer, your operating system starts booting immediately, and this happens seamlessly so that it appears your operating system is just a natural part of the computer. In actuality, when your computer is first powered on, it first loads a boot loader program, and that boot loader tells the operating system to start. If there is only one operating system, you may not even notice the work of the boot loader, because it always starts the same operating system. However, there is no reason why one cannot install two operating systems on their computer. In such a case, each time your computer is powered on, the boot loader asks you which operating system you would like to start, and also usually defaults to the first one if you do not select an option, after a timeout period. All new Macs come with what Apple terms “Boot Camp”, which is a built‐in utility that supports dual booting Mac OS X and Windows. To install Oracle in Windows on your Mac, you will need to: 1. Review the prerequisites needed to run Boot Camp and to install Windows as a second operating system on your Mac computer. The prerequisites are listed at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1461. Ensure that your computer meets the requirements before continuing. 2. Obtain a licensed copy of Windows. If you do not have a licensed copy of Windows, you will need to download one from the MSDNAA site. BU students are entitled to free, licensed copies of the latest versions of Windows through the MSDNAA site, and details on how to access this site are available in your course’s syllabus. 3. Burn the copy of Windows onto a CD, or copy the ISO image onto a USB stick. Boot Camp supports installing Windows from either a CD or a USB stick. 4. Follow the steps recommended by Apple to install Windows using Boot Camp. Instructions are included with the utility, and you can also start here as well: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1461 5. After Windows is installed, reboot your computer then boot into Windows. Proceed with the Oracle install instructions, starting from the beginning of this install guide. When you need to run Oracle, boot into Windows. When you need to use your Mac applications, boot into OS X. Using Virtual Machine Versus Dual Booting An obvious question is, which of these two options should you use? The answer depends upon your computer hardware, and your personal preferences. The following table summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of both options: Page 65 of 76 Virtual Machine Advantages The guest operating system and its applications run at the same time as the host operating system and its applications. There is clipboard sharing between applications in both operating systems. Text can be copied from an application in one operating system, and pasted into an application in the second operating system. Dual Booting Because both operating systems run natively on the computer’s hardware, there is no performance overhead. Because both operating systems directly access the computer’s hardware, there are not hardware compatibility issues. The setup is conceptually simpler. Simply boot the operating system you need upon startup. Disadvantages Because the guest operating system is running under the control of virtual machine software, the guest operating system and its applications will execute noticeably slower than if they were running natively on the computer. Because both operating systems run concurrently, the performance of the host operating system may degrade. You can only run one operating system and its applications at a time. To start the second operating system, you must reboot. There is no clipboard sharing between applications in both operating systems. If text is to be shared across applications, it must be saved in a file then loaded by applications in the other operating system. If your hardware is powerful enough to support running two operating systems simultaneously, and still perform reasonably well, you will want to use a virtual machine, so that you can run both your Mac applications and your Windows applications at the same time. If you are concerned about obtaining the best performance for both operating systems, you may want to dual boot. A third advanced option, supported by the Parallels virtual machine, is to run the same Windows installation under a dual boot configuration and a virtual machine configuration. This is an advanced setup, and will require two Windows license registrations, as running the same installation both ways is the equivalent of running Windows on two different physical machines. Page 66 of 76 Appendix D: Caring for Your Oracle Installation This appendix explains how to care for your Oracle installation to help prevent corruption in your Oracle database, and to avoid the need for a complete reinstallation. You now have your Oracle software installed, and your database is up and running. Great! That is the first hurdle you will leap in your course. One of the problems many students have had is that they are unaware of how to gracefully stop and start their databases. If they simply turn off their machines, the server is literally taken out from under the database. Oracle does not like this, and can become corrupted very easily. This appendix shows you how to verify that you have a database up and running so you can do your coursework, and how to gracefully stop and start your database. Before learning those steps, however, there are some basics for you to learn. Process 1 – Getting Started Oracle has a number of background processes it uses to keep the database up and running and healthy. Some of these are DBWR (Database writer, which writes changes to disk), LGWR (Log Writer, which writes changes to what are called redo logs), and PMON and SMON (Process Monitor and System Monitor, which are the head honchos of all the processes). If you run a Unix System (like Linux or Sun Solaris) you will see these running individually. If you run a Windows system, like most students in the program, you won’t see these individually, but you can see a single service under the Windows Services screen. The way to see if your background processes are running in Windows is as follows: (All key strokes are in bold, all commands are in red bold) Above you will see the picture of the Windows Logo Key (what I call WLK). To get to your Windows services: Press the WLK and the letter ‘r’ on your keyboard. This will bring up the run box. Type in services.msc and hit enter. This will bring up the background services that are running on your Windows machine. Scroll down to the O’s (for Oracle). Page 67 of 76 You only need two of these running when you do your Labs. OracleOraDB12Home1TNSListener OracleServiceORCL The “ORCL” in the second service above is a typical SID for an Oracle database database – yours could be different. For ALL THE OTHER services listed above, set these to Manual and Stopped. You do this as follows: Right Click on the service itself (for example OracleVssWriterORCL) Click on Properties Click on the down arrow next to Startup Type Select Manual Under Service Status Click “Stop” Click on Apply Page 68 of 76 For the two services mentioned above, OracleOraDB12Home1TNSListener and OracleServiceORCL, set their properties to Manual by following the same procedure as above: Press the WLK and the letter ‘r’ on your keyboard. This will bring up the run box. Type in services.msc and hit enter. Scroll down to the O’s. Right click on the service Select properties Click on the down arrow next to Startup Type Select Manual Click Apply When these are set to Manual, you will have to start them each time you start your computer. Follow Process 4 to start them. Page 69 of 76 Process 2 – Verifying There are multiple layers to the Oracle database and Oracle database software. You have just worked with one layer, that of services. There is a layer below that which are the Oracle binaries. There is one other we will discuss, the SQL Engine. The SQL Engine can be accessed through the command prompt on your Windows machine, and requires specific commands (which you will learn in your course) to give you back information you requested from your database. Press the WLK and the letter ‘r’ on your keyboard. This will bring up the run box. Type in cmd.exe and hit enter. This will bring up your Windows command prompt as shown below. Type in the following: sqlplus / as sysdba; You are in your database! This shows your SQL prompt, which is the doorway to the SQL Engine for Oracle. Page 70 of 76 Now, at the SQL Prompt “SQL >” type in the following, making sure to hit enter after each command. SQL > set pages 9999 SQL > select instance_name, status, logins from v$instance; You should see something like the following. (Again, if your global database name is different than ORCL, such as XE for the Express Edition, you should see that name in the INSTANCE_NAME field). If you get the following error, chances are your services are not started. See Process 4. You have now determined your database is up and running and accessible. Now we’ll learn how to stop and start it. Process 3 – Stopping Your Database BEFORE YOU SHUT DOWN YOUR COMPUTER EVERY DAY, STOP THE DATABASE FIRST !!! Page 71 of 76 If you shut your database server (your laptop or desktop) down prior to stopping your database, you can easily corrupt it. What you are doing is literally pulling the storage out from underneath your database and software. At the SQL Command prompt (as shown above): sqlplus / as sysdba; shutdown immediate; Then you can go into services and stop the OracleServiceORCL and OracleOraDB12Home1TNSListener. Press the WLK and the letter ‘r’ on your keyboard. This will bring up the run box. Type in services.msc and hit enter. Scroll down to the O’s. Right click on the Service Select Stop Click Apply Page 72 of 76 This will gracefully shut everything down. To start things up again, go to Process 4.  Process 4 – Starting Your Database In order to start your database after you have started your server (laptop or desktop) up, all you have to do is start the services OracleOraDB12Home1TNSListener and OracleServiceORCL. This will automatically start your database and listener. Press the WLK and the letter ‘r’ on your keyboard. This will bring up the run box. Type in services.msc and hit enter. Scroll down to the O’s. Right Click on the service itself Under Service Status Click “Start” Click on Apply Process 5 – Putting it into a Batch File You can do most of the above (stopping and starting your databases) through a batch file so you don’t have to go into multiple screens. This can make you more efficient. To set up a stop database command file: Open up a Notepad (a new .txt file) on your Desktop Type in the following command (this particular .bat will stop your database) net stop OracleServiceORCL net stop OracleOraDB12Home1TNSListener Then save this file as stop_database.bat on your Desktop. Note the “.bat” in the file name, then Save as type “All Files”. Page 73 of 76 BEFORE YOU RUN THE STOP DATABASE bat file, BE SURE TO DO THE SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATE as shown in Process 3. To then run this command file, open up a command prompt, change directories to your Desktop, and simply type in the filename – stop_database.bat. To set up a start database command file: Page 74 of 76 Open up a Notepad (a new .txt file) on your Desktop Type in the following command net start OracleServiceORCL net start OracleOraDB12Home1TNSListener Then save this file as start_database.bat on your Desktop. Note I put the “.bat” in the file name, then Save as type “All Files”. To run this command file, open up a command prompt, change directories to your Desktop, and simply type in the filename – start_database.bat. Page 75 of 76 If you care for your database as indicated in this appendix, you can help keep your Oracle installation alive and healthy for the duration of your course. Page 76 of 76