Pre-Installation Preparation And Verification; Verifying Memory And Swap Space; Verifying Temporary(/Tmp) Space; Verifying Software Packages (Rpms) - Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 5.1 - LINUX ORACLE Tuning Manual

Chapter 19.
Pre-Installation Preparation and
Verification

19.1. Verifying Memory and Swap Space

Oracle states that the system must have at least 512MB of RAM and 1GB of swap space or a swap
space twice the size of the RAM. For systems with more than 2 GB of RAM it states the swap space
can be between one and two times the size of the RAM. You might also want to read Swap Space.
To check the size of physical memory, execute:
grep MemTotal /proc/meminfo
To check the size of swap space, execute:
grep SwapTotal /proc/meminfo

19.2. Verifying Temporary(/tmp) Space

According to Oracle's documentation, the Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) requires up to 400 MB of
free space in the /tmp directory.
To check the space in /tmp, run:
$ df /tmp
If you do not have enough space in the /tmp file system, you can temporarily create a tmp directory in
another file system. Here is how you can do this:
su - root
mkdir /<AnotherFilesystem> /tmp
chown root.root /<AnotherFilesystem> /tmp
chmod 1777 /<AnotherFilesystem> /tmp
export TEMP=/<AnotherFilesystem>
export TMPDIR=/<AnotherFilesystem>
The TEMP=/<AnotherFilesystem> file is used by Oracle. The TMPDIR=/<AnotherFilesystem> file
is used by Linux programs like the linker "ld". Note as well <AnotherFilesystem> should be adjusted
to fit your filesystem. When you are done with the Oracle installation, shut down Oracle and remove
the temporary /tmp directory:
su - root
rmdir /<AnotherFilesystem>/tmp
unset TEMP
unset TMPDIR

19.3. Verifying Software Packages (RPMs)

Before you install an Oracle Database 10g you need to check your system for required RPMs. Always
use the latest stable RPMs and kernels for your system, Red Hat manages the repositories to ensure
67