Since I had to face some complications, I decided to blog a little "DONOTFORGET", so I'll manage to get it done more quickly the next time.

Important: Make sure, your machine has enough memory for installation!!! I chose to assign 1.5G.

Maybe of interest: If you sendmail service takes ages at startup, you should give your machine a full-qualified-name (including a domain). In /etc/hosts you can define aliases like 192.168.200.140 centos54 centos54.localdomain localhost localhost.localdomain

Let’s start…First off (after setting up an empty CentOS VM; we’ll skip this, since it isn’t too difficult) we probably want to install VMware Tools, so let's start with

Preparing for VMWARE TOOLS

I chose to install VMware Tools because I never installed it on Linux (plus I wanted to see if drag’n’dropping files also works for Linux). From installing VMware tools on Windows, we know that we simply have to select "Install VMware Tools" from menu, but in Linux, this isn't enough.
First off, we have to prepare the installation by installing required software packages (gcc and C-headerfiles) by yum install kernel-devel gcc.

I - later on - had problems with the headerfiles version. They were of a xen-version, so I had to yum install kernel and yum remove xen kernel-xen. This helped me a lot so many, many thanks go out to Zack Williams. (Note: I also tried to only yum install kernel, but this didn't work anyway...)

To make the installation a bit easier, we softlink our header files by ln –s /usr/src/kernels/[version] /usr/src/linux. You can find out your header version by executing uname -r.

We’re done with preparing the VMware Tools-Installation.

Reboot your machine and – when up again - choose "Install VMware Tools" from Menu. Either choose the graphical way and click around for joy or mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/.

Then tar -C /tmp -zxvf /mnt/VMwareTools-[version].tar.gz and umount /mnt. You’ll find a vmwave-install.pl in your /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib.

Run it by ./vmware-install.pl and follow the installation by answering with default values.

Reboot again and you’re through (a little configuration utility will show before reboot).

Preparing for ORACLE 11G

IMPORTANT: Oracle has a quick installation guide here. You can and really should follow the guide, but you really should read carefully. Here, you'll only find what I did.

Again, we have to prepare the installation and add some packages by following statement (you might already have installed some of those, but these are the required packages according to the Quick Install Guide):

yum install binutils compat-libstdc++ elfutils-libelf elfutils-libelf-devel glibc glibc-common glibc-devel glibc-headers gcc gcc-c++ libaio libaio-devel libgcc libstdc++ libstdc++-devel make numactl-devel sysstat unixODBC-2.2.11 unixODBC-devel-2.2.11

You can also install them one by one - I noticed network problems with my VM when firing the whole command. To be safe, I chose to reboot after installing those packages.

Afterwards, we can create the necessary users and groups (assume, none of the groups or users exist):

• /usr/sbin/groupadd oinstall
• /usr/sbin/groupadd dba
• /usr/sbin/useradd -g oinstall -G dba oracle
• passwd oracle

P.S.: If you ever wondered how to delete a user and recreate it: you'll face the problem, that his mailbox and home-directory remained after deleting the user. You can rm -rf /home/[user] and rm -rf /var/spool/mail/[user].

Edit your /etc/sysctl.conf and edit/add following values (IMPORTANT: There are mistakes with the net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range and the net.core.rmem_default in Oracle’s Quick Install Guide!!!)

• fs.file-max = 6815744
• kernel.shmall = 2097152
• kernel.shmmax = 2147483648
• kernel.shmmni = 4096
• kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
• net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000 #IMPORTANT: these are the correct values!!!
  
• net.core.rmem_default = 4194304 #IMPORTANT: this is the correct value!!!
  
• net.core.rmem_max = 4194304
• net.core.wmem_default = 262144
• net.core.wmem_max = 1048576

Reload these settings by /sbin/sysctl -p and review them by /sbin/sysctl -a.

Edit your /etc/security/limits.conf and add

• oracle soft nproc 2047
• oracle hard nproc 16384
• oracle soft nofile 1024
• oracle hard nofile 65536

Edit your /etc/pam.d/login and add

• session required pam_limits.so

Edit your /etc/profile and add (you might format it better than it's listed here)

• if [ $USER = "oracle" ]; then
• if [ $SHELL = "/bin/ksh" ]; then
• ulimit -p 16384
• ulimit -n 65536
• else
• ulimit -u 16384 -n 65536
• fi
• fi

I chose to install Oracle to /data/oracle, so I created the directory by

• mkdir -p /data/oracle
• chown -R oracle:oinstall /data/oracle
• chmod -R 775 /data/oracle

If you're lacking Swap-Space, run the following commands to create a 512 MB Swapfile (512 * 1024 = 524288):

• dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile1 bs=1024 count=524288
• mkswap /swapfile1
• swapon /swapfile1

Then edit your /etc/fstab and add /swapfile1 swap swap defaults 0 0.

To verify what you did, type free -m. I found this helpful, so thanks go out to Vivek Gite.

To be safe, and due to me installing not using PuTTY and X11-Forwarding (explanation later on), let's xhost +localhost before su - oracle and the execution of the user's startup-scripts by . ./.bash_profile.

If you use PuTTY and X11-Forwarding you probably have to set up your $DISPLAY. In any case, you have to set some environment variables for your installation-process. I recommend to either use screen to resume your session or install via the machine and startx, since an aborted installation due to a SSH-crash in PuTTY will lead to re-installing Oracle from the very beginning (I know what I'm talking about...).

• TMP=/tmp
• TMPDIR=/tmp
• ORACLE_BASE=/data/oracle/app/oracle
• ORACLE_SID=dctm
• export TMP TMPDIR ORACLE_BASE ORACLE_SID

Since I downloaded Oracle 11g, I unzipped the archive to /opt/oracle and then ran the installer by ./runInstaller.

With all these steps, Oracle Universal Installer only nagged about the network-configuration (I need to have eth0 via DHCP).

So, "just" complete the Setup-Procedure and you’re done.

Afterwards

After the installation completed, I added some more environment variables to ~./bash_profile:

• ORACLE_BASE=/data/oracle
• ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/db_1/
• ORACLE_SID=dctm
• export ORACLE_BASE ORACLE_HOME ORACLE_SID

Autostarting Oracle

If you want your Database to startup automatically, you'll have to walk some extra steps. First off, you should edit your bootloader and add enforcing=0 as a kernel paramter.

Then edit your /etc/oratab and change it to 'Y'

• orcl:/data/oracle/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/db_1:Y

Then create /etc/init.d/dbora:

• #!/bin/sh
• touch /home/oracle/dbora_ran_$1
• # chkconfig: 345 99 10
• # description: Oracle auto start-stop script.
• #
• # Set ORACLE_HOME to be equivalent to the $ORACLE_HOME
• # from which you wish to execute dbstart and dbshut;
• #
• # Set ORA_OWNER to the user id of the owner of the
• # Oracle database in ORACLE_HOME.
• #source /usr/local/bin/locvars
• ORA_OWNER=oracle
• ORACLE_HOME=/data/oracle/app/oracle/product/11.1.0/db_1
• if [ ! -f $ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbstart ]
• then
• echo "Oracle startup: cannot start"
• exit
• fi
• case "$1" in
• 'start')
• # Start the Oracle databases:
• # The following command assumes that the oracle login
• # will not prompt the user for any values
• su - $ORA_OWNER -c "$ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbstart $ORACLE_HOME"
• echo su - $ORA_OWNER -c '$ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbstart $ORACLE_HOME'
• ;;
• 'stop')
• # Stop the Oracle databases:
• # The following command assumes that the oracle login
• # will not prompt the user for any values
• su - $ORA_OWNER -c "$ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbshut $ORACLE_HOME"
• echo su - $ORA_OWNER -c '$ORACLE_HOME/bin/dbshut $ORACLE_HOME'
• ;;
• esac

Finally chmod 750 /etc/init.d/dbora and chkconfig --add dbora.

Now, that everything's done, I, for the first time in my life, don't have any real goals. For those of you, who don't know me: I NEED TO HAVE GOALS! So it's a bit confusing right now. But I'd say, that's merely because I graduated from university and haven't really realized, what's done now (but, according to the last days of party hardy, it's gotta be huge :-) ).

This is like the first time, where there's nothing else to do but getting older and older and try to avoid problems, build a house, buy a dog, become a daddy, stay contented ... all the things, everybody else does. The problem is: I'm not used to that.

The next week (one week off, by the way :-) ) will bring me a job and hopefully a vision of the next steps for me...but for now, there's nothing else to do, than just do nothing. But somehow that's really hard to get along with...

Coming up next: no more boring private stuff but for instance an in-depth review and experiments with my new mobile phone, I bought myself as a motivation for passing the exams :-)

I recently finished my Diploma-Thesis on "Indicators towards a successful market penetration of mobile services". I was a little astonished, when Chris T. stated, he'd write his one in LaTeX (he's a good guy, but not experienced with LaTeX) and LyX but after all, I also thought it might be a good idea to write with and learn LaTeX a little. So I got myself MiKTeX and TeXnicCenter and started.

After some days of hard work getting my document look like I wanted it to look, I really was enthusiastic about that decission. I ended up with some little problems in my document, but they were just so minimal I could disregard them. I think, it could have saved some time but I also think it SHOULD be a little easier. Especially with tables or URL-hyphenation. Anyways - my first expedition into LaTeX was interesting, annoying and in fact not really faster than I would have been with Word. Sad but true.

Next. My mobile phone really was crap. Nobody could really talk to me on the phone since they couldn't understand what I was saying. I spend nights on research but I ended up - YES - finding an adequate smartphone but - NO - couldn't find an adequate carrier with adequate data-packages. So I waited and waited and waited and waited and ... finally couldn't wait anymore.

So...I went to a local shop and got the cheapest mobile available - a Samsung SGH-C270. Unlocked for € 25.-, including a € 5.- prepaid SIM-Card. Sounds not so bad, but - after all - is so bad. Then, I wanted to migrate my (old) mobiles contacts to my new mobile. I tried to I bought a USB-Cable and tried to connect - NOT possible, since Samsung seems to distinguish a lot from model to model. So I thought - get the new SIM into the new phone, send your contacts from your old phone with your 1000 SMS-flat-fee-packet, one by one, to the new phone. I started and: failed. Because the SGH-C270 cannot handle vCards. Some hours ago, I ordered another data cable one via eBay, hopefully this will work or I fear, I'll go crazy and send this VERY-UNsmartphone to hell.

Next disappointment: Google, again. Alongside trying to migrate my phone-contacts, I uploaded all my contacts to Google Contacts. It's very easy and you can also migrate these contacts birthdays to Google Calendar easily (what encouraged me to delete my Google Calendar Birthday-Calendar, since it was redundant). BUT: you cannot share this new, LINKED calendar to your Google API-Connection like e.g. in your Website.

So I thought, I should not connect to Google Calendar in order to retrieve my contacts birthdays, but to Google Contacts itself. I ended up having a very COMPLICATED and very UNperformant script doing this for me, still not able to sort these dates.

This is 2009, I guess. We should be able to say "Okay, ...

• I have Google Contacts. I want to retrieve the next 14-days birthdays in just ONE query.
• I have a new phone. I want to up- and download my contacts.
• I want to have a LaTeX-table over two pages without spending nights on research.

Why can't I?".

So we decided to buy one of these "Throw-Away-Cameras" and finally got the pictures off it. Not that they are very good pictures, but they present our maybe sole visit to ancient greece - Olympia.

I just uploaded them to my Picasa account - You can find them by navigating here or click "Photography" and then choose the album "Kato Achaia (Urlaub)".

I am very glad about gaining that much experience in those days. Today, I think I am better prepared working with computers than those people, that got themselves computers during the end-1990s. Why do I say so? Because I spent so much time "repairing" computers owned by people who just thought "Everybody has one. I need one too.". Plus: I know shurtcuts and can work a little faster, since I still don't really like that mouse next to me.

So, now that you know a little about my history, I'll try to allude you to the present where my little, 11-year-old brother attends hichschool and it seems that EDP is really reaching schools. He, remember: 11-year-old, has to do powerpoint-presentations during his speeches in school. They write email. A whole lot of. And: they have a locked section in their school's website, where they work with different WebApps. Okay, they provide GoogleApps, but in fact, my little brother is able to create a small and personal website with pictures, links and stuff.

I was rather early creating websites by starting in 1999. I was 15 then.

Why did I have to make that post? Sure, I am proud of that kid but my second brother, just gotten 17, didn't really have such education in highschool. They did something called ECDL. I don't have ECDL, but I think most of you know about it's worth. I really hope, schools will carry on using computers and software to make kids used to working with computers.

It seems like, schools find computers important for the pupils lives. BUT - when will they finally see, that also a driving-license is important? Hard for me to say that, but - uaaarrrgggghhh - we should copy this one from america.