Daniel Westermann's Blog

if you are used to use silent installation for the oracle database software you need to provide additional parameters: oracle.install.db.BACKUPDBA_GROUP, oracle.install.db.DGDBA_GROUP and oracle.install.db.KMDBA_GROUP

./runInstaller oracle.install.option=INSTALL_DB_SWONLY \
    ORACLE_BASE=/opt/oracle/product/base \
    ORACLE_HOME=/opt/oracle/product/base/12.1.0.1 \
    UNIX_GROUP_NAME=oinstall \
    oracle.install.db.DBA_GROUP=dba \
    oracle.install.db.OPER_GROUP=oper \
    oracle.install.db.BACKUPDBA_GROUP=dba \
    oracle.install.db.DGDBA_GROUP=dba \
    oracle.install.db.KMDBA_GROUP=dba \
    FROM_LOCATION=../stage/products.xml \
    INVENTORY_LOCATION=/opt/oracle/oraIventory \
    SELECTED_LANGUAGES=en \
    oracle.install.db.InstallEdition=EE \
    DECLINE_SECURITY_UPDATES=true  -silent -ignoreSysPrereqs -ignorePrereq -waitForCompletion

otherwise your installation will fail with:

[FATAL] [INS-35341] The installation user is not a member of the following groups: [null, null, null]
   CAUSE: The installation user account must be a member of all groups required for installation.
   ACTION: Ensure that the installation user is a member of the system privileges operating system groups you selected.

these are used to further improve seperation of duties: documentation

to be honest, I never was aware of this. there is a create schema command in oracle which can be used to populate a schema in a singe transaction:

create user u identified by u;
create user a identified by a;
grant create session, create table, create view to u;
alter user u quota 1m on users;
connect u/u
create schema authorization u
   create table t1 
      (a number, b varchar2(10))
   create view v1
      as select * from t1 where a = 1
   grant select on v1 to a;

this can be very handy if you want a script ( which creates some tables and views ) to be atomic. if there is an error in your create schema script like:

create schema authorization u
   create table t1
      (a number, b varchar2(10))
   create view v1
      as select **** from t1 where a = 1
   grant select on v1 to a;

… nothing will be created at all. you may fix the script and start over again ( without dropping anything as you would need to do it if you use single create commands ).

this is documented here.

there is a white paper which you definitely should read before you think about running an oracle database on zfs:

Configuring ZFS for an Oracle Database

fixing things afterwards might be tricky …

while randomly browsing the oracle documentation I came across this sentence: “By definition, a schema name need not be just a simple SQL name. For example, “FIRST LAST” is a valid schema name.”

if this is true creating a database user consisting of two words must be possible:

create user "two words" identified by "blubb";
USER CREATED

works …