Too Easy for a Post: Install Oracle 12.2 with Vagrant

If you like the simplicity of Docker, but would like to continue with Virtualbox, then Vagrant is for you. After the conference in Dublin,  OUG Ireland, I got this challenge:

@OyvindIsene agreed to be my guinea pig for my @vagrantup files. That's what you get when going to a conference! ;) https://t.co/pJDisr4Mhp

— Gerald Venzl (@GeraldVenzl) March 24, 2017

Not much of a challenge, of course, since he has done all the work, it is just "Download and Go". Just follow the instructions in the README part on the page linked to in his Tweet. I did this on my Mac at the airport (I found a downloaded copy of 12.2 after all). The only comment I could make is that the git command creates a directory (oracle-12.2-vagrant) and you copy the downloaded zip file (linuxx64_12201_database.zip) into that directory.

In the oracle-12.2-vagrant directory there is of course the Vagrantfile that you can edit if you want. In case you have a listener already running on port 1521, you can easily change the Vagrantfile so the port 1521 from the VM will be forwarded to another port. I actually just did vagrant up on my server at home when preparing for this post, and it failed because port 1521 was already in use. No problem, just edit Vagrantfile (line number 19), and repeat the command, nothing to clean up first.

Do check out this blog post that came out today:  Oracle Linux Vagrant boxes by Mikael Sandström. He has been using Vagrant a lot and actually created a box for many versions of Oracle Linux. Which means that if you want to try an upgrade on one specific version of Oracle Linux you can use one of his boxes easily.  There are some other useful tips on Vagrant in the post too.

I will continue to play around with both Docker and VirtualBox/Vagrant. Creating new lab environments has become very easy so we can focus on more important stuff than just installing software.

Adding Examples to a Docker Container with Oracle database 12.2

Oracle Database 12.2 became available for download last week. This weekend I've been playing with Docker and created a container with it. The whole process is so easy, thanks to the work by Gerald Venzl at Oracle. You'll find all the information you need in his blog post. Though the post is for version 12.1.0.2, the dockerfiles have already been updated for 12.2.0.1, and you can download it from Github using the link he provides in the post.

It takes sometime to create a container (depending on your hardware, of course), so when I discovered that the examples / demos that are distributed in another file were not included, I decided to try to add it to the running container.  It is easy, just download the linuxx64_12201_examples.zip file and copy it into the running container, which in my case is named ora12.2:

docker cp linuxx64_12201_examples.zip ora12.2:/tmp

Also unzip a copy of the included response file locally:

unzip -j -d /tmp linuxx64_12201_examples.zip \
examples/response/demos_install.rsp 

Edit it and change the variables so they look like this:

UNIX_GROUP_NAME=oinstall
ORACLE_HOME=/opt/oracle/product/12.2.0.1/dbhome_1
ORACLE_BASE=/opt/oracle

Copy it to the container:

docker cp /tmp/demos_install.rsp ora12.2:/tmp

Connect to your container with a command similar to this (again, ora12.2 is the name of my container):

docker exec -ti ora12.2 /bin/bash

Inside the container, unzip the transferred zip file and start the installation with:

cd /tmp
unzip linuxx64_12201_examples.zip
cd examples
./runInstaller -silent -force -waitforcompletion \
-responsefile /tmp/demos_install.rsp  -ignoresysprereqs -ignoreprereq

You can now verify that you have more demos installed, for instance under $ORACLE_HOME/md/demo.

Of course you can achieve the same effect by adding a few lines to the Dockerfile, build, and run again. Something like this should do for the Dockerfile:

# Added install of examples 
ENV EXAMPLE_RSP="demos_install.rsp" \
    EXAMPLE_FILE="linuxx64_12201_examples.zip"
COPY $EXAMPLE_RSP $EXAMPLE_FILE /tmp/
RUN cd /tmp && \
  unzip linuxx64_12201_examples.zip && \
  cd examples && \
  ./runInstaller -silent -force -waitforcompletion \
  -responsefile /tmp/demos_install.rsp  -ignoresysprereqs -ignoreprereq

It turned out to run just as fast since the new build builds on the previous images, oh well.