The Oracle Inventory directory is the central inventory of Oracle software installed on your system. It should be the primary group for all Oracle software installation owners. Users who have the Oracle Inventory group as their primary group are granted the OINSTALL privilege to read and write to the central inventory.

• If you have an existing installation, then OUI detects the existing oraInventory directory from the /etc/oraInst.loc file, and uses this location.

• If you are installing Oracle software for the first time, then OUI creates an Oracle base and central inventory, and creates an Oracle inventory using information in the following priority:

  • In the path indicated in the ORACLE_BASE environment variable set for the installation owner user account.

  • In an Optimal Flexible Architecture (OFA) path (u[01–99]/app/owner where owner is the name of the user account running the installation), if that user account has permissions to write to that path.

  • In the user home directory, in the path /app/owner, where owner is the name of the user account running the installation.

Ensure that the group designated as the OINSTALL group is available as the primary group for all planned Oracle software installation owners.

Create operating system groups and users depending on your security requirements, as described in this installation guide.

Set resource limits settings and other requirements for Oracle software installation owners.

Group and user names must use only ASCII characters.

If you have an existing Oracle software installation, and you are using the same user to install this installation, then unset the following environment variables: $ORACLE_HOME; $ORA_NLS10; $TNS_ADMIN.

If you have set $ORA_CRS_HOME as an environment variable, then unset it before starting an installation or upgrade. Do not use $ORA_CRS_HOME as a user environment variable, except as directed by Oracle Support.

Configure the environment of the oracle or grid user by performing the following tasks:

• Set the default file mode creation mask (umask) to 022 in the shell startup file.

• Set the DISPLAY environment variable.

During installation, you are asked to run configuration scripts as the root user. You can either run these scripts manually as root when prompted, or during installation you can provide configuration information and passwords using a root privilege delegation option.

To run root scripts automatically, select Automatically run configuration scripts. during installation. To use the automatic configuration option, the root user credentials for all cluster member nodes must use the same password.

• Use root user credentials

  Provide the superuser password for cluster member node servers.

• Use sudo

  sudo is a UNIX and Linux utility that allows members of the sudoers list privileges to run individual commands as root. Provide the user name and password of an operating system user that is a member of sudoers, and is authorized to run sudo on each cluster member node.

  To enable sudo, have a system administrator with the appropriate privileges configure a user that is a member of the sudoers list, and provide the user name and password when prompted during installation.