Configuring Users, Groups and Environments for Oracle Database Client

Before installation, create operating system groups and users, and configure user environments.

Required Operating System Groups and Users

Oracle installations require an installation owner, a shared Oracle Inventory group, and one or more operating-system groups for database or Grid Infrastructure privileges. Administrators should verify whether an existing central inventory and oraInst.loc file are present, reuse the same inventory for all installations, confirm group membership and write access, and avoid placing oraInventory beneath the Oracle base directory. If no inventory exists, create the inventory group manually; configure grid for Grid Infrastructure and oracle for database software as needed, ensuring each owner uses the inventory group as its primary group and required privilege groups as secondary groups. Verify existing accounts with group and identity commands, and ensure the grid user belongs to racdba for Oracle Restart installations.

Creating an Oracle Software Owner User

Before installation, create the required Oracle software owner account and configure its group memberships, preferably using a separate owner for each Oracle software product. For example, create oracle with a specified user ID, oinstall as the primary group, and dba as a secondary group. Record the user ID for preinstallation activities, and ensure that user and group IDs are identical across all candidate nodes for Oracle Grid Infrastructure installations.

Configuring Software Owner User Environments

Before running the installer as grid or oracle, configure each owner’s shell environment with a 022 umask, appropriate file-descriptor and process limits, and a valid DISPLAY setting. Update the correct shell startup file, remove or unset conflicting Oracle variables such as ORACLE_SID, ORACLE_HOME, ORACLE_BASE, ORA_NLS10, TNS_ADMIN, and especially ORA_CRS_HOME, and remove Oracle home paths from PATH. Set TMP and TMPDIR to a local filesystem with at least 1 GB of free space when /tmp is insufficient; shared temporary filesystems are unsuitable for Oracle RAC. Reload the startup configuration and verify the umask and environment values before installation.
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