Home / server / Questions / 538549
Accepted
Amos Shapira
Asked: 2013-09-13 16:31:21 +0800 CST

Can Docker help me install Oracle 11g database on Ubuntu?

  • 772

We are struggling with a common problem of trying to provide an Oracle 11g instance for our developers to test with. Our standard build agents are based on Ubuntu 12.04 but Oracle supports only RedHat based OS's.

There are some hacks about installing Oracle on Ubuntu floating around the net but they seem to be very fragile and a matter of hit-and-miss.

We want to avoid having to support an entire build server Puppet configuration on top of RedHat(/CentOS) just in order to support Oracle so I was beginning to wonder whether we can employ Docker to provide a RedHat-like environment required just for Oracle on top of our standard Ubuntu systems. The idea is that Oracle will run in its own container but the rest of the build agent will still run on standard Ubuntu, able to talk to Oracle over TCP.

I know what LXC's are and the difference between them and full-fledged virtualization like KVM/VirtualBox etc, but I was wondering whether it could still be possible.

Thanks.

ubuntu

6 Answers

  1. If Oracle Express is suitable for you:

    1. Download Oracle XE 11g rpm.
    2. Convert rpm to deb using alien.
    3. "Extract" the deb package using dpkg-deb command.
    4. Modify the deb scripts:
      • Change [ "$1" != "1" ] to [ "$1" != "install" ] at the beginning of preinst.
      • Change [ "$1" = "1" -o -z "$2" ] to [ "$1" = "configure" -a -z "$2" ] at the beginning of postint.
      • Change [ "$1" = "0" ] to [ "$1" = "remove" -o "$1" = "purge" ] in prerm & postrm.
      • Change 'chkconfig' to 'update-rc.d' command in postinst & prerm.
      • In init script: remove absolute path of some system commands; fix /etc/sysconfig/oracle-xe to /etc/default/oracle-xe; fix /var/lock/subsys to /var/lock; and so on...
      • Add dependencies to control file: bc & libaio1.
    5. Build the deb package using deb command.

    Now you have a deb package of Oracle XE 11g. Install it!

    But there's still a problem: /dev/shm. Here how to fix it:

    1. Comment the line in /etc/init/mounted-dev.conf: [ -e /dev/shm ] || ln -s /run/shm /dev/shm.
    2. Add a line in /etc/fstab: shm /dev/shm tmpfs size=2g 0 0
    3. rm -f /dev/shm; mkdir /dev/shm; mount shm

    Start Oracle XE: service oracle-xe configure

    • 5

  2. I am using the following docker image with a good level of success.

    Get it to run with:

     docker pull wnameless/oracle-xe-11g

    and 

     docker run -d -p 49160:22 -p 49161:1521 wnameless/oracle-xe-11g
    • 3
  3. Best Answer

    Here is my fork:

    • Reduce size of image from 3.8G to 825MB
    • Database initialization moved out of the image build phase
    • Now database initializes at the containeer startup with no database files mounted
    • Media reuse support outside of container
    • Added graceful shutdown on container stop
    • Removed sshd

    You may check here:
    https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/sath89/oracle-xe-11g/
    https://github.com/MaksymBilenko/docker-oracle-xe-11g

    • 3

  4. I can confirm that Oracle XE works within Docker. the only issue is that inside the container the shm is configured to only 65356k see https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/issues/2606 The only workaround so far is to change the lxc template and recompile docker (which is easy)

    • 2

  5. This is definitely a feasible approach. We use Ubuntu 14.04 for our host machines and run several Oracle 11g instances within Docker containers for development purposes as well.

    Currently (Docker 1.5) for both 11g and 12c the main issue is Docker's hard-coded shared memory limit Issue #2606. There are currently two workarounds for this:

    1. Use docker run --privileged ... and remount /dev/shm with more memory before starting the instance
    2. Modify and rebuild Docker yourself. For this case I've put together a Dockerfile for 12c which allows creating an image in one go: https://github.com/arpagaus/docker-oracle-12c
    • 1

  6. You can use OEL 6.5 LXC Linux Containers ontop of Ubuntu 14.04 as described step-by-step here at my blog:

    https://sites.google.com/site/nandydandyoracle/technologies/lxc/oracle-lxc-vlc

    • 0