3 Installation Tasks

Installation Overview

The Oracle Client software is available on disc (CD-ROM or DVD-ROM) or you can download it from the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) Web site. In most cases, you use the graphical user interface (GUI) provided by the Oracle Universal Installer to install the software. However, you can also use the Installer to complete silent-mode installations, without using the GUI. See Appendix B for information about silent-mode installations.

This chapter describes how to install Oracle Client from the product media or from the hard disk. To install the software from the hard disk, you must either download it from OTN and unpack it, or copy it from the discs, if you have them. See one of the following sections, depending on the method that you want to use:

• To copy the software to a hard disk, see the following section:

  Copy the Oracle Client Software to a Hard Disk

• To install the software from disc or from an existing hard disk location, see the "Install the Oracle Client Software" section .

• To download the software from OTN, see the following section.

Download Oracle Software from the OTN Web Site

This section describes how to download the installation archive files and extract them on your hard disk.

Downloading the Installation Archive Files

To download the installation archive files from OTN:

1. Use any browser to access the software download page on OTN:

   http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/

2. Navigate to the download page for the product that you want to install.

3. On the download page, identify the required disk space by adding the file sizes for each required file.

   The file sizes are listed next to the filenames.

4. Select a file system with enough free space to store and expand the archive files.

   In most cases, the available disk space must be at least twice the size of all of the archive files.

5. On the file system that you selected in step 4, create a parent directory for each product, for example OraCli10g, to hold the installation directories.

6. Download all of the installation archive files to the directory that you created in step 5.

7. Verify that the files you downloaded are the same size as the corresponding files on OTN.

Extracting the Installation Files

To extract the installation archive files, perform the following steps:

1. If necessary, change directory to the directory that contains the downloaded installation archive files.

2. To uncompress each file, enter a command similar to the following:

   $ gunzip filename.cpio.gz
   
   

   This command creates files with names similar to the following:

   filename.cpio
   
   

3. To extract the installation files, enter commands similar to the following:

   $ cpio -idmv < filename.cpio
   

   
   

   Note: See the download page for information about the correct options to use with the cpio command on your platform. Some browsers uncompress files while downloading them, but leave the .gz file extension. If these steps do not work, remove the .gz extension from the files and repeat step 3.

   
   

   For each file, this command creates a subdirectory named Diskn, where n is the disk number identified in the filename.

When you have extracted all of the required installation files, see the "Install the Oracle Client Software" section.

Copy the Oracle Client Software to a Hard Disk

If your system does not have a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, you can copy the software from the disc to a file system on another system, then either mount that file system using NFS, or use FTP to copy the files to the system where you want to install the software.

To copy the contents of the disc to a hard disk:

1. Create a single directory on the hard disk to hold the Oracle software:

   $ mkdir OraCli10g
   
   

2. Change directory to the directory you created in step 1:

   $ cd OraCli10g
   
   

3. Create subdirectories for each installation disc with names similar to the following, where n is the disc number:

   $ mkdir Diskn
   
   

4. Mount the disc, if it is not already mounted.

   Some platforms automatically mount the disc when you insert it into the drive. If the disc does not mount automatically, see Appendix A for platform-specific information about mounting it.

5. Copy the contents of the mounted disc to the corresponding new subdirectory as follows:

   $ cp -R /directory_path Disk1
   
   

   In this example, /directory_path is the CD-ROM mount point directory or the path of the client directory on the DVD-ROM. The following table lists typical mount point directories for each platform:

   Platform	Mount Point
   Linux (Red Hat)	/mnt/cdrom
   Linux (SuSE)	/media/cdrom

   
   

Install the Oracle Client Software

The following sections describe how to install the Oracle software:

• Reviewing Product-Specific Installation Guidelines

• Running the Oracle Universal Installer