Oracle 10g and XE

A little tips to you Unix haxors that want to play with RDBMs. Oracle has been kind enough
to let us knowledgefreaks download 10g for free! This is great, as many of us has not been able to
play around with this beast of a database. I mean, besides your employeers production Oracle databases. LoL

So what are you waiting for? Open up an account with Oracle and download the software. There is a XE (Express Edition) that works fine on a laptop, if you dont want to install the full Enterprise Edition.

The installation works as a charm, just make sure to change the database password after the installation, and edit your local firewall rules to deny any source ip address besides does you trust. Which should not be many. :-)

What else, well, on a Fedora Core 5, if you have SElinux enforced, (check with getenforce command)
you might run into some problems with the SELinux ACL's. You might wan't to go offline with your Oracle database and modify your SELinux settings, so you don't leave a slot open for any intruders while modifying.

Check dmesg for more information if you run into problems starting Oracle on a SELinux enabled system.
It might look like this.

audit(1155563893.424:77): avc: denied { execmod } for pid=24499 comm="sqlplus" name="libnnz10.so" dev=dm-0 ino=4819681 scontext=user_u:system_r:initrc_t:s0 tcontext=system_u:object_r:lib_t:s0 tclass=file

If SELinux shows audit posts with avc deniced for sqlplus, you might have to disable SELinux to debug. Remember to put it on right away!

SELinux to permissve mode. (Just logging mode)
# setenforce 0

SELinux to Enforcing mode.
# setenforce 1

To display current mode for SELinux
# getenforce


To start oracle-xe for example, simply run the service command.
# service oracle-xe start

Enjoy!