Re: separate owner/ORACLE_HOME for crs, ASM, and database in RAC environment

  • From: Dan Norris <dannorris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Li Li <litanli@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 19:12:44 -0800 (PST)

Hi Li,

If you haven't already, I'd check the ASM instance logs, the DBCA trace output 
(I don't remember how, but there's an env var or a mod to the dbca start script 
that enables DBCA tracing), or the listener log to determine how far your DBCA 
is getting the process before failing. 

I'd also probably try creating an instance by hand (without DBCA) to see if 
it's a DBCA issue or a core RDBMS/ASM issue. 

One of those locations is bound to yield some useful log information to get you 
closer to finding the root cause of the issue. For the record, I'm not 
guessing...the issue going to be shown in one of those places for sure. I'm a 
card-carrying BAAG member ;).

Until you responded, I was hoping that you used a different OSASM group and 
that would be your issue. Hopes dashed...:( 

Dan

P.S. I don't know how Oracle Support does it--solving issues with no access to 
see the issue and having to ask 1000's of questions to get the info they need. 
I still think they could do better, but it's threads like this one that remind 
me why I don't do phone support!

----- Original Message ----
From: Li Li <litanli@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Dan Norris <dannorris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: William Wagman <wjwagman@xxxxxxxxxxx>; finn.oracledba@xxxxxxxxx; oracle-l 
<oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 8:50:42 PM
Subject: Re: separate owner/ORACLE_HOME for crs, ASM, and database in RAC 
environment


Hi, Dan,

my OSASM group is "dba" also, I know this defeats some of the separation, but I 
just wanted to test this out. It's very strange to me that I have this issue 
because in my case both oracle and oraclex have "oinstall" as primary group and 
"dba" as second group, and oracle's RDBMS home and oraclex's RDBMS home all 
have 775 permission. I am trying to get some other eyes on this issue to see 
what I am missing :(


Thank you all for your time to reply!
-Li

On Dec 12, 2007 7:20 PM, Dan Norris <dannorris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In my experiences with this, the oraclex user (the RDBMS owner) will have to be 
in the OSASM group. This defeats some of the separation, but as I understand 
it, the Oracle developers know that the separation isn't quite complete yet and 
someone told me that we should expect "true" separation in a future release 
(probably 11g R2). If your OSASM group is also dba, then I'm not sure I know 
why you're having issues. I tried the same thing and had three users: 1) a 
clusterware owner, 2) an ASM owner, and 3) an RDBMS owner. I found that the 
clusterware can be separated pretty cleanly from the other two, but the ASM and 
RDBMS owners essentially have power over each others' domains since the RDBMS 
user must be in the OSASM group and I think the
 ASM owner may have had to be in the OSDBA. I don't have access to my test 
systems for this any longer, so my memory may be a little off. It's also 
possible that things have changed slightly since my testing which was done with 
11gR1-beta5.


Dan


----- Original Message ----
From: Li Li <
litanli@xxxxxxxxx>
To: William Wagman <wjwagman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: finn.oracledba@xxxxxxxxx
; oracle-l <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 5:51:26 PM
Subject: Re: separate owner/ORACLE_HOME for crs, ASM, and database in RAC 
environment



Hi, Bill,

 

I don't use asmlib because its dependency on linux kernel. I just create ASM 
diskgroups using RAW devices. when I login as oracle and start dbca, ASM disks 
are all look/work fine.


 

On Dec 12, 2007 5:14 PM, William Wagman <wjwagman@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



Greetings,

 

The thinking is to separate CRS, ASM and RDBMS for ease of maintenance. This is 
also the Oracle suggestion that each be in a separate home. It makes patching 
and upgrading easier.


 

As to the disk issues. First are you using ASMLIB? Make sure if you are it is 
configured correctly and the disks have been created. 



 

Also look at the status of this disks as described in v$asm_disk. They status 
must be either provisioned or candidate. I have encountered this situation 
before where the status was unknown and that caused me problems.


 

Also, are you using multipathing? If so make sure you have scanorder and 
scanexclude set correctly in the oracleasm file as that can affect things. 
There was a thread about this a while ago.


 

I apologize for not being more specific but I still don't have a good enough 
understanding of how things work. A lot of what I have done is through trial 
and error and can give you things to look at but that's about it at this point.


 

Bill Wagman
Univ. of California at Davis
IET Campus Data Center
wjwagman@xxxxxxxxxxx
(530) 754-6208 

 




From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
] On Behalf Of Finn Jorgensen
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 2:09 PM
To: litanli@xxxxxxxxx
Cc: oracle-l

Subject:
 Re: separate owner/ORACLE_HOME for crs, ASM, and database in RAC environment









Before trying to figure this one out, I'm trying to wrap my brain around why 
you would do that. What's the thinking behind this setup?

 

Finn

 

On 12/12/07, Li Li <litanli@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: 

Hi, List,

 

I am testing to setup a 2-node RAC environment with separate owner/ORACLE_HOME 
for crs, ASM, and database, it's 10gR2 on Redhat AS 4.

 

2 users are created: oracle and oraclex, oracle owns clusterware home and ASM 
home, oraclex owns database home.

 

first, I login as oracle and installed clusterware and database software (in 2 
different oracle home of course), configured and started ASM instance, 
everything worked fine.

 

second, I login as oraclex and installed database software, then I tried to 
create a database using dbca, but I ran into error when I chose ASM as my 
database storage, the error is:

"DBCA could not startup the ASM instance configured on this node. To proceed 
with database creation using ASM you need the ASM instance to be up and 
running. Do you want to recreate the ASM instance on this node?" 


 

But the ASM instance IS already running. I am guessing this must be because of 
some permission issue but I am not sure what I am missing. I have oracle and 
oraclex both have "oinstall" as primary group and "dba" as second group. 


 

I googled but cannot find any useful information. Can anybody give me some 
suggestion? Any comment would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks,

-Li

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