Oracle Installer on-line Help provides details on using the Oracle
Installer. The following are some important concepts:
Oracle Home Directories
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The Oracle Installer places most Oracle products into a common location, known
as the Oracle Home. The Installer prompts the user for this location
at setup time.
Multiple Oracle Homes (MOH) Support
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The Oracle Installer (32 bit) version 3.3.0.1 and later supports the installation of several active Oracle homes on the same machine. You can have multiple versions of the same product or different products running from different Oracle homes concurrently. Products installed in one home will not conflict or interact with products installed in another home. You can update software in any home at any time, assuming all Oracle applications/services installed on the target home are shut down. Services from other homes may still be running.
Default Home
The first home created on the system is always the default Oracle home. It is
the only home where you can install products prior to Oracle Version
8.0.4.
Target Home
The Oracle home currently accessed by the Oracle Installer for
installation or deinstallation is the target home. In order to
upgrade or remove products in/from the target home, those products
must be shut down.
Product Types
Different levels of support are available with multiple Oracle homes for the
following product types:
Typically these are Oracle 7 products.
previous product installation is first removed so that only one copy/version
of that application can run at the same time. These are Oracle 8 products
which can only be installed once.
machine, with no conflicts or interaction at install-time, run-time, or
deinstall-time. These are products which can be used concurrently.
Please see product specific documentation for details on how your
products supports MOH.
Home Selector
If your application is not installed in one of the Oracle homes, you need to ensure it uses the right product version, by pointing it to the right home. That specific home must take precedence over the other homes in your path when you launch your application.
The Home Selector enables you to easily change your primary Oracle
home (the one that appears first in your PATH environment variable.)
Oracle Client Software Manager (OCSM)
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The Oracle Installer version 3.2.x (32 bit) and later offers a
new feature that allows administrators to maintain a software
installation on a local area network. The administrator installs
the software onto a central file server, then configures which
products should be available to the user community. Each of the
client machines connecting to this file server are then configured
to run an agent every time Windows starts up, which compares the
local Oracle directories to those of the file server, reinstalling
products if they've been updated. The process allows client machines
to remain automatically synchronized with a single distribution
site. Please see product specific documentation for details on
how your products supports OCSM.
Known Problems/Limitations with this version:
* Oracle home names can not be changed if the location stays the same, to avoid NT services not being updated.(bug 584972)
* Creation of an Oracle home on a drive without enough space should not take place. (bug 590881)
* Homes created by the 3.3.0.1 Installer are lost if a new home is created by a 3.2.x Installer. (bug 588942)
* when 3.2.x Installer and 3.3.0.1 Installer are used interchangeably in default home the win32.* scripts are overwritten. For example, if a 3.3 home is created, when running the 3.2.x Installer, without installing it, the win32.* scripts are overwritten. (bug 588067)
* OCSM is not included with this version of the Installer. OCSM can only be used in a MOH environment if OCSM compliant products are installed in the default Oracle home only, using the Installer/OCSM 3.2.x. (older version)
* If using the older version of OCSM be aware of the following:
If a system has an existing 3.3.x Default home, the same system cannot be registered as a client. The error message given is: "win32.cfg(112): Unbound variable 'current-dir".
After a host has been created with 3.2.x Installer and OCSM tools
installed in it, the user should not upgrade to 3.3.x Installer
in the host home because no new clients will be able to get registered,
since the Installer version will be newer. The error message is
the same as above.