Installing Oracle12c and Oracle Forms on the same linux machine? - database

Question

I have Oracle 12c r1 installed on my Fedora 27 64bit pc and now I want to install Oracle Forms
But the problem is that Oracle Fusion infrastructure needs to be installed on different Oracle_Home and after installing it and when I start Installing Oracle Forms and Oracle reports the installation never finish And get stuck at 98% and when I check the log it looks like that the install program looking for files in the other Oracle_home (the old home)
Where my database is!
Someone told me the the full installation of Oracle Forms includes Oracle Database of the same version so I do not need my old 12c data base installation, is this true?
I've never installed Fusion nor Forms before and I do not know how install them correctly on the same machine as my database, so can anyone help me please ?
Thanks

Answer 1

I'm not the expert in Oracle Forms installation, but I may have some useful information for you.
First of all - what version of Fusion Middleware are you trying to install? It's important because Oracle Forms&Reports is very demanding in matter of OS and much more tricky than Oracle Database. You should install it only on supported ones. It's connected with packages and libraries. If you have too new, you may expect strange problems.
For 12.2.1.3.0 the supported OS's are:
Oracle Linux 6,
Oracle Linux 7,
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6,
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7,
SLES 11,
SLES 12.
Fedora 19 is clone of RHEL 7, maybe Fedora 27 is too new? I couldn't find any info about it... DBA in our company told me once: "Never try to install Oracle software on configuration which is not directly supported by Oracle - it's asking for troubles. You should always do as Installation Guide states."
Maybe you should tried installing Fusion Middleware on separate Virtual Machine using one of mentioned OS's? In my opinion it's much more safe to have Oracle Fusion Middleware installed on VM than on bare-metal PC. It's easy to backup, easy to migrate to other server etc. The supported one is Oracle VM, but you should not have problems with VMware (I know that FMW 11 works on VMware, never tried 12).
Someone told me the the full installation of Oracle Forms includes
Oracle Database of the same version so I do not need my old 12c data
base installation, is this true?
According to this Guide - no, it does not. But I know other products that comes with Oracle DB in package (like Oracle Business Intelligence, which consist of Oracle DB, Weblogic and OBI as middleware) - so maybe it's not all true.
New information (2018-04-26):
Ok, I've asked a more experienced DBA and he told me that it is common to use another linux user account to install other oracle software on the same PC. Then you can easily set completely different environments, so you can avoid glitches. For example you can set for them different ORACLE_HOME.

Answer 2

It is not necessary to have multiple user accounts if you isolate the environments. For multiple Oracle product installs on the same server I use shell scripts to set the ENV for each one.
Ensure that your current ENV does not have any Oracle Database references - check .bashrc .bash_profile and run: printenv to verify.
Example: database env script
#!/bin/sh
#
# Defining environment variables for Oracle Database.
#
ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle
export ORACLE_BASE
ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/product/12.1.0/dbhome_1
export ORACLE_HOME
TNS_ADMIN=$ORACLE_HOME/network/admin
export TNS_ADMIN
JAVA_HOME=$ORACLE_HOME/jdk
export JAVA_HOME
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:/usr/lib
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch:$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH
export PATH
Source the env script and start listener and database from shell - database needs to be running for the middleware install
Install Java 8 JDK from oracle.com/technology - I download the tar gzip file and extract to /u01/app/oracle/product/jdk8 {better to use a generic name for the folder jdk8 vs the release number as it is easier to upgrade the jdk}
Set ENV for install:
ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle
export ORACLE_BASE
JAVA_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/jdk8
export JAVA_HOME
PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH
export PATH
Source ENV for install in shell
Start middleware infrastructure installation from same shell (this part does not require the config to be run)
Create Repository: cd to middleware infrastructure home/oracle_common/bin
Run ./rcu -> Common Infrastructure Services/Oracle Platform Security Services and prefix
Install FMW (same shell as infrastructure)
Run config.sh
Post Install: may require symlink to be created if an error - cd /usr/lib64 - ln -s libXm.so.4 libXm.so.3
Create shell script to set FMW env
#!/bin/sh
#
# 12c Fusion Middleware Environment
#
ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/m12.2
export ORACLE_HOME
JAVA_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/jdk8
export JAVA_HOME
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch:$ORACLE_HOME/wlserver/common/bin:$ORACLE_HOME/oracle_common/common/bin
export PATH
Source the FMW ENV script then cd $ORACLE_HOME and start the processes
I have found that using the shell and environment isolation works well.
The FMW/Infrastructure requires Java 8 - I have run into issues in the past trying to use OpenJDK for FMW - using the Oracle Java 8 JDK seems to work better.
These were my notes for an install on Redhat 7 - should work on Fedora but may require some troubleshooting - sometimes libraries are newer than the version FMW requires or are missing. Not sure if you installed the Repository in your attempts - if not that might have been why the install hangs - it is trying to connect to the database and update the repository tables.
Refer to the Installation guides for more information
hope that helps you.