Technical requirements

The related configuration files for many of the recipes in this book are available on GitHub, at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Oracle-Linux-Cookbook.

Oracle Linux 8 – which ISO is right? USB? Does anyone use DVDs?

Before we start anything else, let’s look at installing Oracle Linux.

Getting ready

When installing Oracle Linux, you must first decide how to do the installation. There are a variety of options, from booting a new computer to an installable image, cloning a drive from another system, or even booting from the network. For all of these options, you need to have the right media. Trying to install using the source code Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) or the wrong CPU architecture is not going to cut it. Before you download anything, you will need internet access and enough free disk space to save the ISO file. Usually, at least 10 GB is recommended to download the ISO. Additional space will also be needed if you are going to use Oracle VM VirtualBox to run VMs based on the ISO. It’s common to allocate 100 GB or more per VM, as this allows you to quickly grow a filesystem without having to add another disk to the volume group. That being said, 50 GB is the default for Oracle’s cloud images and can work for many users. In the cloud, the advantage of using a smaller disk is reduced costs, as the smaller disk equates to lower expenses.

Note

RPM is also defined as RPM Package Manager, but that’s recursive and confusing to many folks.

How to do it…

You also need to understand the hardware you are using for the installation. Burning an ISO to a DVD (or other optical formats) might be great for older systems that have these drives, but modern systems more often than not install via USB boot. Enterprise-grade servers take this to an even higher level, enabling you to boot from an ISO file mounted over the network or virtual console. You can also boot most systems from a Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) server, for a more automated network-based installation. The choice of what method you use is really based on your hardware, and then how much automation you need.

Note

Be careful of the automation trap. Often, you can spend significantly more time automating an installation than doing it by hand. In smaller environments, while automation is nice, it can take significantly more time to build and maintain the automation compared to doing 3-4 manual builds a year.

Note

Though disk images are commonly called an ISO, the actual format of the ISO file is ISO 9660 Joliet, which is a format for optical disk media. ISO is actually an acronym for the International Organization for Standardization (https://www.iso.org/home.html). The ISO organization was formed in 1947 and has standards for everything from quality management (ISO 9001) to food safety (ISO 22000).

The easiest way to get the media is to download the ISO files from https://yum.oracle.com/oracle-linux-isos.html.

On the site, there are four types of ISOs:

• Full ISO: This is the full installation for Oracle Linux. The ISO file contains everything needed to install Oracle Linux and is bootable. You can boot a system with this ISO by burning the file to a USB stick, or even a DVD. Also, on many servers, you can boot a system by virtually mounting the ISO via the lights-out management software. There are many types of remote control options on systems, including the generic Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI), which has basic functionality, and the open source Baseboard Management Controller (BMC), which adds additional features. Most major hardware vendors also offer specific technologies, such as Oracle Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM), Dell’s integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC), and HP’s Integrated Lights Out (ILO).
• Boot ISO: This ISO is bootable using the Red Hat-compatible kernel for the installation process. It does not include all the files required to install. While this is a much smaller file, you will need the remainder of the installed RPM on your network or a local device. You can access the files via HTTP, enabling sourcing the files from https://yum.oracle.com/ or a local HTTP server on your network.

Note

The Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) for Oracle Linux has many advantages, such as enabling the BTFS filesystem for root, or a more modern kernel that matches the mainstream Linux kernel and includes better support for modern devices.

• UEK boot ISO: This ISO is bootable to the more modern UEK, but just like the boot ISO, it does not include all the files required to install. Installing using the more modern UEK is helpful, especially on systems that can’t install correctly on the older Red Hat-Compatible Kernel (RHCK). While this is a much smaller file, you will need the remainder of the installed RPMs on your network. UEK the only option for installation on the Arm architecture.
• Source ISO: This ISO is not bootable, but it’s helpful as it contains all the source RPMs, enabling you to audit the source code.