I know i’m not the fastest blogger on the block, but finally I have a running 11.1.0.6 database. Partly it’s taken so long due to the fact Oracle tend not release on MacOS, so I’ve had to go the parallels route:
Mostly the install was idiot proof, except with upgrading to Leopard, you have to be on the latest Parallels version 3.0, and the latest build 5160. Of course, I was on 2.X which unfortunately is not a free upgrade to version 3.X.
I went for Ubuntu in the end, partly because it seems to be increasingly the Linux desktop variant of choice these days, but mostly due to the size of the download, which at 700MB compares very favourably to the mutli-Gigabyte offering from Oracle Enterprise Linux. Of course the Linux user experience still has not quite reached consumer level, OK so this might be a Parallels issue rather than Ubuntu, but somehow i’m still annoyed with having to install Linux to play with 11g, so I’m blaming them. Essentially the display kept crashing during the install and I had to hack the /etc/X11/xorg.conf details are available on the parallels forum and Shane Duffy. Once the advice there was done, Ubuntu + Parallels seems stable and quite performant on my MacBook Pro. In particular, I love how you can run parallels in full screen in one space and still use the hot-keys to get to another space. Oh I had to do some network fiddling to allow the vm to see the outside world, after fiddling with the network gui, I ran /sbin/dhclient to pick up a dhcp address.
So now I had a working Linux version it was time to get jiggy with 11g, so perhaps the best place of information about installing on Ubuntu is Howard J. Rogers, in particular his script for setting up Ubuntu just the right way for an Oracle install is priceless and saves you the hassle of setting, for example, the shared memory parameters, or indeed the hassle of creating the oracle user. Unfortunately, my Ubuntu install was still not quite right after running the script. I was missing /usr/include/sys/types.h and the first attempt at install bombed out on this. You can find this in the libc6-dev package. Next up was the issue that my /etc/apt/sources.list file had been edited to only look on the install cdrom (I guess due to lack of networking during the install), so if you have a good sources.list you, unlike me will pick up libaio.so.1 (which funnily enough comes from the libaio1 package). The install after this really is easy, lots of things in the Oracle installer bitch about not finding things, but as Howard says, you can safely ignore them and 11g will install happily on Ubuntu.
So now I can play with 11g like any self respecting blogger!
jarneil 
Hi Jason,
Good write up.
The best tip I can give you for running 11g in a Parallels VM is to buy an external drive to place your VMs on, I got a significant speed boost from running my Oracle VM’s on one of those little firewire bus-powered drives and it also has the advantage that if my laptop should die then I can just hook the drive up to another machine which has Parallels (or VMWare if you prefer) on it.
John.
Thanks john.
Interesting you saw a speed bump with the external drive, hopefully I wont be doing too much I/O, but i’ll bare it in mind. I’m hoping time machine saves me in the event of laptop malfunction, though I don’t think there would be any issue using the external drive for my backups as well as for hosting some vm’s on, though it is something extra to lug around!
aff..loser, its not finally running 11g on mac.
wow! thanks for that insightful comment.