Installing Oracle on CentOS

For a very comprehensive guide, look here.

Make the changes by editing the /etc/sysctl.conf file and then rebooting the server
1. Setup kernel parameters
kernel.shmall = 268435456
# For Oracle
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
kernel.shmmni = 4096
#kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 2147483648
#kernel.semnsl = 250
#kernel.semmns = 32000
#kernel.semopm = 100
#kernel.semmni = 128
fs.file-max = 6815744
net.core.rmem_default = 41943404
net.core.rmem_max = 4194304
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_max = 1048576
fs.aio-max-nr = 1048576
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 9000 65500


2. Configure additional swap space

You can find more details here.

Since my disks have filesystem fully created, I have to use the mkfs:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=1600000
Setup the swap file with the command:
mkswap /swapfile
To enable the swap file immediately but not automatically at boot time:
swapon /swapfile
To enable it at boot time, edit /etc/fstab to include:
/swapfile swap swap defaults 0



3. Install additional packages (ensure there is Internet connectivity):
yum -y install compat-libstdc++-296.i386 \
compat-libstdc++-33.i386 \
elfutils-libelf-devel.i386 \
glibc-devel.i386 \
glibc-headers.i386 \
gcc.i386 \
gcc-c++.i386 \
libaio-devel.i386 \
sysstat.i386 \
unixODBC.i386 \
unixODBC-devel.i386