The Oracle Inventory directory (oraInventory) stores an inventory of all software installed on the system. It is required and shared by all Oracle software installations on a single system. If you have an existing Oracle Inventory path, then Oracle Universal Installer continues to use that Oracle Inventory.
Note:
The first time you install Oracle software on a system, Oracle Universal Installer checks if you have created an OFA-compliant directory structure with the format u[01-09]/app, such as /u01/app, and that the user running the installation has permissions to write to that path. If this is true, then Oracle Universal Installer creates the Oracle Inventory directory similar to /u[01-09]/app/oraInventory.
For example:
/u01/app/oraInventory
If you have set the environment variable ORACLE_BASE for the oracle user, then Oracle Universal Installer creates the Oracle Inventory directory similar to ORACLE_BASE/../oraInventory. For example, if ORACLE_BASE is set to /opt/oracle/11, then the Oracle Inventory directory is created similar to /opt/oracle/oraInventory.
mkdir -p /u01/app/oraInventory
chown -R oracle:oinstall /u01/app/oraInventory
chmod -R 775 /u01/app/oraInventory
If you have neither created an OFA-compliant path nor set ORACLE_BASE, then the Oracle Inventory directory is placed in the home directory of the user that is performing the installation. For example:
/home/oracle/oraInventory
Oracle Universal Installer creates the directory that you specify and sets the correct owner, group, and permissions for it. You do not need to create it.
When you install Oracle software on the system for the first time, Oracle Universal Installer creates the oraInst.loc file.
This file identifies:
An oraInst.loc file has contents similar to the following:
inventory_loc=central_inventory_location
inst_group=group
where:
To determine whether the oraInst.loc file exists, enter the following command:
# more /etc/oraInst.loc
If the oraInst.loc file exists, then the output from this command is similar to the following:
inventory_loc=/u01/app/oraInventory
inst_group=oinstall
In the previous output example:
To determine if the Oracle Inventory group exist, enter the following command:
grep oinstall /etc/group
If the oraInst.loc file does not exist, then create the Oracle Inventory group by entering the following command:
/usr/sbin/groupadd oinstall
The following are the default locations for supported operating systems: