The software owner is the user who owned/performed the installation of an oracle database (single or rac).
Oracle recommends that you create one software owner to own each Oracle software installation, typically:
Oracle software owners must have the Oracle Inventory group as their primary group, so that each Oracle software installation owner can write to the Central Inventory.
In Oracle documentation, the Oracle software owner users are referred to as oracle users.
The database software owner (typically, oracle) must also have the OSDBA group of the grid infrastructure home so that database instances can log on to Automatic Storage Management, and (if you create it) the OSOPER group as secondary groups.
You must create an Oracle software owner user in the following circumstances:
[root@oel5u5 ~]# id oracle
id: oracle: No such user
[root@oel5u5 ~]# id oracle
uid=502(oracle) gid=507(oinstall) groups=507(oinstall),502(dba),505(oper),506(asmdba)
but you want to use a different operating system user, with different group membership, to give database administrative privileges to those groups in a new Oracle Database installation.
To create an oracle user, enter a command similar to the following:
[root@oel5u5 ~]# /usr/sbin/useradd -u 502 -g oinstall -G dba,asmdba,[oper] oracle
In the preceding command:
Set the password of the oracle user:
[root@oel5u5 ~]# passwd oracle
If the oracle user exists, but its primary group is not oinstall, or it is not a member of the appropriate OSDBA or OSOPER groups, then modify it as follows:
Specify the primary group using the -g option and any required secondary group using the -G option:
[root@oel5u5 ~]# /usr/sbin/usermod -g oinstall -G dba,asmdba[,oper] oracle
You run Oracle Universal Installer from the oracle account. However, before you start Oracle Universal Installer you must configure the environment of the oracle user. Configuring the oracle User's Environment
grid is an Oracle software owner for Oracle grid infrastructure. Oracle grid infrastructure only, the grid user (the Oracle Restart owner user) needs to be in the OSDBA group of every database home.