Starting Up Oracle

I'm new to this whole UNIX and Linux stuff. I'm totally a Windows person, but I'm learning. Anyway I'm on a Linux cluster and my DBA has loaded on Oracle, but all he does is be an administrator so he says I need to read the Oracle documentation on how to start it up. Now if this was windows, I'd just go find Oracle.exe (or something similar) and run it and voila it'd be started, but Linux seems to be different. I've found the Oracle directory, and I don't have any clue what to do. And Oracle's website is so confusing that it's not any help. I ventured deeper in the Oracle directory and found the binary folder with all these executables, but I cannot run any of them. I just get "Command Not Found". I'm logged in as root, so I know I should have access to them. Really, what I wanted to do is run SQL*Plus so I can start creating and adding data to tables, but when I type in "sqlplus" in the command prompt, it doesn't work even though I see a binary for it in the directory.

So if anybody else has gone through this or knows what's going on, please help me out! Thanks.

the reason you can´t start the file is probably that unlike windows the current directory is not in the search path by default (at least for root).
i.e. you need to tell the shell explicitly you want to start from the current dir:

./oracle
or
./sqlplus

Take first a look at http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/utils/index.html#oom this should answer many of your question, but beware it's not designed with a clustered installation in mind.

But, I have to ask who is the idiot that leaves a beginner without help on an Oracle Cluster????????

PS did you notice this guide http://otn.oracle.com/products/orac...df/redp0410.pdf ? (9i cluster specific?)

What I'm doing is not one of my DBA's highest priorities, so he kinda just let me loose with little instruction. But although it took 10 times longer to get stuff done, it was definitely a learning experience. I've probably learned a whole lot more this way, than if he would've just told me everything. I mean I even learned how to edit the PATH environment variable.

Anyway, M.Hirsch, you were right. I was thinking UNIX was going to be like DOS where if you're in the current directory all you have to do is type in the filename. It took me forever to realize that I had to type in the absolute path. This is actually why I ended up editing $PATH. Thanks for the info about starting in the current directory. I actually asked that in another thread.

And pabloj, it seems like those links are for administrators trying to set up Oracle. I just wanted to run it and connect to an already created database to add tables and run queries.

Thanks for all the help guys!

Hi, sorry, I didn't understand. But why didn't you just add the correct entry to your tnsnames.ora on a windows pc and use the tools from there?

Oracle is just on the Linux cluster I'm using. Anyway, I figured out how to connect. I had to log into Linux as the oracle user that my DBA had set up in order to successfully connect.

This means you don't have a M$/Linux desktop with Oracle client installed?

I don't know what M$ is. I'm assuming it's Microsoft? Oracle is just running on Linux.

Yes, but I find easier to use an Oracle db on linux/solaris with tools running on MsWindows, something like TOAD ...
I think that beside Oracle tools on linux there is only (but it's an excellent tool) TORA, not to mention ODBC connections to the db for query and loading .
Do you work only on *nix machines?