Install R12 on a Virtual Machine hosted on Windows Vista

Question

I wanted to install Oracle EBS R12.1.1 on Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit but used to get .\jre\nt\1.6.0\bin\java error. Hussein Sawwan
helped and said that this is not certified. He adviced me to create a VMWare Server. Following is my experience. I hope it is helpful. Any
suggestions, additions are more than welcome. Thanks to all who helpmed me especially Hussein Sawwan, Helios, Gareth Roberts.
I used to get .\jre\nt\1.6.0\bin\java error after the installation would zoom through 33%. That was because my staging area was not correct. The staging area should be just next to c:\ or whatever be the root directory (or drive). No space or special characters in folder name. My current structure is as follows:
c:\r12stage. Under r12stage I have following folders and subfolders
oraAppDB -- 49 Disks
oraApps -- 11 Disks
oraAS -- 3 Disks (This comes from the Rapid Install Tools)
oraDB -- 5 Disks
startCD -- 1 Disk plus other folders. Just copy startcd from the unzipped download and paste to r12stage area.
I then created a virtual machine using VMWare Server (free download but need to register to get the serial number). Because I installed
vmware server on Vista Home Premium 64 bit Host OS, I have to boot my machine by pressing F8 and then select Disable Digital Signature
Enformcement. Thanks to Gareth Roberts for this tip. Create a vm and install Windows 2003 by selecting the .img file (first cd) by selecting Use ISO image and then path of the windows 2003 cd 1 (zipped file). start the virtual machine, that will install windows 2003 and then ask for location of 2nd cd. On the host machine, where the second win 2003 zip file resides, unzip the second zip file and name the folder as cd2. share this folder to the __vmware_user__ and from the virtual machine, map network drive to \\hostmachinename\cd2. Select this as the location of cd2 and complete the installation. Install MKS Toolkit from http://cygwin.com/ and visual c++ from Microsoft website. for information on this please refer to the following URL. Thanks to Muhammad Habib
http://mhabib.wordpress.com/2007/03/14/installing-oracle-applications-e-bussiness-11i-on-windows-xp/
After installation is done and Windows Update is run, share the r12stage directory on the host machine to the vmuser and launch rapidwiz.cmd from the command prompt and follow the instruction. For internet connection from the VM use Ethernet as NAT.
If the installation errors halfway through, clean up your VM by following instructions in document id 292424.1 in MetaLink. If you dont have access to Metalink then I summarize the steps briefly over here.
Launch the Registry Editor.
Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software key.
Select the Apache Group subkey and delete it.
Select the Oracle subkey and delete it.
Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Current Control Set\Services.
Carefully select and delete each service beginning with Oracle. For example, delete "Oracle Apache Server PROD_<nodename>".
When you are finished, exit the Registry Editor.
Navigate to the Environment Variables editing screen according to your system setup. For example, right-click My Computer and select
Properties. From the Advanced tab, click the Environment Variables button.
Select the following system variables if created during the failed installation, and delete them: DISCO_JRE, DISCO_VBROKER, JSERV,
VBROKER_JAVAVM, VBROKER_TAG, WV_GATEWAY.
Select the Path variable, but do not delete it. Carefully edit it and remove any component with "Oracle" in the name, or that otherwise
references the failed install. For example, delete "E:\11.5.10\test\visora\8.0.6\bin;".
Save and exit System Properties.
Open a command window and navigate to the C:\Program Files\ directory. Delete the Oracle subdirectory.
If your Oracle Inventory directory was not C:\Program Files\Oracle\Inventory and was therefore not deleted in the previous step, locate it
and delete it.
Restart your machine
It is now safe to remove the Oracle filesystem that was partially installed during the failed installation. Go to the base install directory,
or top-level directory under which you installed either the Database Server (DATA, DB) or the Applications Tier Server (APPL, ORA, COMN)
directories, or both. Note that you may choose to rename a directory before you delete it. This allows you to use the same directory name and start a new installation even before you finish the delete filesystem operation. For example, if you placed your filesystem in a "test" directory under
"E:\11.5.10":
C:\> E:
E:\> cd 11.5.10
E:\> rename test oldtest
E:\> del /s /q oldtest
In another window:
C:\> cd <stage install directory>
Q:\> rapidwiz.cmd
After cleaning up if you still get error like RW-50004: Error Code received when running external process. Check log file for
details. Running database Install driver for VIS instance, after 13% complte step 1 of 5 then I suggest that you re-create the machine and follow the above steps again. Including installing win 2003, mks tool kit , vc++, etc. It will be a success.
Starting concurrent manager takes up enormous memory and slows down everything, so if you dont need it then dont ever start it. APPS password is apps and sysadmin user is sysadmin.
Good luck.
Mahesh Acharya

Answer 1

I had Vista 64-bit machine, installed Ubuntu in VMWare. Installed Oracle apps on 32-bit Ubuntu under VMware and was able to access Oracle apps. But, it is very very slow. It hangs sometimes and takes 15-20mins to display Ubuntu screens. Am I missing something here. I have a 4GB RAM and VMWare can not use all the 4GB. It may be using 2GB of 4GB. Am I missing something?