E-Business Suite R12.1.1 installation impression

Two weeks ago I was at Collaborate09 where Charles Phillips announced the release of E-Business Suite 12.1.1. Exciting news, since 12.1.1 comes with a number of enhancements screaming for attention.

First of all, the most eye-catching enhancement is the pre-packaged 11gR1 (11.1.0.7) database. Second is the inclusion of all the Critical Patch Updates.
There is also a number of updates on the Application Servers for Forms (version is now 10.1.3.4)

As soon as I came back home, I downloaded the 12.1.1 software and created a VM to test the installation. I installed Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.3 with a bunch of storage... You definitely need some storage for 12.1.1! Vision Demo Database only is over 200GB!
Starting with the Oracle Applications Installation Guide: Using Rapid Install, you will be guided through the installation process. Since I am on OEL5.3 32-bit, I was pointed to Metalink Note 761564.1 - Oracle Applications Installation and Upgrade Notes Release 12 (12.1.1) for Linux x86.
In this document you can find all the details about installing EBS 12.1.1 on Linux x86:

RPMS required to install 12.1.1:

openmotif21-2.1.30-11.EL5.i3861
xorg-x11-libs-compat-6.8.2-1.EL.33.0.1.i386
binutils-2.17.50.0.6-6.0.1.i3862

The above RPMs can be downloade from oss.oracle.com.
The list of RPMs down here can all be found on your distribution media of OEL5.3:

compat-glibc-2.3.4-2.26
gcc-4.1.2-14.el5
gcc-c++-4.1.2-14.el5
glibc-2.5-123
glibc-common-2.5-123
glibc-devel-2.5-12
libgcc-4.1.2-14.el53
libstdc++-devel-4.1.2-14.el5
libstdc++-4.1.2-14.el53
make-3.81-1.13
gdbm-1.8.0-26.2.13
libXp-1.0.0-8.1.el5
libaio-0.3.106-3.23
libgomp-4.1.2-14.el5
sysstat-7.0.0-3.el5
compat-libstdc++-296-2.96-138
compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-61

If you are performing a fresh install of 12.1.1, like I did, you will also need some RPMs for 11g database:

elfutils-libelf-devel-0.125
elfutils-libelf-devel-static-0.125
libaio-devel-0.3.106
unixODBC-2.2.11
unixODBC-devel-2.2.11
kernel-headers-2.6

Now all required RPMs have been installed, take a look at the kernel settings:

Add or adjust the following parameters in /etc/sysctl.conf:

kernel.sem = 256 32000 100 142
kernel.shmall = 2097152
kernel.shmmax = 2147483648(*)
kernel.shmmni = 4096
kernel.msgmax = 8192
kernel.msgmnb = 65535
kernel.msgmni = 2878
fs.file-max = 131072
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 10000 65000(**)
net.core.rmem_default = 262144
net.core.rmem_max = 4194304
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_max = 262144

(*) least value. Half the memory if that is more
(**) I had 1024 65000 and it worked too

Apply these settings by saving the /etc/sysctl.conf and typing the command:
sysctl -p

Next, adjust the DNS resolver parameters in /etc/resolv.conf:
options attempts:5
options timeout:15

Next, make sure your hosts fully qualified domain name is mentioned as the first alias to the hosts IP address in /etc/hosts:
192.168.1.10 hostname.domain.name.com hostname

Make sure that /etc/sysconfig/network contains the fully qualified domain name as your hostname.

In /etc/security/limits.conf you should set some limits for the user you are installing EBS under:
oracle hard nofile 65535
oracle soft nofile 4096
oracle hard nproc 16384
oracle soft nproc 2047

Next, apply patch 6078836 for Oracle or RedHat Enterprise Linux 5. This is an important prerequisite patch in order to prevent compilation errors during installation.
After you have applied this patch, perform the following as root:
# unlink /usr/lib/libXtst.so.6
# ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/libXtst.so.6.1 /usr/lib/libXtst.so.6

Now we're ready to install.
Installation is currently underway.
I'll be back soon to update on my findings.