My first ever computer, the 10-year old HP Pavilion 4455 desktop, purchased after I finished my master degree in Economics, has seen very limited action in the last few years. My better half had suggested that I donate it away, since we really don’t have enough space to put it, but I refused, because I always thought I would use it in the future. Now I am working on my own, so I will need some spare machines to mess around with as my sandboxes. I finally got some time in the last two days to show it some love.

I decided to load Linux on it. Neither Ubuntu 7.04 nor Ubuntu 6.01 worked. (They might work better for newer desktops, I just don’t know) I have Fedora Core 2, so I installed that. I know the latest Fedora Core is version 6. I am kinda old school in this regard. Anyway, Fedora Core 2 worked on this computer.

I then decided to load Oracle 10g R2 on it. Here is a brief note of my process. It failed, because this machine has 160 MB of memory, not reaching the 256 MB required. I think I will purchase some memory tomorrow and try again.

1. Verify dependencies

[root@localhost haidong]# rpm -i oracle-xe-10.2.0.1-1.0.i386.rpm  --test
error: Failed dependencies:
        libaio >= 0.3.96 is needed by oracle-xe-10.2.0.1-1.0

2. Downloaded libaio source. libaio is Oracle’s library for asynchronous IO. configure failed, therefore I couldn’t compile and install it. Below is the last output on the screen.

                                                                                                                             
ecking for libaio >= 0.3... no
checking for libaio 0.1... no
configure: error:
*** libaio is required.

3. I didn’t bother to look through the configure log file. Instead, I searched for “rpm libaio fedora core 2” and got this link:

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/2/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/

Downloaded the package for libaio.

                                                                                                                             
[root@localhost haidong]# rpm -ivh libaio-0.3.99-2.i386.rpm
warning: libaio-0.3.99-2.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4f2a6fd2
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:libaio                 ########################################### [100%]

4. Install. It failed. I will try again, if/when I get more memory for this old machine.

[root@localhost haidong]# rpm -ivh oracle-xe-10.2.0.1-1.0.i386.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
Oracle Database 10g Express Edition requires a minimum of 256 MB of physical
memory (RAM).  This system has 155 MB of RAM and does not meet minimum
requirements.
error: %pre(oracle-xe-10.2.0.1-1.0) scriptlet failed, exit status 1
error:   install: %pre scriptlet failed (2), skipping oracle-xe-10.2.0.1-1.0