Configuring Operating System Users and Groups

In this guide, a single software owner will be used for all installations, named oracle. The oracle user will belong to the oinstall and dba operating system groups.

To create one software owner with all operating system-authenticated administration privileges:

1. Determine the groups that already exist on your server by listing the contents of the /etc/group file.

   cat /etc/group
   

2. If this is the first time Oracle software has been installed on your server, and the Oracle Inventory group does not exist, then create the Oracle Inventory group (oinstall) with a group ID that is currently not in use on all the nodes in your cluster. Enter a command as the root user that is similar to the following:

   # /usr/sbin/groupadd -g 1000 oinstall
   

3. Create an OSDBA (dba) group with a group ID that is currently not in use on all the nodes in your cluster by entering a command as the root user that is similar to the following:

   # /usr/sbin/groupadd -g 1001 dba
   

4. If the user that owns the Oracle software (oracle) does not exist on your server, you must create the user. Select a user ID (UID) that is currently not in use on all the nodes in your cluster. To determine which users have already been created on your server, list the contents of the /etc/passwd file using the command:

   cat /etc/passwd
   

   The following command shows how to create the oracle user and the user's home directory (/home/oracle) with the default group as oinstall and the secondary group as dba, using a UID of 1100:

   # useradd -u 1100 –g oinstall -G dba -d /home/oracle -r oracle
   

5. Set the password for the oracle account using the following command. Replace password with your own password.

   passwd oracle
   
   Changing password for user oracle.
   New UNIX password: password 
   retype new UNIX password: password
   passwd:  all authentication tokens updated successfully.
   

6. Repeat Step 1 through Step 5 on each node in your cluster.

7. Verify that the attributes of the user oracle are identical on each node of your cluster:

   id oracle 
   

   The command output should be similar to the following:

   uid=1100(oracle) gid=1000(oinstall) groups=1000(oinstall),1001(dba)