Running Oracle database server on a Mac.

Due to my upcoming job having a large part being Oracle, I figured I should install Oracle on my Mac. I found this article on the Oracle site that made running it in a virtual machine look easy. Simply, it’s:

git clone https://github.com/oracle/vagrant-projects
cd vagrant-projects/OracleDatabase/21.3.0-XE 
# Optional: download the Oracle Database installation file and place it in this directory
vagrant up

And that’s where the wheels fell off. I haven’t used Vagrant for a couple of years. My Vagrant fell into a wibbling heap. I needed to do the following to drag everything up to date:

brew install vagrant

And then install Virtualbox from the Virtualbox downloads page. Bringing up vagrant then refreshes the vagrant image, brings the oracle image up to date and runs it.

    oracle21c-xe-vagrant: INSTALLER: Started up
    oracle21c-xe-vagrant: Oracle Linux 8 BaseOS Latest (x86_64)           3.3 MB/s |  49 MB     00:14
    oracle21c-xe-vagrant: Oracle Linux 8 Application Stream (x86_64)      3.2 MB/s |  37 MB     00:11
.
.
.
    oracle21c-xe-vagrant: INSTALLER: Oracle preinstall and openssl complete
    oracle21c-xe-vagrant: INSTALLER: Environment variables set
    oracle21c-xe-vagrant: INSTALLER: Downloading Oracle Database software

You’re going to need the instantclient libraries. Do the following in the instantclient directory, you might want to have copied *.dylib* into /usr/local/lib:

$ chmod u+w *
$ xattr -r -d -s com.apple.quarantine instantclient_19_3

vagrant ssh into the Virtualbox, sudo su – to root, thence to the oracle user and sqlplus sys as sysdba gets you in. This isn’t wildly useful but it’s a start.