How to Make Oracle Database Start and Shutdown Automatically - Linux

The automatic startup and shutdown of the Oracle database can be achieved with the files dbstart and dbshut both provided by Oracle.

These files rely on the existance of the file /etc/oratab to work (although by altering the dbshut and dbstart files this can be moved).


The file oratab is used by ORACLE utilities (DbStart and DbShut).  It is created by root.sh and updated by the Database Configuration Assistant when creating a database.

The format of the /etc/oratab file is as follows: 

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SID:ORACLE_HOME:AUTO

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An example:

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orcl:/home/oracle/7.3.3.0.0:Y  -- 'Y' -- To Start Automatically
leaveup:/home/oracle/7.3.2.1.0:N -- 'N' -- Not to start Automatically.

This is not it, there is more to it. The above will work only when the DbStart and DbShut scripts are run during the startup of the linux system. Please read on:

init.d & rc.d

To start and stop the database when the machine comes up and goes down by modifying the startup routines for the Linux machine. This is quite easy, although I should point out here that this may change depending on which flavour of Linux (slackware, debian, redhat, etc). I will show examples which work for Redhat Linux 5.0. To modify these for your own flavour of Linux, please see your Linux documentation sets. (Although it should hold true for any Sys V type UNIX).
Firstly, we need to create the script which will run dbshut and dbstart in the /etc/rc.d/init.d directory.

Create the following file as /etc/rc.d/init.d/OracleDB:

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#!/bin/sh
# chkconfig: 345 99 10
# description: Oracle auto start-stop script.
#
# Set ORA_HOME to be equivalent to the $ORACLE_HOME
# from which you wish to execute dbstart and dbshut;
#
# Set ORA_OWNER to the user id of the owner of the
# Oracle database in ORA_HOME.

ORA_HOME=<Oracle Home>
ORA_OWNER=oracle

if [ ! -f $ORA_HOME/bin/dbstart ]
then
    echo "Oracle startup: cannot start"
    exit
fi

case "$1" in
   'start')
        # Start the Oracle databases:
        # The following command assumes that the oracle login
        # will not prompt the user for any values
        su - $ORA_OWNER -c "$ORA_HOME/bin/lsnrctl start"
        su - $ORA_OWNER -c "$ORA_HOME/bin/dbstart $ORA_HOME"
        touch /var/lock/subsys/dbora
        ;;
    'stop')
        # Stop the Oracle databases:
        # The following command assumes that the oracle login
        # will not prompt the user for any values
        su - $ORA_OWNER -c "$ORA_HOME/bin/dbshut $ORA_HOME"
        su - $ORA_OWNER -c "$ORA_HOME/bin/lsnrctl stop"
        rm -f /var/lock/subsys/dbora
        ;;
esac

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After checking the correctness of the above script, This script needs to be linked to the Linux runlevel directories.

The following commands will ensure that the databases will come up in runlevels 3,4 and 5:

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$ ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/OracleDB /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S99OracleDB

$ ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/OracleDB /etc/rc.d/rc4.d/S99OracleDB
$ ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/OracleDB /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S99OracleDB

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The following commands will ensure that the databases will shut down in runlevels 0,1,2 and 6:

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$ ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/OracleDB /etc/rc.d/rc0.d/K10OracleDB          # Halting
$ ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/OracleDB /etc/rc.d/rc1.d/K10OracleDB
$ ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/OracleDB /etc/rc.d/rc2.d/K10OracleDB
$ ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/OracleDB /etc/rc.d/rc6.d/K10OracleDB        # Rebooting

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 Reference: Oracle Database HOWTO