Goals

• Provide an easy way to build a lightweight Docker image for Oracle Database.
• Just run a database and skip the complexities of installation and configuration.

Features

• docker run creates and starts up a new database or the existing database, if it is already created.
• docker logs shows all the logs prefixed with log source (in the style of syslog).
• Uses trap to handle signals and shutdown gracefully.
• Data and logs are stored in /data so that -v /data could be used.
• Total memory used by Oracle instance (MEMORY_TARGET) is set depending on --shm-size parameter.
• rlwrap can be installed by running bash /tmp/install/install_rlwrap.sh (+ 50 MB on disk).

Build

Optional: if you are using Vagrant, you can use this Vagrantfile for your build environment.

1. download linuxamd64_12102_database_1of2.zip and linuxamd64_12102_database_2of2.zip from oracle.com and extract the archives to current directory.
2. Execute the following lines in bash and wait ~15 minutes:

git clone https://github.com/bofm/docker-oracle12c.git
cd docker-oracle12c
make all

Usage

Note: In the following examples oracle_database is the name of the container.

• Create or run database and listener

  • Daemon mode

    # Create and start
    docker run -d --shm-size 1GB --name oracle_database -p 1521:1521 -v /data bofm/oracle12c
    # Stop
    docker stop -t 120 oracle_database
    # Start again
    docker start oracle_database

    Important: Always stop with -t, otherwise Docker will kill the database instance, if it doesn't shut down in 10 seconds.

  • Foreground mode

    # Start
    docker run -it --shm-size 1GB --name oracle_database -p 1521:1521 -v /data bofm/oracle12c
    # `ctrl+c` (SIGINT) to stop

• Create a gzipped tar archive suitable for docker load (an archive of the image with a created database and without volumes)

  It is recommended to use large (>=20GB, the default is 10GB) Docker base volume size, for which Vagrant with Vagrantfile can be used.

  # Build everything and save the created image to a file.
  #   This will echo something like this:
  #     Image saved to: /some/path/docker_img_oracle_database_created_YYYY-MM-DD.tgz
  make all docker-save
  
  # The saved image can be loaded from the file
  # The image will be loaded with tag bofm/oracle12c:created
  docker load < docker_img_oracle_database_created_YYYY-MM-DD.tgz
  
  # Run the image in the new container
  # Daemon
  docker run -d --shm-size 1GB --name oracle_database -p 1521:1521 bofm/oracle12c:created
  # Foreground
  docker run -it --shm-size 1GB --name oracle_database -p 1521:1521 bofm/oracle12c:created

• Logs

  # Check all the logs in one place
  docker logs oracle_database
  
  # Check alert log
  docker logs oracle_database | grep alertlog:
  
  # Check listener log
  docker logs oracle_database | grep listener:

• SQL*Plus, RMAN or any other program

  # Bash
  # as root
  docker exec -it -u root oracle_database bash
  # as oracle
  docker exec -it oracle_database bash
  
  # Run sqlplus in the running container
  docker exec -it oracle_database sqlplus / as sysdba
  
  # Run rman in the running container
  docker exec -it oracle_database rman target /
  
  # Run sqlplus in a separate container and
  # connect to the database in the linked container
  docker run -it --rm --link oracle_database:oradb bofm/oracle12c sqlplus sys/sys@oradb/ORCL as sysdba

• Start listener only (not sure if anybody needs it :) )

  docker run -d --name listener -p 1521:1521 bofm/oracle12c listener
  # Or link it to the running container
  docker run -d --name listener -p 1521:1521 --link <database_container> bofm/oracle12c listener

Compatibility

• Tested on Docker 1.12

Limitations and Bugs

• --shm-size option is required to mount /dev/shm to use Oracle's automatic memory management.
• Oracle Database doesn't work with Docker ZFS storage driver by default. Check this issue for the workaround.
• Database options and sample schemas installation through DBCA is a mystery. In this repo dbca is run with -sampleSchema true and db_template.dbt contains this line <option name="SAMPLE_SCHEMA" value="true"/>, but nothing happens, the database is always created without sample schemas. Well, that's Oracle Database after 30+ years of development.

License

• This repo - MIT License.
• Oracle Database software - see Database Licensing Information.

TODO

• create new databases faster
• use spfile?
• EM DBconsole
• Archivelog mode option?
• syslog-ng or rsyslog, maybe?