DBCollect/Install

Summary

Installing DBCollect is pretty simple: download the latest dbcollect zipapp, put it somewhere in $PATH, and make it executable.

Requirements

Python

DBCollect is a Python ZIP app

• Requires Python (2.6+ or 3.x)
  • On Linux (EL6+) works out of the box
  • On AIX/HP-UX, need to install Python first, Windows not supported

ZIPApp

A Python ZipApp is a standard ZIP file with an additional "shebang" prepended: #!/usr/bin/env python

• This causes dbcollect to be called with whatever ‘python’ version is in $PATH
• If this does not work, manually run python: ‘/usr/bin/python3 /usr/local/bin/dbcollect <options>’
• Executable can be inspected with unzip –v /usr/local/bin/dbcollect
• Run simply as root or as ‘oracle’ user/owner

Prerequisites

• Python 2.6 or higher, or Python 3.x (preferred)
• Python-argparse (is usually included in the Python distribution except for very old versions)
• Enterprise Linux 6, 7 or 8 (RHEL, Oracle Linux, etc), Solaris 11, IBM AIX 7
• Some free space in /tmp (or elsewhere, use --tempdir)
• Oracle RDBMS 11g or higher (optional)
• Diagnostics pack license OR statspack configured on the database(s)
• Access to the 'oracle' special user or dba privileges ('root' not required)
• Database instances up and running (opened read/write required for AWR/Statspack)
• SYS credentials (hence the 'oracle' or dba user requirement)

Downloading DBcollect

The latest release is always available on the releases page:

DBcollect releases (GitHub) On the Github releases page, go to the latest release, open Assets and download dbcollect.

DBCollect Download (application page, not always working) is a direct link to the latest version.

Easy Install

If your system has internet (https) access, see dbcollect install for an easy way to install dbcollect

DBCollect location

Do NOT put dbcollect in non-standard locations such as /tmp, /root etc. The user dbcollect runs as (usually oracle) needs to have access to the dbcollect file (hence it does not work in /root). It also may not work on mounted paths that have execute disabled (/tmp, /var/tmp, ...)

Cloning Git Repository

Do NOT clone the git repository and run it from there (it will result in an error). This to prevent tampering, and weird problems (the zipapp package ensures all required files are contained in a predictable location).

Other requirements

Linux

On Linux (EL7+) both Python 2 and 3 may be installed. To set the preferred version globally on the system, use alternatives

alternatives --set python /usr/bin/python3

AIX

On IBM AIX, you need to install Python first. You can get python for AIX from AIX Toolbox (IBM)

Make sure it is executable and available in $PATH.

Simply running python should work.

Solaris

On Solaris, Python should be already available. It may be an older version. Make sure you can run python from the command line.

HP-UX

HP-UX has experimental support. Some OS commands require sudo access, run dbcollect --sudoers to install the sudoers file before proceeding. This will allow dbcollect to pick up required stuff like CPU model, disk capacities and more. sudo must be installed for this to work.

Windows

dbcollect does not yet support Windows. Let me know if you need it.

Python

The dbcollect app runs using a shebang (#!/usr/bin/env python). This means Python needs to be available in the environment to run dbcollect. Some systems do not have this by default.

On UNIX (AIX, Solaris) you may have to create a symbolic link or run dbcollect like this:

python3 /usr/local/bin/dbcollect

If all else fails, you can run dbcollect from python directly:

python /usr/local/bin/dbcollect
# or
/usr/bin/python /usr/local/bin/dbcollect
# or
python2 /usr/local/bin/dbcollect