Oracle XE – “Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE) is an entry-level, small-footprint database based on the Oracle Database 10g Release 2 code base that’s free to develop, deploy, and distribute; fast to download; and simple to administer….”

RHEL - is Linux for enterprise environment.

CentOS – “is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor.” Aiming for binary compatibility with RHEL.

After first month of releasing CentOS 5.0 one of the questions was will Oracle and RHEL continue to work together and certify their products after release of Oracle Unbreakable Linux -based on RHEL.
Recently Redhat added Oracle Database 10gR2 to their software catalog, but in the meantime Oracle released Oracle Database 11g.

Enough theory let’s start.

First you need to download Oracle XE. I prefer(and recommend) using universal edition.

Then it becomes much simpler.

Just issue(from terminal):

rpm -ivh <path to oracle rpm>

In case of missing packages see my previous post for a way to install them.

After successful installation the installer instruct you to run:
/etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure

for initial configuration. Read carefully the questions and remember system password.

Then you are ready to use XE.

Just start the browser and type:

http://localhost:8080/apex

If you are not familiar with Oracle there are step by step instructions here and here, and official documentation here.

Troubleshooting:

If you cannot access web server after successful installation check your host name it seems that oracle xe do not likes FQDN hostname. In case that you do not have DNS server enter your FQDN in local hosts file.

Credits for the tip goes to Emerson.