Specify the following information, then click Next:
The full path to directory where the Installer should place inventory information (the Oracle Inventory directory)
The name of the operating system group that should own the Oracle Inventory directory (the Oracle Inventory group)
See the following sections for more information about the values that you must specify.
Note: Ensure that the Oracle Inventory home path contains only ASCII characters. At the time of this release, the use of non-ASCII characters for an Oracle Inventory is not supported.
The Oracle Inventory directory (oraInventory) is the central inventory location for all Oracle software installed on a server. Specify the full path to the Oracle Inventory directory (also called the oraInventory directory). The installer uses this directory to store information about all of the Oracle products installed on this system.
Note: The installer creates the oraInventory directory you specify only if it does not exist. Ensure that you do not place the Oracle Inventory directory under Oracle base or Oracle home.
Use the following Optimal Flexible Architecture (OFA) guidelines when choosing the directory:
The first time you install Oracle software on your computer, the Oracle Universal Installer provides an oraInventory directory in the format u[01-99]/app, such as /u01/app. If the user running the installation has write permissions on the oraInventory file, then the installer creates an Oracle Inventory directory in the path /u[01-99]/app/oraInventory. For example:
/u01/app/oraInventory
By default, the Oracle Inventory directory is not installed under the Oracle base directory. This is because all Oracle software installations share a common Oracle Inventory, so there is only one Oracle Inventory for all users, whereas each user that performs a software installation can use a separate Oracle base directory.
When you provide an Oracle base path when prompted during installation, or you have set the environment variable ORACLE_BASE for the user performing the installation, then the OUI suggests the following default path:
ORACLE_BASE/../oraInventory
If you neither enter a path nor set ORACLE_BASE, then the Oracle Inventory directory is placed in the home directory of the user that is performing the installation. For example:
HOME/oraInventory
In this example, HOME is the login home directory of the user that started the Installer. Unless you are installing the software in a subdirectory of the home directory, Oracle recommends that you change this value to specify the previously recommended value.
Select the name of the operating system group that will own the Oracle Inventory directory.
All the members of this group have access to write to the Oracle Inventory (oraInventory) directory, which is the central inventory record of all Oracle software installations on a server. By default, this group is called oinstall. The Oracle Inventory group must be the primary group for Oracle software installation owners.
Only UNIX users that are members of this group can update, install, or remove Oracle software using Oracle Universal Installer.