How to Setup Automatic Startup and Shutdown of an Oracle Database on Linux (Not Using Oracle-Restart)

Ok, we all have done it several times. I, myself, made some scripts to do it in past. However, do you know there is an official way/script for that?
You can accomplish this with dbstart and dbshut scripts, which are located in the $ORACLE_HOME/bin directory.
This is documented for 12.1 in Stopping and Starting Oracle Software .

Of course that, if you have Oracle Clusterware configured, you can use Oracle Restart and SRVCTL tool, and Clusterware automatically starts and stops the Oracle database instances and listeners. Which is way better.
This post refers to official procedure in case you haven’t Clusterware configured.

Quick Guide:

1) You need your Database Entry in /etc/oratab:
— No mysteries with that. Just follow the pattern:

$ORACLE_SID:$ORACLE_HOME:<N|Y>

2) Create file /etc/init.d/dbora
— Edit with you environment configuration:

#! /bin/sh 
# description: Oracle auto start-stop script.
#
# Set ORACLE_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 ORACLE_HOME.

ORA_HOME=
ORA_OWNER=

case "$1" in
'start')
    # Start the Oracle databases:
    # The following command assumes that the oracle login
    # will not prompt the user for any values
    # Remove "&" if you don't want startup as a background process.
    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" &
    rm -f /var/lock/subsys/dbora
    ;;
esac

* You may also want to add listener commandsin script. For that, fit the follwing in same sintax as shown above.

$ORACLE_HOME/bin/lsnrctl {start|stop} listener_name

3) Change the group of the dbora file to the OSDBA group (typically dba), and set the permissions to 750

# chgrp dba dbora
# chmod 750 dbora

4) Create symbolic links to the dbora script:

# ln -s /etc/init.d/dbora /etc/rc.d/rc0.d/K01dbora
# ln -s /etc/init.d/dbora /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S99dbora
# ln -s /etc/init.d/dbora /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S99dbora

And that’s it!
Now your database/listener are restarting automatically with server.

* Bonus!
*.1) Register this as a service:

chkconfig --add dbora

*.2) And now you can stop/start your database as an OS service:

# service dbora start
# service dbora stop

Interesting:
– Oracle 11gR2 documentation states the use of the dbstart and dbshut scripts are deprecated. It’s supposed to be replaced by Oracle Restart.
– The Oracle 12c documentation has no mention of the deprecation of dbstart and dbshut and has reinstated the documentation about them (as I linked above). So, feel free to use dbstart and dbshut in a supported manner for all versions of the database.

Important:
Also, note that this post is focused on Linux RHEL or OL. But you can also find this procedure documented for AIX and Solaris as per official Online Doc: Stopping and Starting Oracle Software.

Hope it helps!
See you next week!