The advantages of silent install using response file are:
1. All the installations are identical, so the setup is consistent across different environment.
2. No X required during the installation, just the normal ssh to server is sufficient.
3. Installation is simpler, just trigger the command, no need to click on different installing screen.
The most important part of silent install is the response file. Oracle installation binary contains a folder called response. From there we can modify the db installation rsp file. Many lines in the file are comments, so the file is self-explanatory. In 10g response file, the most important parameters to configure are:
UNIX_GROUP_NAME, ORACLE_HOME, ORACLE_HOME_NAME, INSTALL_TYPE
Once the response file is ready, we can install oracle binary by calling OUI
runInstaller -responseFile /full/path/to/myInstall.rsp -silent
The last few lines of the installation output, we will get some instructions run root.sh as root user. After run root.sh following the instruction, we are done with the installation.
