Running Oracle Database on Docker on Apple M1 Chip
This post is for you if you have an Apple M1 laptop and cannot get Oracle Database to run on Docker.
The reason Oracle Database, and lots of other software, doesn’t run on the new Apple Silicon is their new chip uses a different instructions set to what is used by Intel chips. Most of the Database vendors have come out to say they will not be porting their Databases to the M1 chip, as most/all servers out there run on x86 chips, and the cost of porting is just not worth it, as there is zero customers.
Are you using an x86 Chip computer (Windows or Macs with intel chips)? If so, follow these instructions (and ignore this post)
If you have been using Apple for your laptop for some time and have recently upgraded, you are now using the M1 chip, you have probably found some of your software doesn’t run. In my scenario (and with many other people) you can no longer run an Oracle Database 😦
But there does seem to be a possible solution and this has been highlighted by Tom de Vroomen on his blog. A work around is to spin up an x86 container using Colima. Tom has given some instructions on his blog, and what I list below is an extended set of instructions to get fully setup and running with Oracle on Docker on M1 chip.
1-Install Homebrew
You might have Homebrew installed, but if not run the following to install.
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"2-Install colima
You can not install Colima using Homebrew. This might take a minute or two to run.
brew install colima3-Start colima x86 container
With Colima installed, we can now start an x86 container.
colima start --arch x86_64 --memory 4
The container will be based on x86, which is the important part of what we need. The memory is 4GB, but you can probably drop that a little.
The above command should start within a second or two.
4-Install Oracle Database for Docker
The following command will create an Oracle Database docker image using the image created by Gerald Venzi.
docker run -d -p 1521:1521 -e ORACLE_PASSWORD=<your password> -v oracle-volume:/opt/oracle/oradata gvenzl/oracle-xe
23c Database – If you want to use the 23c Database, Check out this post for the command to install
I changed <your password> to SysPassword1.
This will create the docker image and will allow for any changes to the database to be persisted after you shutdown docker. This is what you want to happen.
5-Log-in to Oracle as System
Open the docker client to see if the Oracle Database image is running. If not click on the run button.
When it finishes starting up, open the command line (see icon to the left of the run button), and log in as the SYSTEM user.
sqlplus system/SysPassword1@//localhost/XEPDB1
You are now running Oracle Database on Docker on an M1 chip laptop 🙂
6-Create new user
You shouldn’t use the System user, as that is like using root for everything. You’ll need to create a new user/schema in the database for you to use for your work. Run the following.
create user brendan identified by BTPassword1 default tablespace usersgrant connect, resource to brendan;If these run without any errors you now have your own schema in the Oracle Database on Docker (on M1 chip)
7-Connect using SQL*Plus & SQL Developer
Now let’s connect to the schema using sqlplus.
sqlplus brendan/BTPassword1@//localhost/XEPDB1That should work for you and you can now proceed using the command line tool.
If you refer to use a GUI tool then go install SQL Developer. Jeff Smith has a blog post about installing SQL Developer on M1 chip. Here is the connection screen with all the connection details entered (using the username and password given/used above)
You can now use the command line as well as SQL Developer to connect to your Oracle Database (on docker on M1).
8-Stop Docker and Colima
After you have finished using the Oracle Database on Docker you will want to shut it down until the next time you want to use it. There are two steps to follow. The first is to stop the Docker image. Just go to the Docker Desktop and click on the Stop button. It might take a few seconds for it to shutdown.
The second thing you need to do is to stop Colima.
colima stopThat’s it all done.
9-What you need to run the next time (and every time after that)
For the second and subsequent time you want to use the Oracle Docker image all you need to do is the following
(a) Start Colima
colima start --arch x86_64 --memory 4
(b) Start Oracle on Docker
Open Docker Desktop and click on the Run button [see Docker Desktop image above]
And to stop everything
(a) Stop the Oracle Database on Docker Desktop
(b) Stop Colima by running ‘colima stop’ in a terminal
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