quick creation of a valid EL5.4 linux installation in vmware[fusion]

Start with downloading the latest Enterprise Linux Distribution from oracle Choose the Enterprise Linux Release 5 Update 4 for x86 (32 Bit) - DVD at the bottom of the page.

unzip the file you downloaded try to remember where you left it.
In vmware Create a New Virtual Machine
Continue without disk
In the Installation Media select Create a custom virtual machine and continue
In Choose Operating System select Operating System Linux and select Version Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Continue
Now use Customize Settings to select how you want to connect to the vm machine, first choose where to save the image. Choose Host Only for the network adapter if you don't want to hassle with networks. Set the memory to > 1GB, if your host operating system has enough available.

At this point there still is no installation on the virtual disk. This can be fixed when the machine starts. It will complain that no bootable disk was found. Now you can attach the downloaded iso image to the vm machine by selecting the image to connect it as a dvd or cd. When this is done, the vm machine can boot from the installation cd.
You can now choose to scan or skip the scan of the installation media.
Does this look familiar?
Choose your preferred language
And let know if you want to clear the disk (I would say: Yes)
For a simple demo installation the default disk layout is ok.
Adjust hostname if you like to
choose timezone
Enter the root password and confirm it. Try to remember this ....
Now choose for software development since this installs almost anything you are ever going to need when working with oracle.
Now most of the installation will be done. When it is ready, logon as root with the password that you should have remembered and

cd /media/En*/Server
rpm -Uvh libaio-devel-* sysstat-* unixODBC-* unixODBC-devel-*

to install the few missing packages.
When this is done, it can be very convenient to install the vmware tools package. This will solve the complaint that is written on the status line. To do this, select 'Install Vmware Tools' from the VMware menu. This will mount a cd image that contains the vmware tools installer. When connected as root,

cd /tmp
gzip -cd /media/VM*/VM*.tar.gz|tar -xf -
cd vm*b
./vm*.pl

and accept all defaults. When this is done, you can share a directory from your host OS with the vmware machine. I prefer to use this for the oracle installers that I keep in the shared directory. Connected as user that you are going to use to install oracle with, cd /mnt/hsfg/[your directory] and continue navigating to the directory that contains your installer. The 11gR2 installer is very helpful because it does not only complain about what is wrong, as far as kernel settings is concerned, it also generates a script that fixes this.

Run the generated scripts

./runfixup.sh
Response file being used is :./fixup.response
Enable file being used is :./fixup.enable
Log file location: ./orarun.log
Setting Kernel Parameters...
kernel.sem = 250 32000 100 128
fs.file-max = 6815744
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 9000 65500
net.core.rmem_default = 262144
net.core.wmem_default = 262144
net.core.rmem_max = 4194304
net.core.wmem_max = 1048576
fs.aio-max-nr = 1048576

Now, the oracle installation can continue.

For a production environment a few things might be done a little more secure, customize disk layout, pay more attention to users and groups, to mention a few. For a quick demo this is enough.

Have fun!