Installing Clusterware through OUI fails Cheking OS version in RHL-5

Whenever to install oracle clusterware I run runInstaller on Red hat linux 5 machine it fails with operating system version test. The same problem happens whenever you try to install Oracle Clusterware or oracle database 10g on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.0 or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 then the current version of Oracle Universal Installer does not recognized these operating systems as supported operating systems and does not perform the installation. It fails like below.

-bash-3.1$ ./runInstaller
Starting Oracle Universal Installer...

Checking installer requirements...

Checking operating system version: must be redhat-3, SuSE-9, redhat-4, UnitedLinux-1.0, asianux-1 or asianux-2
Failed <<<< style="font-weight: bold;">Cause of The Problem
The installer picks up the version of Linux installed from the /etc/redhat-release file. There may be several reasons for which the above messages can be shown.

1. Your OS is not certified with the oracle certification to install clusterware.

2. The /etc/redhat-release become corrupted and installer can't read the file.

3. It cannot identify the version of Linux installed in the machine and reports a failure accordingly.

4. May be bug of the OUI.

Solution of The Problem
Method 1: Change the release value in /etc/redhat-release
Step 1: Ensure that your OS version is certified with clusterware installation or the product you want to install. This can be seen by oracle certification matrix.

Step2: Ensure that /etc/redhat-release is there and not corrupted. You can copy it to somewhere and edit it.

Step 3: I have seen if you want to install oracle clusterware on RHL 5 then then it shows above failure though it is certified and I have intact /etc/redhat-release. In that case to meet clusterware installation edit the /etc/redhat-release file to make it from 5 to 4.

The original value and changed value is listed below.
•On Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.0, original value is "Enterprise Linux Enterprise Linux server release 5". Change it to Enterprise Release Enterprise Linux server release 4.

•On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0, original value is "Red Hat Enterprise Linux server release 5". Change it to Red Hat Enterprise Linux server release 4.

•On SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, original value is
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (x86_64)
VERSION = 10

Change it to
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (x86_64)
VERSION = 9

I have done this on my Red Hat system as,

-bash-3.1$ vi /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 4 (Tikanga)

Now again try to run runInstaller and possibly you will not get the error.

Method 2: (recommended) Running as ignoreSysPrereqs flag:
The idea is while running OUI( Oracle Universal Installer) command it to skip operating system test. Start the runIstaller as
./runinstaller -ignoreSysPrereqs
which causes the installer to skip the operating system check and continue with the installation.

Related Documents
Install Oracle Database 10g Software on Red Hat Linux