Installing Oracle XE 11gR2 on Fedora 15 - linux group permission deadlock During installation of Oracle XE 11gR2 on Fedora 15, I am presented with:


  The install cannot proceed because ORACLE_BASE directory (/u01/app/oracle) is not owned by "dba" group.  You must change the ownership of ORACLE_BASE directory to "dba" group and retry the installation. 


This is frustrating because I have set oracle:oinstall as the owner, and dba is in the oinstall group.   

When I change the owner to dba it just complains about the oracle user. 


  dba gid=oinstall groups=oinstall,root,oper
  oracle gid=oinstall groups=oinstall,vboxsf,dba  (running in virtualbox)


What am I doing wrong?
You've got the distinction between users and groups mixed up. Putting the dba user in the oinstall group will not mean that the dba group will also have permission to write to /u01/app/oracle when the owning group is oinstall - this is because the dba user and the dba group are completely separate entities.

The Oracle user should be in the oinstall and dba groups. There shouldn't be a dba user, only an Oracle user.

chown oracle:dba /u01/app/oracle


... will fix it.