oracle OPatch

OPATCH USERS GUIDE Copyright (c) Oracle Corporation 2002, 2003 and 2004 INTRODUCTION ------------ OPatch is a set of Perl scripts that allow the application and rolling back of interim patches to an Oracle product. The program has sub-commands that may take arguments. The program requires that the Perl language interpreter (ref: http://www.cpan/org/ ) is available on the current system. Help is available for all commands. OPatch relies upon Perl version 5.005_03 or greater to run but version 5.6 or greater is recommended. We will update this user-guide as arguments and commands change. OPatch expects users to have commands such as jar, java, ar, cp and make (depending on platforms) available in their PATH. ENVIRONMENTAL VARIABLES ----------------------- $ORACLE_HOME must point to a valid Oracle Home and matches the value when that Oracle Home was installed. A list of products that have been installed can be retrieved from the inventory by using "lsinventory -all". REAL APPLICATION CLUSTERS ------------------------- When patching a RAC installation with either a rolling patch or minimum downtime the user is prompted for which nodes to patch during the patch installation process. A rolling RAC patch is identified inside the patch and cannot be enabled when invoking the patch tool. More details are in the FAQ that should be in the same directory as this file. When patching a RAC on certain platforms, it is important that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH must be set up correctly. Please see the FAQ for details. LIMITATIONS ----------- The current version of OPatch has some limitions that will be resolved in the future. These limitations are: 1. Shared ORACLE_HOMEs (clustered file systems): Rolling RAC and minimum down options are not supported and should not be used on RAC clusers with a shared ORACLE_HOME. This is normally seen when CFS (clustered file systems) are used for the installation. Patching this type of installtion should be done on a single machine. Any instance that uses the ORACLE_HOME on a CFS that is to be patched should be stopped on all nodes before patching the installation. 2. Simultaneous installing new instances and patching: Currently installing a new instance while patching an existing installation is not supported. Inventory corruption may result from this activity. 3. Patch process must finish Currently a partially installed interim patch cannot be removed. The patch process must finish. Once the patch process has finished the patch can be removed. GENERAL USAGE ------------- $ 'opatch apply ...' is to apply a patch $ 'opatch rollback ...' is to roll back a patch $ 'opatch lsinventory' is to show inventory on an Oracle Home $ 'opatch lsinventory -all' is to list all products on all Oracle Homes $ 'opatch query ...' is to query a given patch from specific details $ 'opatch version' is to show the version of the OPatch being used. SYNOPSIS -------- < perl > < opatch > < opatch sub-command > [ < command_arguments > ] where: perl: A version of perl. The version must be 5.005_03 or greater but 5.6 or greater is recommended. opatch: The path to the opatch program. opatch sub-command: The sub-command to use. command_arguments: Any arguments supported by the sub-command. DETAILS ------- Invoking OPatch without arguments or with the 'help' sub-command returns the list of valid sub-commands to the user: $ opatch Usage: opatch [ -help ] [ -r[eport] ] [ command ] command := apply lsinventory query rollback version <global_arguments> := -help Displays the help message for the command. -report Print the actions without executing (deprecated). APPLY ----- The apply command is used to install a interim patch. $ opatch apply -help DESCRIPTION This operation applies an interim patch to an ORACLE_HOME from the current directory. The patch location can specified using the parameter patch_location. SYNTAX opatch apply [-delay <value> ] [ -force ] [-invPtrLoc <Path to oraInst.loc> ] [-jdk <LOC> ] [-jre <LOC> ] [-local ] [-minimize_downtime ] [-no_bug_superset ] [-no_inventory ] [-oh <ORACLE_HOME> ] [-responseFile <path to response file>] [-retry <value> ] [-silent ] [-verbose ] [-nolink] [-pre <parameters for the pre script in escaped double quotes> [-opatch_pre_end] ] [-post <parameters for the post script in escaped quotes> [-opatch_post_end] ] [-no_sysmod] <patch zipfile> OPTIONS -delay: If -retry is specified, this options tells OPatch how many seconds it should wait before attempting to lock inventory again in case of a previous failure. -error_on_conflict: Deprecated. Does not do anything. -force: If a conflict exist which prevents the patch from being applied, the -force flag can be used to apply the patch. OPatch will remove all the conflicting patches before applying the current patch. -invPtrLoc: Used to locate the oraInst.loc file. Needed when the installation used the -invPtrLoc flag. This should be the path to the oraInst.loc file from -jdk location -jre: This option tells OPatch to use JRE (java) from the specified location instead of the default location under Oracle Home. Both -jdk and -jre options cannot be specified together. OPatch will display error in that case -local: Patch the local node, then update inventory of the local node. Do not propagate the patch or inventory update to other nodes. -minimize_downtime: Only applied to RAC instances. User supplies the order of nodes to be patched. This option cannot be used in conjunction with -local option with a rolling patch. -no_bug_superset: This option tells OPatch to error out if the current patch's bugs-to-fix is a super-set (or same set) of an installed patch's bugs-fixed in the Oracle Home. -no_inventory: Bypass the inventory for reading and updates -oh: The oracle home to work on. This takes precedence over the environment variable ORACLE_HOME -retry: This option tells OPatch how many times it should retry in case of an inventory lock failure. -silent: This suppresses any user-interaction and uses the response file instead -verbose: This option prints more OPatch output to the screen as well as to the log file -report: Just prints out the actions without executing -responseFile: Specifies the path to the response file. Should be used in conjunction with the --silent option. Default however is $OH/OPatch/opatch.rsp. -nolink: The nolink option does not perform any make operations. This option can be used during multiple patch applications and perform the linking step only once. OPatch does not keep track of the make operations it did not perform. It is the job of the OPatch users to make sure the execute OPatch without this option at the end, so that compilation happens once -opatch_post_end: This option is used to mark the end of post options. Without this option everyth