Patching my databases with the July 2018 PSU, BP and RU

As usual I download the patch bundles  and apply them to our Hands-On Lab environment as quickly as possible. First of all for the simple reason that I don’t want to trap into issues which are fixed already. Second for the reason that I always tell you: YOU MUST PATCH! But if I’m saying this over and over again, then I can’t have my own environments unpatched. And at third, because I want to learn if anything is not working correctly or has changed (see below).

Of course my tiny single instance environments are not comparable to your critical production sites. And I don’t have to complete any extra tests. Or include the patch into a Rapid Home Provisioning rollout plan. So for me it’s a fairly simple task whereas for you it usually involves more work.

Patching my databases with the July 2018 PSU, BP and RU

As you can see from my previous blog post, I figured out already which patches I need to download, I learned about the July 2018 Risk Matrix scores, and I checked the READMEs as well.

Then as next step, I will have to verify the prerequisites including OPatch, and afterwards apply the patch bundles. I don’t patch OJVM as I didn’t include it in any of my databases.

Prerequisites

For the Oracle 11.2.0.4 PSU I must ensure OPatch utility version 11.2.0.3.6 is installed. In my case it is already. Hence, no action needed here. But for Oracle 12.1.0.2 there’s a change.

Important change:
Different from previous runs where I simply used the 12.2/18c OPatch as you could see in April 2018 to patch also my Oracle 12.1.0.2 databases, this will fail now since the OPatch 12.2.0.1.14 version.
When you invoke it from a different home, you’ll see the below error pattern.
Thus, you MUST install the version of OPatch into your 12.1.0.2 homes now as well.

$OH18/OPatch/datapatch -verbose
...
Queryable inventory could not determine the current opatch status.
Execute 'select dbms_sqlpatch.verify_queryable_inventory from dual'
and/or check the invocation log
/u01/app/oracle/cfgtoollogs/sqlpatch/sqlpatch_16186_2018_07_18_13_07_29/sqlpatch_invocation.log
for the complete error.
Prereq check failed, exiting without installing any patches.
...
SQL> select dbms_sqlpatch.verify_queryable_inventory from dual;

VERIFY_QUERYABLE_INVENTORY
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ORA-20001: Latest xml inventory is not loaded into table

As far as I can see, there reason seem to be the 3 directories OPatch creates in the database (see DBA_DIRECTORIES). But I didn’t went into details as my shortcut most likely wasn’t meant to work anyways. Hence, I can’t blame anybody 🙂

For Oracle 18.3.0 the OPatch requirement is now OPatch utility version 12.2.0.1.14. As my current version is Opatch 12.2.0.1.13 I will need to update it via patch 6880880.

In the README I find the following install instructions:

1. Please take a backup of ORACLE_HOME/OPatch into a dedicated backup location.
2. Please make sure no directory ORACLE_HOME/OPatch exist.
3. Please unzip the OPatch downloaded zip into ORACLE_HOME directory

This is not complicated.

. cdb2
cd $ORACLE_HOME
tar -czf opatch_old_del_later.tar OPatch
rm -rf OPatch
cp /media/sf_TEMP/p6880880_180000_Linux-x86-64.zip .
unzip p6880880_180000_Linux-x86-64.zip
cd OPatch

Afterwards I verify the version – and this looks good.

[CDB2] oracle@localhost:/u01/app/oracle/product/18/OPatch
$ ./opatch version
OPatch Version: 12.2.0.1.14

OPatch succeeded.

Good thing: I can use this version also for the 12.1.0.2 patching but I will have to install it this time separately into my 12.1.0.2 home as well.

Patching Oracle 11.2.0.4 with the July 2018 Patch Set Update

As I don’t have an Engineered System unfortunately, I patch my single instance 11.2.0.4 environment with the July PSU.

And as I showed the task in step-by-step instructions already in April, I recorded a short 3 min video this time:

.

Patching Oracle 12.1.0.2 with the July 2018 Bundle Patch

Please find all the steps in the README. As noted above it is now important to have the OPatch utility installed into the same Oracle Home as otherwise the inventory can’t be queried within the database.

.

Patching Oracle 18.1.0 with the July 2018 Update

I have applied the 18.2.0 Update already a few weeks ago to my Oracle 18.1.0 environment. But for this exercise I use a standard 18.1.0 environment. For most of you this task won’t be necessary as you’ll start off with Oracle 18.3.0 on premises anyway, and hence don’t have to apply the July 2018 Update (RU).

All the necessary steps are similar to Oracle 12.2.0.1 patching. You can find them in the README.

In brief:

$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch version

$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch prereq CheckConflictAgainstOHWithDetail -phBaseDir /media/sf_TEMP/p28090523_180000_Linux-x86-64/28090523

cd /media/sf_TEMP/p28090523_180000_Linux-x86-64/28090523

$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch apply

$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/datapatch -verbose

But please see the short video below:

.

–Mike