Do we offer patched Gold Images already?

Internally we can use a Gold Image service at Oracle. I can download a zip with 19.6.0 included. But externally for you as customers, the download of 19.6.0 required that you download 19.3.0 at first, then apply 19.6.0 on top of it. But a day ago, a tweet by my Belgium friend Philippe Fierens caught my attention. Do we offer patched Gold Images already?

Photo by Sergey Pesterev on Unsplash

What is a Gold Image?

Since Oracle 18c, the installation routine has changed to the better. You download zip file containing the Gold Image, you create a directory and unzip the file into it. Then you call the installer which configures the installation. And you are done. Of course, if you’d like to have the most recent (or any other) Release Update on top, you need to download it separately and install it into this home with opatch. I widely explained how to do this.

So basically, with a Gold Image you avoid this “copy” part of the install routine.

Do we offer patched Gold Images already?

Following up with Philippe, I learned about the [the following link disappeared after I posted this – please see the message in RED below] OEDA (Oracle Exadata Deployment Assistant) readmes. And the most recent one has this section:

Now I was thrilled. Do we offer patched Gold Images already? And I wasn’t aware of it?

As above link disappeared, let me described the patch to access to most recent OEDA readmes:

1. 1. MOS Note 2542082.1 – 19c Grid Infrastructure and Database Upgrade steps for Exadata Database Machine
   2. Then scroll down to: Step 1.4.1 – Download the most recent gold images patch sets for 19c
   3. This section tells you the most recent patches with links
   4. Then you download for instance the patched DB home:
      

      Example: 19.6.0 Database Gold Image Clone from May 5, 2020

The section mentions this as being intended for OVM – but actually it also says:

• A gold image is a copy of a software-only, installed Oracle home. It is used to copy an image of an Oracle home to a new host on a new file system to serve as an active, usable Oracle home.

I started the slow download of the 19.5.0 one for the database – 19.6.0 was not mentioned yet. But nevertheless, I just wanted to see what I get.

Btw, I find it VERY disturbing, that (whoever) includes now the date as a 5th number to the release. We changed to a 3-number schema. So 19.5.0 is it – not 19.5.0.0.191015.

File size is 3.99GB – that’s quite a lot. And took almost 4 hours to download but it has to travel over the Pond I guess …

$ unzip p30397799_195000DBRU_Linux-x86-64.zip 
Archive:  p30397799_195000DBRU_Linux-x86-64.zip
 extracting: db-klone-Linux-x86-64-19000191015.zip  
  inflating: README.txt

Let me check the README.txt at first:

Build Date:     December 24, 2019 01:00

Software home of Oracle Database software
This zip file contains Database  software version: 19.5.0.0.191015
To use this patch with OEDA, copy this file to OEDA's WorkDir before running OEDA.
Refer to the Exadata database machine owners guide for information about the Oracle Exadata deployment assistant
Patches installed:
30165503;TRACKING BUG FOR CLIENT SIDE FIXES NEEDED FOR PMEMLOG
30165493;LOG FILE FAST SYNC PARAMETERS NEED TO BE FIXED FOR PMEMLOG
30128191;OJVM RELEASE UPDATE: 19.5.0.0.191015 (30128191)
30125133;Database Release Update : 19.5.0.0.191015 (30125133)
30122149;OCW RELEASE UPDATE 19.5.0.0.0 (30122149)

What do I get when I unzip it?

$ ls
addnode      dbjava       instantclient  odbc     precomp        sqldeveloper
apex         dbs          inventory      olap     QOpatch        sqlj
assistants   deinstall    javavm         OPatch   R              sqlpatch
bin          demo         jdbc           opmn     racg           sqlplus
cfgtoollogs  diagnostics  jdk            oracore  rdbms          srvm
client       dmu          jlib           ord      README.txt     suptools
clone        drdaas       ldap           ords     relnotes       ucp
crs          dv           lib            oss      root.sh        usm
css          env.ora      md             oui      runInstaller   utl
ctx          has          mgw            owm      schagent.conf  wwg
cv           hs           network        perl     sdk            xdk
data         install      nls            plsql    slax

This doesn’t look very different from a normal home. Of course, there’s a .patch_storage directory, too.

$ ls -lrt .patch_storage/
total 36
drwxr-xr-x.  3 oracle dba    74 Apr 18  2019 29517242_Apr_17_2019_23_27_10
drwxr-xr-x.  3 oracle dba    74 Apr 18  2019 29585399_Apr_9_2019_19_12_47
drwxr-xr-x.  4 oracle dba    87 Dec 24 07:44 30122149_Sep_19_2019_19_36_02
drwxr-xr-x.  4 oracle dba    87 Dec 24 07:45 30125133_Oct_9_2019_00_10_29
drwxr-xr-x.  4 oracle dba    87 Dec 24 07:46 30128191_Aug_29_2019_23_53_58
drwxr-xr-x.  4 oracle dba    87 Dec 24 07:46 30165493_Oct_11_2019_03_38_25
-rw-r--r--.  1 oracle dba 12177 Dec 24 07:46 record_inventory.txt
drwxr-xr-x. 11 oracle dba  4096 Dec 24 07:46 NApply
-rw-r--r--.  1 oracle dba    92 Dec 24 07:46 LatestOPatchSession.properties
-rw-r--r--.  1 oracle dba 12292 Dec 24 07:46 interim_inventory.txt
drwxr-xr-x.  4 oracle dba    87 Dec 24 07:47 30165503_Nov_6_2019_18_00_01

Then I call the ./runInstaller. And it looks exactly the same as for my standard 19.6.0 home.

A minute later, everything is installed and ready to go.

Afterwards I created a CUSTOM database with no extra components to see what I’ll get.

$ export ORACLE_SID=HUGO
[CDB2] oracle@hol:/u01/app/oracle/product/19GOLD
$ s

SQL*Plus: Release 19.0.0.0.0 - Production on Thu Jan 23 18:48:21 2020
Version 19.5.0.0.0

Copyright (c) 1982, 2019, Oracle.  All rights reserved.


Connected to:
Oracle Database 19c Enterprise Edition Release 19.0.0.0.0 - Production
Version 19.5.0.0.0

And here we go:

SQL> select con_id, comp_id, version from cdb_registry order by 1,2;

    CON_ID COMP_ID			  VERSION
---------- ------------------------------ ------------------------------
	 1 CATALOG			  19.0.0.0.0
	 1 CATPROC			  19.0.0.0.0
	 1 OWM				  19.0.0.0.0
	 1 RAC				  19.0.0.0.0
	 1 XDB				  19.0.0.0.0
	 2 CATALOG			  19.0.0.0.0
	 2 CATPROC			  19.0.0.0.0
	 2 OWM				  19.0.0.0.0
	 2 RAC				  19.0.0.0.0
	 2 XDB				  19.0.0.0.0
	 3 CATALOG			  19.0.0.0.0
	 3 CATPROC			  19.0.0.0.0
	 3 OWM				  19.0.0.0.0
	 3 RAC				  19.0.0.0.0
	 3 XDB				  19.0.0.0.0

15 rows selected.

Which patches are included already?

With a fiinal check using my check_patches_18.sql script I’d like to find out which patches have been applied to this home.

    CON_ID ACTION_TIME	  PATCH_ID PATCH_TYPE ACTION	 DESCRIPTION		  SOURCE_VERSION  TARGET_VERSION
---------- ------------ ---------- ---------- ---------- -------------------------------- --------------- ---------------
	 1 2020-01-23	  30125133 RU	      APPLY	 Database Release Update : 19.5.0 19.1.0.0.0	  19.5.0.0.0
							 .0.191015 (30125133)

	 1 2020-01-23	  30128191 INTERIM    APPLY	 OJVM RELEASE UPDATE: 19.5.0.0.19 19.1.0.0.0	  19.1.0.0.0
							 1015 (30128191)

	 2 2020-01-23	  30125133 RU	      APPLY	 Database Release Update : 19.5.0 19.1.0.0.0	  19.5.0.0.0
							 .0.191015 (30125133)

	 2 2020-01-23	  30128191 INTERIM    APPLY	 OJVM RELEASE UPDATE: 19.5.0.0.19 19.1.0.0.0	  19.1.0.0.0
							 1015 (30128191)

	 3 2020-01-23	  30125133 RU	      APPLY	 Database Release Update : 19.5.0 19.1.0.0.0	  19.5.0.0.0
							 .0.191015 (30125133)

	 3 2020-01-23	  30128191 INTERIM    APPLY	 OJVM RELEASE UPDATE: 19.5.0.0.19 19.1.0.0.0	  19.1.0.0.0
							 1015 (30128191)


6 rows selected.

OJVM of course wouldn’t have been needed in this case. On purpose, I didn’t configure JVM. But it doesn’t hurt.

Summary

Actually, apart from the huge download and the fact that 19.6.0 is not available yet, that’s pretty neat. I don’t have to go through the opatch exercise. I’m really surprised. Still, I didn’t dig into the details yet. But I can’t see a reason why this should be good to go with. Except the fact, that I’d prefer 19.6.0 instead.

Of course, the intention for these images is different as you can see from the README:

I don’t have an OEDA home or an install.sh script here. Still, it works 😉

Take this blog post not as a recommendation to download these images – more as an explanation what would work and what it is meant for.

Further Information and Links

• New Installation procedure since Oracle 18c
• Patching all my environments to the January 2020 patch bundles
• OEDA 19.5.0 Readme

–Mike