AutoUpgrade Patching – From Zero to Hero – Part 1: Download AutoUpgrade

I was traveling the past two weeks, and I met a lot of customers who still “enjoy” navigating through MOS and searching for the right patches to download. This blog post series will give you ultimate relief, and it will ease your life as DBAs and sysadmins. You must patch more frequently – and this is the key solution for everyone. Let’s get us started with AutoUpgrade Patching – From Zero to Hero – Part 1: Download AutoUpgrade today.

Download the newest version of AutoUpgrade

Our first task is simple. You will find autoupgrade.jar in your ?/rdbms/admin directory since Oracle Database 19c – but most of you will not download any patches on your database server but instead from an independent machine, maybe your own laptop or a dedicated download server. Therefore, there may be no $ORACLE_HOME on this machine.

Here are your six options to get AutoUpgrade. I prefer the first three, whatever suits you best:

1. Auto-refresh AutoUpgrade

   This of course is the easiest option but it requires that you have AutoUpgrade somewhere already. The tool actually checks whether the version you are using is older than the version available for download. In this case, it downloads the most recent version automatically.
   .

2. Download with curl

   Super-easy, link is static and has always the newest version for you.
   Just run:

   curl -L -O https://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/otn_software/autoupgrade.jar

   .

3. Download with wget

   Another super-easy option in case your OS has wget installed. I download from a Mac OS, and there is no wget by default. I installed wget with brew install wget. And it works as simple as downloading with curl above.

   wget https://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/otn_software/autoupgrade.jar

   .

4. Download from oracle.com/goto/upgrade

   For those of you who prefer just to click by yourself, type into your browser (or click here):
   https://www.oracle.com/goto/upgrade
   This takes you to our upgrade page on oracle.com, and then simply download it from here:

   

   AutoUpgrade Download from oracle.com

   .

5. Download from MOS Note: KB123450

   We’ve got one of the coolest MOS note numbers on the new portal, easy to remember. And the MOS Note: KB123450 contains previous versions as well, and keeps track of enhancements, changes and fixes in a log attached to the note. But you need to logon to MOS, and the version you can download is identical to the one you can get via the other sources as well.
   Here’s the link to MOS Note: KB123450
   .

6. Download AutoUpgrade with an autoupgrade config file

   Once you have AutoUpgrade configured, you can also use it for a targeted download of only AutoUpgrade. Just use a simple config file such as:

   global.global_log_dir=/Users/mdietric/TEMP/AU/logs
   global.keystore=/Users/mdietric/TEMP/AU/keystore
   global.folder=/Users/mdietric/TEMP/AU/patches
   
   patch1.target_version=19
   patch1.patch=AU

   Since AutoUpgrade updates itself, and since it is also part of the RECOMMENDED option we’ll talk about in a following blog post, it isn’t really necessary to have a config file specifically for AutoUpgrade – but it is possible.

   java -jar autoupgrade.jar -patch -config get_patches.cfg -mode download 
   
   AutoUpgrade Patching 26.4.260701 launched with default internal options
   Processing config file ...
   Loading AutoUpgrade Patching keystore
   AutoUpgrade Patching keystore is loaded
   
   ----------------------------------------------------
   Downloading files to /Users/mdietric/TEMP/AU/patches
   ----------------------------------------------------
   autoupgrade.jar 26.4 (July 2026)
       File: autoupgrade.jar - VALIDATED
   ----------------------------------------------------

   There it is. But again, we’ll come back later to this since you need to add your MOS credentials at first before this can work. I’ll cover this in the second blog post of this series.

   .

All the above options lead to the most recent version of AutoUpgrade – which is right now 26.4. And this brings us to the next task.

Check the AutoUpgrade version

Why should you do this? Just in case – and to make sure you have the newest available version. About a third of the service requests related to AutoUpgrade can be simply solved by using the newest version of AutoUpgrade. Right now, as of July 6, 2026, this is supposed to be the output:

java -jar autoupgrade.jar -version

build.version 26.4.260701
build.date 2026/07/01 21:57:45 +0000
build.hash 211bf76de
build.hash_date 2026/06/27 01:28:23 +0000
build.supported_target_versions 12.2,18,19,21,23,26
build.type production
build.label (HEAD, tag: v26.4, origin/stable_devel, stable_devel)
build.MOS_NOTE KB123450
build.MOS_LINK https://support.oracle.com/support/?anchorId=&kmContentId=2485457&page=sptemplate&sptemplate=km-article

This is the newest one, and this is the tool I will use for this blog post series.

Further Links and Information

AutoUpgrade Patching Blog Post Series

• Part 1: AutoUpgrade Patching – Download and Version Check
• Part 2: AutoUpgrade Patching – MOS Credentials
• Part 3: AutoUpgrade Patching – Download Patches
• Part 4: AutoUpgrade Patching – Download Examples

Additional Links

• AutoUpgrade Download from oracle.com
• Static link to fetch AutoUpgrade
• MOS Note: KB123450 AutoUpgrade

Virtual Classroom Seminars

• Episode 21: One-Button Patching with AutoUpgrade – Easing every DBA’s life
• Episode 27: Patch Smarter, not Harder – Oracle Database Patching with AutoUpgrade
• Episode 28: Patch Smarter, not Harder – Microsoft Windows Special Patching Edition

To be continued!

–Mike