CPU

A patch (RU, OJVM, 32-bit) is not available yet – where will I find information?

A longer while ago I wrote a blog post about the topic that a patch (RU, OJVM, 32-bit) is not available yet – where will I find information? But I wrote it too specific. And it is even hard for me to find my older blog post. Since several of you mailed me the past weeks with a variety of questions regarding patch availability I decided to write down my thoughts – but this time in a more generic way. And I hope it is helpful.

Why are patches missing?

At first, I …

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RUs contain now all available DST patches

At first, Happy New Year everybody. There was silence on the blog for some weeks but I took an extended longer time off. Well, and once you return, there are some emails in your inbox which need some work. You’ll see several new blog posts getting published in the coming days. Back to normal, yesterday night RU 19.18.0 among other patch bundles has been released. And there’s a huge fantastic surprise in it: RUs contain now all available DST patches.

 

What’s the story?

There are some good news. We discussed this internally …

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Patching all my environments with the October 2022 Bundle Patches

Oh yes, it is patching time (again). And this time I somehow missed the slot since the quarterly critical patch updates got released right during Oracle Cloud World. Since I didn’t want to stretch the hotel WiFi too much – and since I wouldn’t have had enough time to install and write-up this blog post, I do it now with a week of delay. So as usual every quarter, follow me for patching all my environments with the October 2022 Bundle Patches.

As usual, an important annotation upfront: I patch in-place due to …

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How to speed up your database and GI patching

Several of you mailed me already and commented. And I know that I promised this blog post for weeks, if not longer. So let me try to explain How to speed up your database and GI patching. Since this blog post has a longer history, I’d say far over 6 months, it will be a bit longer than the usual posts. At when I started writing it, I decided to split it up into several pieces to make it more digestible but also to allow easier finding of certain topics. I hope it may help easing some recent patching …

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Patching all my environments with the April 2022 Patch Bundles

Easter time is patching time. And since I was hiking and biking every day the last week up in the Northern Italian mountains, this blog post is coming with a slight delay. But better late than never. Time to show you my usual exercise, this time Patching all my environments with the April 2022 Patch Bundles.

As usual, an important annotation upfront: I patch in-place due to space issues. But in reality, you please patch always out-of-place with a separate home. Please see this blog post about how to apply the RU

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Adding the Oracle 19.14.0 OCW / GI bundle patch to my database home

Actually I planned for a different blog post this morning. But since I have a backlog of unanswered comments accumulated I came across this interesting question from Pedro. He wanted to know how he can patch the OCW component in his database home. So I thought I will show you the process of Adding the Oracle 19.14.0 OCW / GI bundle patch to my database home.

Is this necessary?

That’s a good question for a Monday morning. I think: No, that isn’t necessary for a “Database only” home where you don’t have or …

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Patching all my environments with the January 2022 Patch Bundles

It’s patching time. When I checked an SR and had a quick discussion with a customer yesterday, Peter reminded me that it’s patching day. And at about 20:00h CET the new patch bundles appeared on MOS. So let me show you again Patching all my environments with the January 2022 Patch Bundles for 11.2.0.4, 12.2.0.1, 19c and 21c.

As usual, an important annotation upfront: I patch in-place due to space issues. But in reality, you please patch always out-of-place with a separate home. Please see this blog post about how to apply the

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Why do you need a password to download older patch bundles?

A customer raised this question recently: Why do you need a password to download older patch bundles? The customer wanted to download a PSU from July 2020 on the MyOracle Support (MOS) platform but this wasn’t possible without a password.

Why do you need a password to download older patch bundles?

Photo by Privecstasy on Unsplash

Why is there an extra password required?

In MOS Note: 888.1 – Master Note for Database Proactive Patch Program we documented the following:

1.4 Policy to obtain older Oracle Database Bundles, Updates & Revisions

Through our review of customer Service Requests (SRs), we find that customers frequently run into issues because they have unknowingly downloaded

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Patching all my environments with the April 2021 Patch Bundles

Oh well, time flies. And it is April 2021, and hence I will start Patching all my environments with the April 2021 Patch Bundles. In my case, this will be 19.11.0 and 12.2.0.1 Release Updates. But there will be an additional blog post for the OJVM bundle, too.

As usual, an important annotation upfront: I patch in-place due to space issues. But in reality, you please patch always out-of-place with a separate home. Please see this blog post about how to apply the RU directly when you provision a new home with OUI

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Patching all my environments with the January 2021 OJVM Bundles

You may have read my blog post from the other day about patching my environments with the January 2021 Release Updates. But as I installed now Java in all my databases for testing purposes, I will quickly demonstrate how Patching all my environments with the January 2021 OJVM Bundles works.

Security Alert January 2021

Let me start with the Security Alert for January 2021. And don’t forget to take a look at the Oracle Database Server Risk Matrix for January 2021. This time, the is a 4.8 risk score issue with …

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Why is the 19.9.0 Release Update not available yet for MY platform?

I’ve had a week off and tried to relax and stay away from work topics (which worked quite well this time). The downside is 300+ emails in the inbox. And I spotted several ones already asking: Why is the 19.9.0 Release Update not available yet for MY platform?

Details for Patch 123456789 not found.

At first, this is not a uncommon question. And the root cause is two-fold. As you know from my quarterly blog posts such as Patching all my environments with the October 2020 Patch Bundles, these notes are important:

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Patching all my environments with the October 2020 Patch Bundles

I have to confess: Time didn’t allow to rearrange my lab yet to have GI and ASM. Hence, this will be another blog post about Patching all my environments with the October 2020 Patch Bundles with only non-RAC patching. But it is in the works …

As usual, an important annotation upfront: I patch in-place due to space issues. But in reality, you please patch always out-of-place with a separate home. Please see this blog post about how to apply the RU directly when you provision a new home with OUI.

Security Alert

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Patching all my environments with the July 2020 Patch Bundles

Quarterly routine: When the new security alert get published, then it is patching time again. I’ll show you as usual how Patching all my environments with the July 2020 Patch Bundles works. And I heard your comments – in the next round in October, I will do this for GI and OJVM most likely, too. If not earlier …

And just an important annotation upfront: I patch in-place due to space issues. But in reality, you please patch always out-of-place with a separate home.

Security Alert July 2020

This is the Security Alert for

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Patching all my environments with the January 2020 Patch Bundles

I was traveling last week and had not enough time to download and apply the January 2020 Release Updates and PSUs. Yes, I’m one week late. But nevertheless, I’d like to check whether patching my databases with the January 2020 RUs will work fine.

Patching all my environments with the January 2020 Patch Bundles

Wörthsee near Munich in January 2020 – Water temperature is 3.4°C

Security Alert January 2020

My usual approach is to start with the Security Alerts for January 2020. It leads me to the January 2020 Critical Patch Advisory. As I’m a database guy, this is the line I’m interested in: Oracle Database Server, versions 11.2.0.4,

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Patching all my environments with the Oct 2019 Patch Bundles

Yesterday I blogged about the Oct 2019 Patch Bundles being available for download. And while I wrote this blog post, I downloaded all of them for my environments. Here I’d like to share with you the most simple path to apply them. As I have no cluster or ASM, I don’t have to patch Grid Infrastructure. And I don’t even have OJVM in any of my databases right now. Due to space constraints in my lab environment I will apply the patches in-place. You shouldn’t do this but instead use always a new home you patch. This allows you …

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CPU October 2019 Patch Bundles are available

As of Oct 15, 2019, the CPU October 2019 Patch Bundles are available for download. So let me do the quarterly exercise to download and install all of them into my various environments.

CPU October 2019 Patch Bundles are available

Critical Patch Alert October 2019

At first, I check the Alert and the Risk Matrix whether critical issues with a high risk score are included. I will install the patch bundles anyway, but I’m curious. In my particular case I will take care on the database only. You of course will check for other products you are using, too.

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Oracle Security Alerts for July 2019 got published

It’s patching day. And I’m already downloading the patch bundles for all my installations (11.2.0.4, 12.1.0.2, 12.2.0.1, 18c and 19c). The Oracle Security Alerts for July 2019 got published today.

Oracle Security Alerts for July 2019 got published

Patch Advisory and Risk Matrix

You can find the July 2019 Patch Advisory here. I checked the risk matrix for the database. It contains 8 new fixes for the database server. Please pay attention that 3 of the vulnerabilities may be exploitable from a client without an Oracle Database server being installed. The highest score is 9.8.

Please check the risk matrix by yourself:

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VBox 5.0.10 crash issues with our Hands-On-Lab

Milano - Nov 2015 (c) Mike Dietrich

I’ve ran two Hands-On-Workshops with customers and partners in Italy last week in Milano where we used our well known and thousands-of-times proven Hand-On-Lab environment:

But this time some people failed while running the lab with random corruptions either shutting down the entire VM while running – or displaying file corruptions in the spfile – or other issues.

The common thing in all cases: People had VBox 5.0.10 downloaded and installed right before the workshop.

Of course they’ve did it – as I’m tempted too since …

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Oracle VirtualBox 5.0.x – Segmentation Fault in PERL

Please see as well:


 

Yesterday and the day before I’ve exchanged several emails with Ana who downloaded our Hands-On-Lab from here:

after OOW15, encountering a SEGMENTATION FAULT when trying to start the database upgrade with catctl.pl:

$ $ORACLE_HOME/perl/bin/perl catctl.pl catupgrd.sql

Segmentation fault 

Very strange thing … 

The database is in upgrade mode (checked this in the alert.log) and there are no strange things mentioned anywhere. Plus hundreds of people have run and completed our lab so far.

Tue Nov 10 20:39:47 2015
MMON 
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MS Windows Bundle Patches – a VERY different story

I like Upgrade Workshops for a very different reason:
Hopefully people feed back with questions and information I wasn’t aware off before. So for myself these workshops are also a learning experience. And thanks to a customer in Singapore (Thanks a lot, Hanh!!) I learned something about Oracle’s Bundle Patches for MS Windows.

Customer asked about a specific issue when using RMAN Duplicate command in 12c failing with a nice ORA-600 [KSRPCSEXEC_1]. This got logged a while ago as bug16883554 – and it will be fixed in database patch set 12.1.0.2. But this customer asked …

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October 2013 PSUs and CPUs – News for 12c

Last night CET the most recent Patch Set Updates (PSU) and Critical Patch Updates (CPU aka SPU) got published on MOS. And there’s a significant and remarkable change for Oracle Database 12c onwards. MOS Note: 1571391.1 – Patch Set Update and Critical Patch
Update October 2013 Availability Document
says:

2.1 Database Security Patching from 12.1.0.1 Onwards

Starting with Oracle Database version 12.1.0.1, Oracle only provides
Patch Set Updates (PSU) to meet the Critical Patch Update (CPU) program
requirements for security patching. Security Patch Updates (SPU) will no
longer be available. Oracle has moved to this simplified model due to
popular

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Fundamental Oracle flaw revealed??? Update …!

Writing a blog has a nice effect on the side: it brings me in touch with people I’ve never met – but we have similar targets or interests. Today I’ve received a comment from Gökhan Atil about the Fundamental Oracle Flaw known also as the SCN issue.

And for sure I did visit Gökhan’s blog and I did watch his very interesting 5 minutes demonstration how to bring down a database with the SCN issue. Which is very good to know as I thought the database won’t come down because of this issue. But watch Gökhan’s video by …

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Fundamental Oracle flaw revealed??? Really …?

This Infoworld article from Jan 17, 2012  Fundamental Oracle flaw revealed did alert Oracle database customers.Infoworld has raised this issue to Oracle before going public with it. Patches are included in the Jan 2012 CPU and PSU. So again, it’s strongly recommended to apply the Jan 2012 PSU (or CPU if you are just asking for security fixes) to your environments.

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