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 …
Continue reading...CPU
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.
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
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 …
Continue reading...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.
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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 …
Continue reading...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.
Photo by Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz on Unsplash
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 …
Continue reading...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.
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Why is there an extra password required?
In MOS Note: 888.1 – Master Note for Database Proactive Patch Program we documented the following:
… Continue reading...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
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.
Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash
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…
Continue reading...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.
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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 …
Continue reading...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?
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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:
… Continue reading...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 …
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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
… Continue reading...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 …
Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash
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 …
Continue reading...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.
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, …
Continue reading...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 …
Continue reading...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.
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.
… Continue reading...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.
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:
- https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/security-advisory/cpujul2019-5072835.html#AppendixDB
- Text form of
VBox 5.0.10 crash issues with our Hands-On-Lab
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 …
Continue reading...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.sqlSegmentation 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… Continue reading...
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 …
Continue reading...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:
… Continue reading...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
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 …
Continue reading...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.
- Please read on OTN the Critical Patch Update Advisory from January 2012
- You’ll find an explanation from Oracle Support in
MOS Note:1376995.1: Information on the System Change Number (SCN) and how it is used in the Oracle Database
