Patching

Your Upgrade / Migration / Patching Guide for OCW23

Thanks for using this blog post. It will be your Upgrade / Migration / Patching Guide for OCW23. You will find the slide decks to download, the coming talks, the HOL as well as the survey links and other important sources. We wil update it every day throughout the conference. If you have questions, please use the “Comment” option below the blog post. And we won’t post content BEFORE the session but instead AFTER the sessions.

Your Upgrade / Migration / Patching Guide for OCW23

All you need, day by day

Please find – grouped day by day – each of our talks with the survey links and …

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Your UPGRADE and MIGRATION program at OCW23

Are you coming to Oracle Cloud World 2023 and to Oracle DatabaseWorld at CloudWorld? Then you should read on since this may be your upgrade and migration program at OCW23. We are desperately looking forward to see and meet you in 2 weeks in Las Vegas. Don’t forget to add the talks you’d like to visit to your schedule as some of the rooms have limited capacity. And at least one of our labs is already sold out.

https://www.oracle.com/database/upgrades/#rc30p2

Who’s speaking and HOL’ing?

Speakers and your lab hosts will be:

  • Roy Swonger
  • Mike Dietrich
  • Daniel Overby Hansen
  • Rodrigo Jorge
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You may need to run root.sh again after RU patching

With the Oracle Critical Patch Update Advisory – July 2023 – you may have spotted a change in the Database Release Update READMEs: You may need to run root.sh again after RU patching. Why is that?

Let us have a quick look

I verified this with the 19.20.0 README on Linux. But I guess this applies to the other READMEs as well. Please bare in mind that this applies to the Database RUs only, not to Grid Infrastructure. You can find this new paragraph in it:

3.3.5 Update Permissions for extjob

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Zero Downtime Upgrade of Timezone Data in Oracle 21c and 23c?

There is a feature in Oracle Database 21c I planned to write about for a very long time: Zero Downtime Upgrade of Timezone Data in Oracle 21c and 23c. This sounds very promising – but let us take a closer look together in this blog post.

Time Zone Upgrade?

There is of course an ongoing discussion whether and when you should upgrade the DST version of your database to a current value. Since we all live in a more and more globalized world, this topic becomes more and more important. Even more important …

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Patching to Oracle 19.19.0 out-of-place with additional patches

From all my quarterly blog posts you know that I patch usually in-place for space and other reasons. And you may have similar reasons when you patch. But it is not ideal – and just speaking about risk and downtime, you should always patch out-of-place. So let me show you how Patching to Oracle 19.19.0 out-of-place with additional patches works.

What do I need?

Actually, this is not complicated at all. And if you never done it this way, give it a try now please.

  • Base release Oracle Database 19.3.0 image
  • opatch 37 from
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Patching process changes with MRPs

I blogged about the Monthly Recommended Patches (MRP) several times before. And due to the feedback you and we had given, a few things got changed. The main change is from having the MRP bundled as a system patch making opatchauto a requirement. See below what Patching process changes with MRPs were implemented recently.

Before …

As you could read already in:

the introduction of the MRPs added one major flaw: They’ve been built as system patches which made …

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Cleaning up older patch artifacts – improving opatch performance

This blog post is about a feature not only I but you did ask for actually for a long time. Cleaning up older patch artifacts – improving opatch performance. Both in one opatch release. And opatch 12.2.0.1.37 from April 2023 has it.

A little bit of history

One of the longest journey I had ever done in my long time in Oracle was helping customers to find a voice for patch cleanup. Oracle 19c is a long term support release. Many customers upgraded to it already. And you apply patches on a regular …

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Virtual Classroom Seminar 16: Release and Patching Strategy for Oracle 19c and 23c

There are just two days left to sign up for our Virtual Classroom Seminar 16: Release and Patching Strategy for Oracle 19c and 23c. We’ll talk to you on Wednesday, May 10 at 16:00h CET.

What’s the topic?

We’ll try to cover everything for your best release and patching strategy with Oracle Database 19c of course, but also moving forward to Oracle Database 23c. Our big focus will be several aspects of patching. You’ll hear us talking not only about standard database patching but especially about patching in RAC environments.

We’ll put together a …

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Datapatch may be slower when Traditional and Unified Auditing are on

I wrote several times especially about Unified Auditing in the past. It is a very efficient and useful way to audit operations in the database. But you need to be a bit careful about what’s on, and what isn’t. Now we recently had a customer case where it was clearly proven that Datapatch may be slower when Traditional and Unified Auditing are on. But how can this happen?

Recapping Traditional Auditing

At first, I am neither a security not an auditing expert. But I played quite a bit with Unified Auditing over the …

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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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Oracle Optimizer Statistics Advisor in Oracle 19c

Christian Pfundtner pointed me to the fact that my old blog post about the Statistics Advisor from 2017 may not be up to date anymore. And he further pointed out that some of his clients still suffer from issues with the tool. Hence, let me refresh the topic with Oracle Optimizer Statistics Advisor in Oracle 19c. And thanks to Christian for the pointers.

 

Overview

At first, I won’t rewrite the entire blog post but instead focus on recent findings. Therefore, you may please want to read my previous blog post about the …

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ORA-13516 “CATPROC not valid” during datapatch or autoupgrade to 19.18.0

I thought I could relax this week using my leftover vacation days from 2022. But this issue is triggering me since some of you mailed me already. Maybe this blog post can prevent others from being trapped by this issue: ORA-13516 “CATPROC not valid” during datapatch or autoupgrade to 19.18.0. And as a prolog, you will NOT see the below issue when you started your database in NORMAL mode for the execution of datapatch.

 

What is the symptom?

Regardless of whether you patch to Oracle Database RU 19.18.0 manually or with …

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Patching my environments with the January 2023 Bundle Patches

Mid-of January. It’s patching time again. So let me show you the quarterly exercise of Patching my environments with the January 2023 Bundle Patches. Let’s see this time if I will have to remove my Data Pump Bundle Patch and the 19.17.0 MRP2 at first when I patch in-place.

Patching my environments with the January 2023 Bundle Patches

Photo by karokrasinska 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

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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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OCW 2022 – Your Upgrade / Migration / Patching Track to Success

Will you come to Oracle Cloud World (tcfkaOOW = the conference formerly known as Oracle Open World) 2022 in Las Vegas in the week from October 17-20, 2022? Then we hope to see you there. And we certainly hope to meet you. So in case you are looking for our technical talks and sessions at OCW 2022 – Your Upgrade / Migration / Patching Track to Success.

OCW 2022 – Your Upgrade / Migration / Patching Track to Success

 

Your Upgrade / Migration / Patching Track at OCW2022

As usual our promise stands.

Zero marketing. Just pure tech.

And we our proud to have lots of real

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Oracle Cloud World 2022 – Database Upgrade and Patching Labs

Oh … it’s just a few weeks left until Oracle Cloud World 2022 will start on Oct 17, 2022 in Las Vegas. If you have some final doubts whether you should go or not, let me tell you that it’s like Oracle Open World just under a different name. And in a different place. But with the same cool people and many great talks. Take the chance to meet the developers, their managers and the product managers behind the features you daily use – or miss. We’ll be there – and this is YOUR chance now to sign up for …

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DOAG Conference 2022 is next week already

I’m scared – time flies so quickly. Yesterday evening I returned from vacation, and this morning I spoke to Daniel and we both realized: There is only one week to go since DOAG Conference 2022 is next week already. Yes, in September 2022. Not as usually in November – September it will be this year. And we hope to see you there next week in my hometown, Nürnberg for another great DOAG conference.

DOAG Conference 2022 is next week already

Tuesday

Tuesday will be a theme day this year – and we’ll have two talks there. We? Yes, Daniel and I will do all sessions together this …

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Patching most of my environments with the July 2022 Bundle Patches

It’s brutally hot out there. It must be July. And I sit in my cool basement office and start my quarterly patching journey hoping that you can enjoy the sun and the sea somewhere. It is time to do my usual exercise, this time Patching most of my environments with the July 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 directly

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OC YATRA 2022 visiting 6 cities in India in July 2022

Yes, you read correctly in my blog post’s title: OC YATRA 2022 visiting 6 cities in India in July 2022. And it is already July. Just a few days to sign up – if you haven’t already. So please register here: https://www.aioug.org/ocyatra-2022

Just pick one of the six cities from the agenda page:

  • 23 July 2022, Saturday – Chennai
  • 24 July 2022, Sunday – Bengaluru
  • 26 July 2022, Tuesday – Mumbai
  • 28 July 2022, Thursday – Pune
  • 30 July 2022, Saturday – Delhi
  • 31 July 2022, Sunday – Hyderabad

And register yourself.

Please check out the awesome agenda with …

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How to speed up datapatch – and much more information

Ok, I promised to write more about patching speed. And this blog post will be just the root post targeting datapatch speed. I will link also to blog posts I’ve written before but also share knowledge which may not be obvious at first stage. The overall topic will be How to speed up datapatch – and much more information.

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What is datapatch

Let me start at the ground level and explain what datapatch is and why it exists.

When you are still on Oracle Database 11g, you may wonder what datapatch …

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Binary patching is slow because of the inventory

The headline of this blog post may sound a bit cryptic: Binary patching is slow because of the inventory. But actually this seems to be one of the main causes when your binary patching gets slower and slower with every patch you apply.

The more you patch, the worse it gets

Well, this is a tough headline. But you may have read my blog posts about my quarterly patching experience. It actually started with the July 2021 RU in my 19c environment when I wrote:

At least in my environment, both checks with the

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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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Some additional information regarding the Oracle 19.14.0 RUs

You may have read my previous blog post about patching all my environments to the January 2022 patch bundles. But since I do this in a very simple non-RAC, non-GI environment, I may not see issues you may have encountered. Some people commented – and I would like to share Some additional information regarding the Oracle 19.14.0 RUs . Still, please, this is NOT a collection of all open issues. I just see this blog post as a summary of the issues I have seen and/or heard about so far.

Some additional information regarding the Oracle 19.14.0 RUs

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash

555.1 is one

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