Pro Tips

Grid Infrastructure, Uncategorized 3 Minutes

Here’s a collection of good tips and tricks I found while writing this series of blog posts.

Pro Tip #1: How Do You Determine Grid Infrastructure Patch Level?

To determine the GI patch level:

[grid@copenhagen1]$ $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch lspatches | grep "OCW"

34444834;OCW RELEASE UPDATE 19.17.0.0.0 (34444834)

The inventory registers the GI Release Updates as OCW RELEASE UPDATE. In this example, GI is running on 19.17.0.

Sometimes critical one-off patches are delivered as merge patches with the GI Release Update. It can mess up the patch description. This example is from a Base Database Service in OCI:

[grid@copenhagen1]$ $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch lspatches | grep "OCW"

34122773;OCW Interim patch for 34122773

The patch description no longer contains the name of the Release Update. In this case, you can trawl through MOS to find the individual patches in the merge patch to identify which Release Update it contains. Or, you can often look at the ACFS patch instead:

[grid@copenhagen1]$ $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch lspatches | grep "ACFS"

34139601;ACFS RELEASE UPDATE 19.16.0.0.0 (34139601)

Pro Tip #2: Where Can You Find the Log Files?

Logging happens in different places depending on which method you use. Here are a few locations to browse when there are problems:

  • $GRID_HOME/install
  • $GRID_HOME/cfgtoollogs
  • $GRID_BASE/crsdata/<node>/crsconfig
  • /u01/app/oraInventory/logs

Pro Tip #3: Where Can You Find Information On Troubleshooting?

A few good MOS notes:

OPatchAuto enables you to control the logging granularity. If you run into problems, increase the logging level to get more information:

$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatchauto ... -logLevel FINEST

In addition, OPatchAuto can resume a broken session. Fix the issue and restart OPatchAuto. It will pick up from where it left off:

$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatchauto resume

Pro Tip #4: How Can I Install Patches Manually?

If you don’t want to use the automation tools (like OPatchAuto), you can install the patches manually using OPatch.

The details are in Supplemental Readme – Grid Infrastructure Release Update 12.2.0.1.x / 18c /19c (Doc ID 2246888.1).

The GI patch bundle contains several sub patches that must be installed in the correct order using opatch apply.

Pro Tip #5: How Do You Roll Back A Patch?

In-place OPatchAuto

You can find patch rollback (or deinstallation) instructions in the patch readme file. In short, you execute the following command:

$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatchauto \
   rollback <unzipped_patch_location>/<patch_dir>

Note you might need to reboot the server.

Out-of-place OPatchAuto

You find rollback instructions in MOS note Grid Infrastructure Out of Place ( OOP ) Patching using opatchauto (Doc ID 2419319.1). In short, you execute the following command:

$NEW_ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatchauto \
   rollback \
   -switch-clone

Out-of-place SwitchGridHome

Check out this blog post.

Zero Downtime Oracle Grid Infrastructure Patching

You find rollback instructions in MOS note Step by Step Zero Downtime Oracle Grid Infrastructure Patching in Silent Mode (Doc ID 2865083.1). You need to execute a few commands. Check the MOS note for details.

Pro Tip #6: The FAQ

On My Oracle Support there is an extensive FAQ. Bookmark it: RAC: Frequently Asked Questions (RAC FAQ) (Doc ID 220970.1)

Appendix

Other Blog Posts in This Series

Published

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