Learn to patch the way God intended (S2E3)
Sure, we can use the tried-and-true procedure, but it’s inefficient to keep doing the same thing over and over again.
Fortunately, the procedure can be optimized, taking advantage of out-of-place patching, as shown below.
Gold Image to the rescue
What if, to save time and effort, we could just install the patched software when we needed it, rather than installing the basic software and applying the patches repeatedly?
Well, this is possible using a Gold Image; let’s see how it is created.
Creation of Oracle Home
A directory is created, which will subsequently be associated with an Oracle Home named GITemp.
$ mkdir /u01/app/grid/19.0.0/grid_1
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Oracle Grid Infrastructure Installation
Unzip the Oracle Grid Infrastructure 19c base software into the newly created directory.
$ export GI_HOME=/u01/app/grid/19.0.0/grid_1
$ export STAGE=/stage
$ unzip -oq ${STAGE}/LINUX.X64_193000_grid_home.zip -d ${GI_HOME}
$ rm -rf ${GI_HOME}/OPatch
$ unzip -oq ${STAGE}/p6880880_190000_Linux-x86-64.zip -d ${GI_HOME}Following this, we have the Oracle Grid Infrastructure 19.3 binaries in the new location.
Patching the new Oracle Home
The patches listed below are applied:
| 37257886 | GI release update 19.26.0.0.0 |
| 37542054 | JDK bundle patch 19.0.0.0.250415 |
| 37769929 | GI MRP 19.26.0.0.250415 |
$ ${GI_HOME}/gridSetup.sh -silent -printtime -waitforcompletion \
-ignorePrereqFailure -lenientInstallMode \
ORACLE_HOME_NAME="GITemp" -applyRU ${STAGE}/37257886 \
-applyOneOffs ${STAGE}/37542054 \
-responseFile ${GI_HOME}/install/response/gridsetup.rsp \
INVENTORY_LOCATION=/u01/app/oraInventory \
oracle.install.option=CRS_SWONLY \
ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle \
oracle.install.asm.OSDBA=asmdba \
oracle.install.asm.OSOPER=asmoper \
oracle.install.asm.OSASM=asmadmin
$ ${GI_HOME}/OPatch/opatchauto apply ${STAGE}/37769929 \
-binary -oh ${GI_HOME} -target_type clusterAfter this, we have the Oracle Home GITemp, containing the Oracle Grid Infrastructure 19.26 binaries.
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Gold Image Creation
Finally, we generate a Gold Image based on the patched Oracle Home.
$ ${GI_HOME}/gridSetup.sh \
-silent \
-createGoldImage \
-destinationLocation \
${STAGE}/goldImages \
-name grid_home_19_26.zipThe final result is a zip file with the contents of the Oracle Home GITemp, which we can save in a shared directory using NFS, for patching all Oracle Grid Infrastructure servers.
$ ls -lt /stage/goldImages
total 51721292
drwxrwxr-x 2 4096 May 21 15:52 .
drwxrwxr-x 27 4096 Jul 15 14:28 ..
-rw-r--r-- 4204999485 Apr 27 19:30 grid_home_19_26.zip
-rw-r--r-- 4718682191 Apr 16 11:40 db_home_19_26.zip
-rw-r--r-- 5915692667 Jan 25 13:39 grid_home_19_25.zip
-rw-r--r-- 4726890823 Jan 25 15:13 db_home_19_25.zip
-rw-r--r-- 4313523245 Aug 28 2024 grid_home_19_24.zip
-rw-r--r-- 2970297266 Aug 28 2024 db_home_19_24.zip
Out-of-place patching with Gold Image
Copying from the Gold Image
Unzip the patched Oracle Grid Infrastructure 19c software from the Gold Image into the newly created directory.
$ export GI_HOME=/u01/app/grid/19.0.0/grid_2
$ export STAGE=/stage
$ unzip -oq ${STAGE}/goldImages/grid_home_19_26.zip -d ${GI_HOME}1
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Registering the new Oracle Home
We proceed to compile the binaries and add the Oracle Home GridHome2 to the inventory.
$ ${GI_HOME}/gridSetup.sh -silent -printtime -waitforcompletion \
-ignorePrereqFailure -lenientInstallMode \
ORACLE_HOME_NAME="GIHome2" \
-responseFile ${GI_HOME}/install/response/gridsetup.rsp \
INVENTORY_LOCATION=/u01/app/oraInventory \
oracle.install.option=CRS_SWONLY \
ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle \
oracle.install.asm.OSDBA=asmdba \
oracle.install.asm.OSOPER=asmoper \
oracle.install.asm.OSASM=asmadmin
Conclusions
Setting up each new Oracle Home for patching Oracle Grid Infrastructure can take 20 minutes or more, depending on the number of patches applied, but with the prior work of preparing a Gold Image, it can take as little as a couple of minutes!
With this episode, we conclude the second season, but there is still plenty to learn, such as how to patch the Grid Home from a cluster, how to add nodes to a cluster, and even how to set up clusters from scratch using Gold Image, so stay tuned for Season Three!