Oracle’s OPatch utility is used for applying interim CPU patches to maintain the security of your RDBMS. In this article we will cover the error which would be received when you attempt to apply an Oracle patch to a currently executing Oracle database.

1. Logon to your Oracle database server as the Oracle software owner.

2. Change directories to the location of your CPU patch and unzip the file.

unzip p9119226_10204_.zip

3. Change directories into your unzipped patch directory which is named with the CPU number you are applying.

cd 9119226
OPatch apply

conflicts against Oracle Home…
OPatch continues with these patches: 7155248 7155249 7155250 7155251
7155252 7155253 7155254 7197583 7375611 7375613 7375617 7609057 7609058
8309592 8309632 8309642 8568395 8568397 8568398 8568402 8568404 8568405
8836667 8836671 8836675 8836677 8836678 8836681 8836683 8836684 8836686
9119226 9173244 9173248 9173253

Do you want to proceed? [y|n]
y
User Responded with: Y

Running prerequisite checks…
Prerequisite check “CheckActiveFilesAndExecutables” failed.
The details are:

Following executables are active :
/u01/prism/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/bin/oracle
UtilSession failed: Prerequisite check “CheckActiveFilesAndExecutables” failed.

OPatch failed with error code 73
mylinux :>

4. As seen above the OPatch utility errored out with code 73 and references the Prerequisite check “CheckActiveFilesAndExecutables”. This error normally occurs when the Oracle database is still up and running, so we check it below with the command ps:

mylinux :> ps -ef|grep smon
cimsora 26981 1 0 02:12 ? 00:00:00 ora_smon_prism
cimsora 4326 11581 0 02:34 pts/1 00:00:00 grep smon

5. As seen above the database is in fact up, so logon as sysdba and shut it down.

mylinux :> sqlplus ‘/ as sysdba’

SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.4.0 – Production on Sun Feb 2802:38:36 2010

Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All Rights Reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 – Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

SQL> shutdown immediate
Database closed.
Database dismounted.
ORACLE instance shut down.
SQL> exit

6. Once the database is shutdown we can re-execute our OPatch install.

Larry J Catt, OCP9i, 10g
oracle@allcompute.com
www.allcompute.com