Oracle’s OPatch utility is used for applying interim CPU patches to maintain the security of your RDBMS. When installing any oracle patch set it is important to know the bit count of your current Oracle binaries. In this article we will cover the error which would be received when you attempt to install a 64 bit patch on a 32 bit Oracle home

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 napply -skip_subset -skip_duplicate

4. You are under the assumption that you have a 64 bit Oracle home which is platform ID 226. However, you’re true Oracle home is 32 bit or platform ID 46. The following error message is the result.

OPatch2010-03-02_02-29-19AM.log:Platform IDs supported by patch are: 226 Patch (
8836667 ) is not applicable on current platform.
OPatch2010-03-02_02-29-19AM.log:Platform IDs supported by patch are: 226 Patch (
8836684 ) is not applicable on current platform.
ISM :> vi OPatch2010-03-02_02-29-19AM.log
Platform ID needed is : 46
Platform IDs supported by patch are: 226 Patch ( 9173253 ) is not applicable on
current platform.
Platform ID needed is : 46
Platform IDs supported by patch are: 226
SEVERE:OUI-67073:UtilSession failed: Prerequisite check
“CheckPatchApplicableOnCurrentPlatform” failed.
INFO:Finishing UtilSession at Sun Feb 28 02:33:02 EDT 2010
INFO:Stack Description: java.lang.RuntimeException: Prerequisite check
“CheckPatchApplicableOnCurrentPlatform” failed.
INFO:StackTrace: oracle.OPatch.OPatchSessionHelper.runApplyPrereqs(OPatchSession
Helper.java:4173)
INFO:StackTrace: oracle.OPatch.OPatchutil.NApply.process(NApply.java:2057)
INFO:StackTrace: oracle.OPatch.OPatchutil.OUSession.napply(OUSession.java:868)
INFO:StackTrace: sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
INFO:StackTrace:
sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
INFO:StackTrace: sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMetho
dAccessorImpl.java:25)
INFO:StackTrace: java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:324)
INFO:StackTrace: oracle.OPatch.UtilSession.process(UtilSession.java:313)
INFO:StackTrace: oracle.OPatch.OPatchSession.main(OPatchSession.java:1993)
INFO:StackTrace: oracle.OPatch.OPatch.main(OPatch.java:630)

5. The solution is to logon to www.metalink.oracle.com and download the correct bit version for your platform.

Larry Catt, OCP 9i, 10g
oracle@allcompute.com
www.allcompute.com