Oracle’s OPatch utility is used for applying interim CPU patches to maintain the security of your RDBMS. OPatch uses the OraInst.loc file located in /etc or /var/opt/oracle depending on your OS to determine what needs to be applied during patch installation. In this article we will cover the error which would be received if your OraInst.loc file points at the incorrect home or contains invalid information.
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_
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 receive the following error or similar error during installation.
Oracle Interim Patch Installer version 10.2.0.4.9
Copyright (c) 2009, Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.
Oracle Home : /app/oracle/product/10.2.0
Central Inventory : /app/agent10g
from : /var/opt/oracle/oraInst.loc
OPatch version : 10.2.0.4.9
OUI version : 10.2.0.4.0
OUI location : /app/oracle/product/10.2.0/oui
Log file location : /app/oracle/product/10.2.0/cfgtoollogs/OPatch/OPatch2010
-02-20_14-48-27PM.log
Patch history file:
/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/cfgtoollogs/OPatch/OPatch_history.txt
List of Homes on this system:
Home name= agent10g, Location= “/app/agent10g”
Inventory load failed… OPatch cannot load inventory for the given Oracle Home.
Possible causes are:
Oracle Home dir. path does not exist in Central Inventory
Oracle Home is a symbolic link
Oracle Home inventory is corrupted
LsInventorySession failed: OracleHomeInventory gets null oracleHomeInfo
OPatch failed with error code 73
5. As seen by the error message, the OPatch utility is picking up the incorrect inventory location from the file OraInst.loc. Open up the OraInst.loc file, correct the location of your inventory directory, and re-execute OPatch.
Larry J Catt, OCP 9i, 10g
oracle@allcompute.com
www.allcompute.com