Patching

Types of patches:

1. Interim patch (single patch)
2. Patchset patch (collection of patches)

We install interim patching using opatch utility and patchset we install using Oracle Universal Installer (OUI).

Applying Interim Patch

Location of opatch utility = $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch

These patches were released by oracle on a quarterly basis in January, April, July and October.

We should not install these patches until unless there is a need for it. We can search for this quarterly patch in google and download it from oracle website.

Once you unzip the downloaded file it will create a folder with patch number.

Inside the folder apart from patch files there is readme.txt.  Go through this file.  This will tell us which bug this patch is going to fix.

Stop all the services like database, listener and dbconsole etc.

Go to $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch folder

To apply the patch:

$opatch apply <patch id>

To see the information which problem the patch is going to fix:

$opatch query

To get the installed patches information:

$opatch lsinventory

(This will read the file $ORACLE_HOME/ContentsXML/comps.xml)

To see the version of opatch utility:

$opatch version

To rollback the patch:

$opatch rollback -id <patch id>

$opatch rollback -id 1234567

To restore a failed patch:

$cd $ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage/<patchid-timestamp>

$./restore.sh