Mistake in April2009 CPU Release Instructions

I thought as soon as I saw this set of instructions that something was a bit fishy, a bit unusual:

The instructions are pretty clear and unambiguous: Apply the April2009 CPU to the CRS Home. I’d never seen this recommended on a clusterware patch before. This is actually really the only place in the release instructions for the CPU where it is mentioned.

I assumed it was just a case a changing the ORACLE_HOME to point to the CRS_HOME and running OPatch as normal:


oracle@linuxrac1:DBA1 /var/opt/oracle/product/admin/TAR/8290506> /var/opt/oracle/product/10.2.0/OPatch/opatch napply -skip_subset -skip_duplicate
Invoking OPatch 10.2.0.4.6

Oracle Interim Patch Installer version 10.2.0.4.6
Copyright (c) 2009, Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.

UTIL session

Oracle Home : /var/opt/oracle/product/crs
Central Inventory : /home/oracle/oraInventory
from : /etc/oraInst.loc
OPatch version : 10.2.0.4.6
OUI version : 10.2.0.4.0
OUI location : /var/opt/oracle/product/crs/oui
Log file location : /var/opt/oracle/product/crs/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch2009-04-28_09-38-05AM.log

Patch history file: /var/opt/oracle/product/crs/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch_history.txt

OPatchSession cannot load inventory for the given Oracle Home /var/opt/oracle/product/crs. Possible causes are:
No read or write permission to ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage
Central Inventory is locked by another OUI instance
No read permission to Central Inventory
The lock file exists in ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage
The Oracle Home does not exist in Central Inventory

UtilSession failed: Locker::lock() mkdir /var/opt/oracle/product/crs/.patch_storage

OPatch failed with error code 73

I then looked at the permissions on the CRS_HOME directory:


[jason@linuxrac1 ~]$ ls -ltar /var/opt/oracle/product/
drwxr-xr-x 45 root oinstall 4096 Jun 25 2008 crs


I even attempted to apply this patch to the CRS_HOME as root:


root@linuxrac1 8290506]# /opt/oracle/product/10.2.0/OPatch/opatch napply -skip_subset -skip_duplicate
Invoking OPatch 10.2.0.4.6
The user is root. OPatch cannot continue if the user is root.

OPatch failed with error code 255
[root@linuxrac1 8290506]#


Lots of head scratching ensued until Oracle support pointed out Support Note 786803.1, where it states:

If the home has CRS installed, then CPUApr2009 does not need to be applied.

Gee, thanks Oracle, might be an idea to remove that line from the actual instructions that get downloaded with the CPU!

As a bootnote, the CPU applied without a hitch into my 10.2.0.4 RAC instance.