Chapter 11: Managing Oracle Software

Purpose

This chapter describes how to keep your Oracle software up-to-date with patch releases.

Topics

This chapter discusses the following:

Determining Your Oracle Software Environment
Setting Your Oracle MetaLink Login Credentials
Staging the Patch Release
Installing the Patch Release
   

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Determining Your Oracle Software Environment

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To select the appropriate patch for your environment, determine the following:

What version of the Oracle Database software are you using?
Where your Oracle Home location?
What is your hardware configuration?

1.

You can determine your Oracle database version by navigating to the Enterprise Manager Database Home page. The version is listed under the General section.

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2.

The Oracle Home is the operating system location of your Oracle installation. To determine this location, navigate to your Enterprise Manager Database Home page. Click View All Properties.

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3.

The Oracle Home is listed on the View All Properties page. Click the Oracle Home link.

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4.

The Oracle Home directory page is displayed. On this page, you can view the file directory of your Oracle home, along with the installed product components and time of installation.

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5.

Detailed information is provided about the components on this page. Click the host link to access information about your hardware configuration.

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6.

The Host page appears listing your operating system, hardware platform, IP address, number of CPUs, memory size and disk space. Note your operating system and platform. Click Database to return to your Database Home page.

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Setting Your Oracle MetaLink Login Credentials

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You can configure your Oracle MetaLink Login Credentials in Enterprise Manager as follows:

1.

Click Setup on your Database Home page.


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2.

The Setup page is displayed. Click Patching Setup to access the Patching Setup page.

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3.

Enter your own MetaLink username and password. Click Apply.

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4.

Your MetaLink credentials have been successfully set up.

 

 

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In this section you learn how to download, or stage patches.

Perform the steps listed below to stage the patch release:

1.

Access the Maintenance page. Click Apply Patch in the Database Software Patching section.

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2.

The Patch: Select Patch page appears. Enterprise Manager automatically supplies environment information including your product family, product, release number, and platform. You can limit your search by entering values for Begin and End dates. Click Search to access the available patches from MetaLink.

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Note: If there are no patches for this release, you will receive the error message as shown. If there are patches to be applied, proceed with the remaining steps in this section.

 

 

3.

The patches are displayed in the Search Results section. You can view the patch details by clicking View Details. You can view the patch Readme by clicking View ReadMe. The ReadMe includes a description of the bug fixes.

 

4.

Select the patch you are interested in, or select the most recent patch set if you are performing a periodic software update.

 

5.

The Patch: Select Destination page appears. On this page you select your destination. You can specify your target database, or you can select a host or directory location to stage your patch. Click Next.

 

6.

The Patch: Set Credentials page appears. On this page, supply the operating system username and password to enable Enterprise Manager to stage the patch to your Oracle home. Enterprise Manager requires these credentials for job scheduling. Click Next.

 

7.

The Patch: Stage or Apply page appears. By default Enterprise Manager downloads the patch to the stage directory which is listed on the top of the page. Typically this is an Oracle home subdirectory called EMStagePatches<patch number>. Click Next.

 

8.

The Patch: Schedule page appears. Select Immediately in the Schedule Patch Job section to download and stage the patch immediately. Click Next.

 

9.

The Patch: Summary page appears. Click Finish.

 

10.

A confirmation page confirms that your job was submitted. Navigate to the Maintenance page. Click View Patch Cache in the Deployments section to confirm that the patch was staged.

 

11.

Click View Patch Cache in the Deployments section to view the Patch Cache page.

 

12.

Confirm that your patch has been staged.

 

 

Installing the Patch

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After you have downloaded the latest patch or patch set release, you can install it. Prior to installing the patch, you should shut down your database instances, listeners, and dependent applications, and back up your current Oracle home installation. You can apply the patch by unzipping the downloaded file and running the Oracle Installer.

1.

Review the ReadMe included with the patch release for patch-specific installation instructions.

 

2.

Shut down all dependent applications.

 

3.

Shut down your database instances.

 

4.

Optionally, shut down the database listener.

 

5.

Shut down Enterprise Manager processes

 

6.

Apply the patch by following the instructions in the ReadMe file.

 

7.

Restart the database instance(s).

 

8.

Start the listener if you shut it down in step 4.

 

9.

Start the Enterprise Manager processes.

 

10.

Start your applications and notify users.

 

 

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