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Issue Installing the Oracle July 2008 CPU

By Eric Gross | February 29, 2008

The threats mitigated by installing the quarterly security patches are numerous. There are also risks involved, in this case specifically the risk that the database will be unavailable after the patch installation until invalidated objects are recompiled.

Here is a snippet from the readme:

  1. Run the view recompilation script. Note that this script is run with the database in upgrade mode, which restricts connections as SYSDBA. 
    cd $ORACLE_HOME/cpu/view_recompile
sqlplus /nolog
SQL> CONNECT / AS SYSDBA
SQL> STARTUP UPGRADE
SQL> @view_recompile_jan2008cpu.sql

SQL> SHUTDOWN;
SQL> STARTUP;

This procedure works fine for single instance databases, but not so much for RAC databases. The problem is that attempting to startup the instance in upgrade mode requires that the database is configured as a single instance database rather than a RAC database - specifically the CLUSTER_DATABASE parameter must be set to false in the SPFile.

Unfortunately, running the startup upgrade part of this procedure as noted in the readme results in an error unless you have “de-RACified” your database first:

ORA-01092: ORACLE instance terminated. Disconnection forced

If this issue is discovered before a rare downtime has been made available you can take the appropriate actions, which is one of the following:

Hopefully this message meets you before your downtime, or more importantly during your patch testing.

Topics: Upgrades, 10gR2, OPatch, Patches, Oracle Home

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