Tuesday when Oracle released its (delayed due to Open World) Fall 2009 Critical Patch Update, it also released an update to Patch Set Updates (PSU’s). This information is obtained from Document ID 854428.1, dated 20 Oct 2009.
As mentioned earlier, I’m a big fan of the PSU concept and am pleased to see that it has been expanded with this Critical Patch Update. The arrival of RDBMS 11.1 PSU’s, clusterware, as well as EM is great news for me, as it makes life simpler. I figure I’m already going to have to apply the CPU, might as well get the benefits of the PSU and a version change (internally) to prove it.
I’ve already installed 10.2.0.4.1 on 4 production and 8 development/test/training 10g databases without incident, and plan to get moving on testing this release. I’d really like it if Oracle would actually show a PSU’d database as 10.2.0.4.1, as it would be a visual queue that the PSU had been applied to the database, but at least on the internal company Wiki I can just tag the RDBMS version as such and not have to separately track CPU’s anymore.
After a little digging, I found that Oracle has mad some “oddball” platforms “By request only”, while most mainstream platforms (Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX) are available as PSU’s. Again, curiously, Windows has been classified “Not applicable” as an OS since “Windows fixes are released in periodic bundle patches which contain all the CPU and PSU content”. Whatever that means.
RDBMS PSU’s available (patch number in parenthesis):
- 11.1.0.7.1 (8833297)
- 11.1.0.7.1 for CRS (Cluster Services) (8287931)
- 10.2.0.4.2 (8833280)
- 10.2.0.4.2 for CRS (Cluster Services) (8705958)
Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control (patch number in parenthesis):
- 10.2.0.5.1 for OMS (8864918)
edit: I ran the PSU against my Enterprise Manager OMS (10.2.0.5.1) and ouch it broke it. Badly. The application was 2 parts; opatch apply and an RDBMS script. The opatch piece was fine. The RDBMS script ended with many errors, and EM wouldn’t start. I rolled back the RDBMS script per the readme… and EM wouldn’t start. For the record, I am running RDBMS 11.2 (uncertified for EM) and not the 10.2 version..
edit 2: I ran the PSU against my regression test ERP database (11.1.0.7) and it applied (seemingly) without incident.
edit 3: At this point, I’ve run this PSU successfully against the following environments:
- Enterprise Manager OMS (10.2.0.5) 8874205
- I installed without the RDBMS script
- You must install the Linux x86 version even if you’re running x86-64, as the default 64-bit install of EM runs 32-bit binaries. Go figure.
- Not sure what the problem with this patch was the first time I tried it
- Discoverer 10g (AS 10.1.2.3) 8874205
- RDBMS 10.2.0.4 (15 instances) 8833280
- RDBMS 11.1.0.7 (1 instance) 8833297
