Introduction:

At the moment I am reading a great book on 12c (Pro Oracle Database 12c administration) by Darl Kuhn (http://www.apress.com/9781430257288) . And I really like his style and elaborations on topics . While i was  reading it is like being held a mirror. Indeed most times I would also use the runInstaller interactively to run the installation of the Oracle binaries and yes would even frown if I would not be allowed to use a xterm to do installations. Well Darl you gave me an inspiration for set up of environment i need shortly.  So this is a big applause for him already!

Details:

For a data migration environment i am asked to set up Oracle on a Linux server identical to the production servers that are part of the scope of the project.  After installation I will be working with BCVS to bring copies of a number of databases to this box. The production servers are 11.2.2.0 with  one-off patches and a psu patch ..  And as an important add-on information i have installed the Grid Infrastructure software already on the new box so i have Oracle Restart with an ASM instance running. ( that also means that  i have an OraInst location and an existing Oracle Inventory in place too). So which way would i head.

1. Install Oracle binaries from scratch , and apply all the patches
2. Clone  the Rdbms software from a production box.

Since i got time i investigated both options. But in the end i loved the scenario 2 below because I always had done the normal interactive way installation:

First $ORACLE_HOME was checked:

$ echo $ORACLE_HOME
/opt/oracle/product/112_ee_64/db

Next step was to move to the ORACLE_HOME

$ cd $ORACLE_HOME

Almost there. Moved back  ( up ) one level ( so I was in /opt/oracle/product/112_ee_64 directory).

$ cd ..

Was aiming  for the tar utility to copy everything in the subdirectory db (and below)  in the  /opt/oracle/product/112_ee_64/.

Note if you get error messages of files not being included ( happened to me too make sure you do a nohup  tar -cvf myorahome.tar>Mylogfile.lst) Most likely you either ran out of space or did not have enough privileges to run the tar for all files ( so i ran  tar as root in the end).

$ tar -cvf myorahome.tar db

• tar -cvf is the command  to run with the options -cvf

• myorahome.tar will be holding all the files in all the subdirectories below the /opt/oracle/product/112_ee_64/

• db is the subdirectory ( part of my ORACLE_HOME) which I need to be added to the tar file.

That created for a full-sized Rdbms Installation with all patches included a Tarred file  of about  5G. After that  myorahome.tar file was copied to the new server with scp.

The tar file was copied to the already existing /opt/oracle/product/112_ee_64 on the new machine. There the tar file was extracted and the extract created the subdirectory db again ( and all others below 2) as part of the extract:

$ cd /opt/oracle/product/112_ee_64
Note: make sure you have plenty space on the new server ( better check that before extraction.
Next, extract the files:
$ tar -xvf myorahome.tar

Next step was needed to include, to register this cloned installation in the Oracle Inventory. In my case I used the runInstaller inside the new Oracle home. First to make sure that the new Oracle Home was not known in the Inventory by detaching it:

./runInstaller -detachHome ORACLE_HOME="/opt/oracle/product/112_ee_64/db"

Then I added the cloned software to the Inventory:

./runInstaller -silent -ignoreSysPrereqs -attachHome ORACLE_HOME="/opt/oracle/product/112_ee_64/db" ORACLE_HOME_NAME="OraDb11g_home1" LOCAL_NODE="" CLUSTER_NODES="

But of course the proof of the pudding is in tasting it once this had finished:

So  it was needed to check with Opatch if the Orainventory now was aware about all installed patches.

export PATH=/opt/oracle/product/112_ee_64/db/OPatch:$PATH

I checked  opatch was the correct one:

which opatch

Then I checked the patches with the command below:

opach lsinventory -oh /opt/oracle/product/112_ee_64/db

And it showed all the correct patches . So indeed I had cloned the Oracle software in a correct way to this machine . Yah ! And a  big thank you to Darl  for a great book which pointed me in the right direction.

Happy reading,

Mathijs