Deprecation of OPatch Command Option "-all_nodes"

A very important change will be happening soon (actually it has already happened) about opatch and then all the scripting you may have developed over the years. Indeed, the -all_nodes option will be deprecated and replaced as announced in Customer Recommended GI/RAC/Single Instance Announcing Deprecation of OPatch Command Option "-all_nodes" (Doc ID 2331762.1).

Details :

 This is applicable to all releases of OPatch.

 The 12.2.0.1.13 release (and later) of OPatch, which is used for all releases 12.1.0.x and later

 The 11.2.0.3.18 release (and later) of OPatch, which is used for all releases 11.2.0.1 - 11.2.0.4

 Beginning with these releases of OPatch,  OPatch will only support patching/listing inventory for local node of a RAC cluster.

 There will be no propagation to other nodes in cluster.

I first thought that this announcement was kind of awkward as we cannot imagine to have opatch to only support patching/listing inventory for local node of a RAC cluster. But it is not and after few tests, the -all_nodes option indeed does not provide any remote patch information any more in 12.2.0.1.13 which is not really nice.

Future :

Hopefully is also announced a new -remote option to replace -all_nodes but in the 12.2.0.1.14 version only :

1. In Opatch 12.2.0.1.13 and Opatch 11.2.0.3.18, OPatch command option “-all_nodes” will be no-op and existed in -help.

     If opatch command is being called with option “-all_nodes”, Opatch will print out the warning on console msg as:

     "OPatch was called with -all_nodes option. The -all_nodes option is being deprecated. Please remove it while calling OPatch."

 2.  In future release Opatch 12.2.0.1.14 (and later) and Opatch 11.2.0.3.20 (and later) , Option “-all_nodes” will be removed from -help, user will get syntax error if specify the option. 

Alternative Feature of -all_node is available  for Multi-Node GI/RAC :

$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatchauto report -format xml -type patches -remote

(The remote command will get a list of patches from all nodes)

Indeed, 12.2.0.1.13 opatch now raises a warning when using the -all_nodes option :

oracle@exadatadb01> $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch lsinventory -all_nodes
Oracle Interim Patch Installer version 12.2.0.1.13
Copyright (c) 2018, Oracle Corporation.  All rights reserved.


Oracle Home       : /u01/app/12.2.0.1/grid
Central Inventory : /u01/app/oraInventory
   from           : /u01/app/12.2.0.1/grid/oraInst.loc
OPatch version    : 12.2.0.1.13
OUI version       : 12.2.0.1.4
Log file location : /u01/app/12.2.0.1/grid/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch2018-06-21_21-12-23PM_1.log

Warning: OPatch was called with -all_nodes option. The -all_nodes option is being deprecated.
         Please remove it while calling OPatch.

But do NOT provide any remote patch information any more.