list-ohpatches.sh: a better Oracle patch reporting tool

Tired of struggling with Oracle patches, I developped lspatches.sh three years ago and I based it on a new feature at that time which was implemented after the opatch -all_nodes option was deprecated; this new feature was a new report -remote option to opatchauto. I must confess that I like new things and this is why I decided to go this new feature instead of basing lspatches.sh on that good old buddy opatch lspatches.

Three years later, I can clearly say that it was a bad decision; indeed many people (and I) had issues mainly because:

• Oracle clearly dropped the 11g support with this -- but people still have tons of 11g (which may not be a bad idea :))
• This opatchauto -remote option had many issues just not working properly
• This option has even been removed and replaced by a -host

Even if this is kind of usual with oracle and the new features, at the end of the day, lspatches.sh was most likely not to work due to the points discussed above.

So I restarted from scratch and developped a new list-ohpatches.sh script based on opatch lspatches which is working forever and also has the advantage of showing the description of the patches which is always good to have. The script is now more reliable, works perfectly with 11g, less code, more simple... in short: better.

How that works ?

list-ohpatches.sh checks the homes from /etc/oratab, runs opatch lspatches on all the nodes of a cluster and makes a nice table, one column by node, showing a green x if the patch is installed on that specific node and a red Missing if a patch is missing as you can see below:

You can then very easily find a missing or extra patch installed on one or many nodes. You can also note that the return code of the script is the number of missing patches so if used by an automatic script, you can easily know if all is good (return code 0) or not OK (return code > 0) and even the number of missing patches.

Below a successful output:

Is it Exadata specific ?

No, it works on any RAC, even on standalone systems.

Is it working for GI and databases Homes ?

Yes, it does work for GI and databases Homes.

Which user to execute the script with ?

opatch lspatches must be run by oracle (not root) so if you run it as root, the script will execute the opatch lspatches commands as oracle (or anothger user if the --oracleuser option is used to specify another "oracle" user) so you can use root or oracle, the script will manage automatically.

Some options

Feel free to check the help of the script (list-ohpatches.sh -h or list-ohpatches.sh --help) for the possible options; it is pretty simple and self-exaplanatory:

# ./list-ohpatches.sh --help

NAME
        list-ohpatches.sh - Show nice tables of the installed and/or missing patches for some GI/DB Oracle Homes

SYNOPSIS
        ./list-ohpatches.sh [-g] [-c] [-G] [-v] [-s] [-u] [-h]

DESCRIPTION
        list-ohpatches.sh Based on oratab, show nice tables of the installed and/or missing patches for some GI/DB Oracle Homes
                       You can then quickly find a missing patch across a RAC system
        list-ohpatches.sh will by default check all the nodes of a cluster (based on olsnodes) which requires ASM to be running
                       and oraenv to be working with the ASM aslias defined in oratab; If you have no ASM alias in oratab,
                       you may suffer from https://unknowndba.blogspot.com/2019/01/lost-entries-in-oratab-after-gi-122.html
                       You can specify a comma separated list of host or a file containing one host per line
        list-ohpatches.sh by default checks all the homes defined in oratab, you can use --grep/--home and --ungrep/--ignore to limit your home selection (see examples below)
        list-ohpatches.sh relies on opatch lspatches which must run as oracle user (and not root); if the script is started as root,
                       the opatch lspatches commands will be run after su - oracle (see -u | --oracleuser for more on this)


OPTIONS
        -g | --groupfile            ) A group file containing a list of hosts
        -c | --commalist  | --hosts ) A comma separated list of hosts
        -G | --grep | --oh | --home ) Pattern to grep from /etc/oratab
        -v | --ungrep | --ignore    ) Pattern to grep -v (ignore) from /etc/oratab
        -s | --showhomes | --show   ) Just show the homes from oratab resolving the grep/ungrep combinations
        -u | --oracleuser           ) User to use to run opatch lspatches if the script is started as root, default is oracle
        -h | --help                 ) Shows this help


EXAMPLES
       ./list-ohpatches.sh                                                       # Analyze and show all the homes of nodes of a cluster
       ./list-ohpatches.sh --show                                                # Show the homes from oratab (only show, dont do anything else)
       ./list-ohpatches.sh --grep grid                                           # Analyze the grid home
       ./list-ohpatches.sh --grep db --ungrep 12                                 # Only the DB homes but not the 12 ones
       ./list-ohpatches.sh --grep db --ungrep 12 --groupfile ~/dbs_group         # Same as above on the hosts contained in the ~/dbs_group file
       ./list-ohpatches.sh --home db --ignore 12 --hosts exa01,exa06             # Same as above but only on hosts exa02 and exa06
       ./list-ohpatches.sh --home db --ignore 12 --hosts exa01,exa06 -u oracle2  # Same as above but started as root; will then su - oracle2 automatically
# 

We now finally have a robust script to show the installed patches across many nodes, enjoy ! You can freely download the script here.