How to apply CPU Patches in Oracle Database?

Today I am going to give little insight about Opatch and CPU patch.Opatch is a tool is used to patch all oracle homes for oracle applications. CPU is stands for Critical patch updates, in other way its a security patches for Apps.

How to use Opatch?

Opatch is one of the easiest and safest for patching oracle apps because you can rollback opatch if you find any issues applying the patches

1. From the opatch read me make sure which oracle home you want to patch
2. Shutdown the instance related to particular oracle home.
3. Set the oracle home in the env .Set the opatch in the path.
4. Follow the readme whether opatch needs up gradation.
5. cd to the patch area and opatch apply
6. Proceed the post install steps
7. Run cpu_root.sh to give some permissions to the executables.
8. For rollback use opath rollback –id
9. “opatch lsinventory “ is used to list all the patches
10. “opatch lsinventory –details” is used to find the version belongs to particular oracle home.

CPU patch
CPU patch has to keep uptodate. Use opatch to apply CPU patches. Follow the opatch steps to apply the CPU patch. As part of post installation step run catcpu.sql and utlrp.sql

Issues will face
1. When you are applying CPU patch you will get conflict with some patches .Report to Oracle Corporation they will provide a new merged patch if its actually a conflict.