Provisioning, Patching, and Grid Control

Attempted (again) to get 10.2.0.4 Grid Control to patch a few databases. Fail. Hard.

Eventually, we found the following glorious DocID on Metalink: 427577.1. Bookmark it now.

It identifies a few patches you'll need to install on GC in order for patching to work. Or you end up with some very irritating, strange, and mostly undocumented errors:

ERROR em.paf_jobs executePAFCommand.142 - Problems with the directive urn parameter format.

oracle.sysman.emgc.provision.UrnException: The URN, 'null', is not properly formatted

There are others, not totally related:

There was an error saving 'p4898608_10.2.0.4_2000' below 'OracleSoftwareUpdates' in the deployment library

Fixed that one by deleting from Deployments>>Provisioning select and deleted p4898608.

There's a really handy guide to look at -- grid-automation-deployment-procedures.pdf Found that to be pretty useful.

Couple more random things:
1) Setup your software library: info here
2) Run the metalink & opatch update scripts. Now.
3) Patch the system from the docid above.

Should work. Hasn't for me yet, but when it does I'll post the last lil bits.