Oracle 19c

New mandatory unified audit policy on 19.26

This entry was posted in Audit Oracle Oracle 19c Oracle 23ai on by

This feature was just backported from Oracle 23ai. The new ORA$MANDATORY audit policy was added with the Oracle 19.26 RU. This policy is not visible at UNIFIED_AUDIT_POLICIES or AUDIT_UNIFIED_ENABLED_POLICIES.

After patching the database to 19.26, then you see entries on UNIFIED_AUDIT_TRAIL:

SYS@CDB2.CDB$ROOT> select EVENT_TIMESTMAP, SYSTEM_PRIVILEGE_USED, ACTION_NAME 
from UNIFIED_AUDIT_TRAIL 
where UNIFIED_AUDIT_POLICIES='ORA$MANDATORY' 
order by EVENT_TIMESTMAP;

                  EVENT_TIMESTAMP     SYSTEM_PRIVILEGE_USED       ACTION_NAME
_________________________________ _________________________ _________________
02-FEB-2025 21:54:56.192982000    SYSDBA                    LOGON
02-FEB-2025 21:54:56.216549000    SYSDBA                    SELECT
02-FEB-2025 21:55:00.381577000    SYSDBA, ALTER DATABASE    ALTER DATABASE
02-FEB-2025 21:55:00.393882000    SYSDBA                    LOGOFF
...

The actions that are audited by ORA$MANDATORY policy are described on Oracle 23ai documentation.

What I find interesting, is that the “ALTER DATABASE MOUNT” during startup is audited, so we can have a good history of database startups.

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ORA-64307 when creating compressed table and /home

This entry was posted in Engineer Systems ExaCC Exadata Oracle 19c on by

My customer running on ExaCC (Exadata Cloud@Customer) was getting “ORA-64307: Exadata Hybrid Columnar Compression is not supported for tablespaces on this storage type” on one of his test databases.

I did test connecting to SYS and no problem. Then I try to do using his tablespace and indeed, I get the error:

Quite going around, to check what was different on the user tablespace than on others. I test a self created tablespace and it works.

Strange. Until I found that… some datafiles were not in ASM!

Seems the ASM Diskgroup is almost full and the client DBA just put the datafiles somewhere else!

Warning: OPatchauto ignores disabled components – possible licensing issues

This entry was posted in OPatch Oracle Oracle 19c Patchset Update PSU on by

Since many years at my customer I’m using “opatchauto” to perform a out-of-place patching of Oracle Restart (GI+RDBMS).

My customer is concerned about database users using not licensed options, like partitioning. To avoid it, at the installation time the partitioning option is disabled using chopt, like described at Doc ID 948061.1.

Today during a check we noticed that Partitioning option was activated everywhere, which is not the client standard! We found out the origin of the problem was the out-of-place patching with “opatchauto”.

The big advantage of using “opatchauto” is that it allows easily either a single-step or a two-step Out-of-Place patching. We just write in a properties file the name of the new Oracle Homes and it does:

  • Clone current GI + RDBMS homes to new Homes (prepare clone)
  • Patches the new homes (prepare clone)
  • Stops GI and DBs (switch clone)
  • Switches GI and DBs from current homes to new Homes (switch clone)
  • Restart everything (switch clone)
  • Runs Datapatch on DBs if not standby (switch clone)

This allows to decrease the patching downtime without RAC to about 10 minutes, with the two-step (prepare clone + switch clone) operation.

Here the steps to reproduce de bug:

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Solve “OGG-08224 Error: CONTAINER option was specified though the database does not support containers” error

This entry was posted in GoldenGate Oracle 19c on by

Quick post to add info about the following Goldengate error:

OGG (http://localhost:9300 test1 as ogg_pdb1@CDB2) 10> REGISTER EXTRACT E_TEST1 DATABASE CONTAINER (pdb1)

2024-12-08T17:16:58Z ERROR OGG-08224 Error: CONTAINER option was specified though the database does not support containers.

This means that you are connected directly to the PDB, and not to CDB$ROOT.

To register Goldengate 21 extracts you need to connect to the Root container with a common user.

OGG (http://localhost:9300 test1 as ogg_pdb1@CDB2) 12> DBLOGIN USERIDALIAS ogg_cdb2
Successfully logged into database CDB$ROOT.

OGG (http://localhost:9300 test1 as ogg_cdb2@CDB2/CDB$ROOT) 13> REGISTER EXTRACT E_TEST1 DATABASE CONTAINER (pdb1)
2024-12-08T17:20:36Z  INFO    OGG-02003  Extract group E_TEST1 successfully registered with database at SCN 8039188.

Well, in the future this is not anymore true, as new version from Goldengate and DBs will work only at PDB level.

The DBT-16051 when creating a standby database using DBCA is still around. 7 years after.

This entry was posted in DataGuard Oracle Oracle 19c on by

Sometimes I ask myself why some bugs are not solved. When looking for DBT-16071 we find a blog post from Frank Pachot from more than 7 years ago. He shows that with Oracle 12.2 you can “create” standby databases directly with dbca. But that the script does only a duplicate for standby and nothing more.

I decided to try with 19.22 to see how the situation evolved. It didn’t.

The first thing I got was a DBT-16051 error:

$ dbca -createDuplicateDB -gdbName anjodb01 -primaryDBConnectionString "anjovm01.local.wsl/anjodb01_s1.local.wsl" -sid anjodb01 -createAsStandby -dbUniqueName anjodb01_s2 -silent
Enter SYS user password:
*****
[FATAL] [DBT-16051] Archive log mode is not enabled in the primary database.
   ACTION: Primary database should be configured with archive log mode for creating a duplicate or standby database.

Quick check shows the primary is correctly in archivelog mode. The problem is the Easy Connect string. The string I gave “anjovm1.local.wsl/anjodb1_s1.local.wsl” works well on sqlplus, but not with dbca. There you need to specify the port, also when you are just using the default one:

$ dbca -createDuplicateDB -gdbName anjodb01 -primaryDBConnectionString "anjovm01.local.wsl:1521/anjodb01_s1.local.wsl" -sid anjodb01 -createAsStandby -dbUniqueName anjodb01_s2 -silent
Enter SYS user password:
*****
[WARNING] [DBT-10331] Specified SID Name (anjodb01) may have a potential conflict with an already existing database on the system.
   CAUSE: The specified SID Name without the trailing numeric characters ({2}) may have a potential conflict with an already existing database on the system.
   ACTION: Specify a different SID Name that does not conflict with existing databases on the system.
Prepare for db operation
22% complete
Listener config step
44% complete
Auxiliary instance creation
67% complete
RMAN duplicate
89% complete
Post duplicate database operations
100% complete

The warning DBT-10331 appears because I’ve a “anjodb02” in the same VM, and this could create a problem, as they share the prefix “anjodb”. I don’t expect on a single instance environment that to be a problem though.

And it starts the new standby in ‘read only’ mode, which requires adequate licenses. 

SQL> select name, db_unique_name, database_role, open_mode, dataguard_broker from v$database;

NAME      DB_UNIQUE_NAME                 DATABASE_ROLE    OPEN_MODE            DATAGUAR
--------- ------------------------------ ---------------- -------------------- --------
ANJODB01 ANJODB02_S2                  PHYSICAL STANDBY READ ONLY            DISABLED

For the moment, I’ll stay with my set of scripts which do the operations in the right way.

Install Oracle Linux 9 and Oracle Database 19c on Windows WSL 1

This entry was posted in Linux Multitenant Oracle Oracle 19c on by

Since a few days I’ve a Oracle Database 19c running on my laptop (4 year old i5 processor with 16GB memory) under the Windows Subsystem for Linux with the latest Oracle Linux 9.3. It is working great for testing functionalities. It survives without problem sleep and restart without first shutting down correctly the database.

While there are no snapshot possibility like with Virtualbox, it is possible to export the running image and re-import later.

Below I describe the main steps to quickly install the system.

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New “OPatch util DeleteInactivePatches” tool for reducing the $ORACLE_HOME size

This entry was posted in OPatch Oracle Oracle 19c on by

When you are a sensible person, you patch regularly your Oracle database. After a few years, maybe you noticed that the $ORACLE_HOME increased size from new ~7 GB to …. 26 GB!

$ du -hs /u00/app/oracle/product/19.18.0
26G     /u00/app/oracle/product/19.18.0

Looking better, you find the culprit is the hidden directory $ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage :

$ du -hs /u00/app/oracle/product/19.18.0/.patch_storage
17G     /u00/app/oracle/product/19.18.0/.patch_storage

Today I show how a new option from OPatch allowed me to regain 11 GB of disk space in a couple of minutes. In a supported way.

Last year I had already presented other options to recover space from Oracle Patching. Below I remind them, but todays post is about the latest and improved way that OPatch tool has to keep only the usual needed patch backups.

Read More

How to workaround Oracle Text primary key limitations (and DRG-10528)

This entry was posted in bug Oracle Oracle 19c on by

One of my clients had a quite easy desire to try Oracle Text for an existing application. Oracle Text allows to use “standard SQL to index, search, and analyze text and documents stored in the Oracle database, in files, and on the web”.

It seemed simple, until we tried to implement on table named after the city where I studied: T_COIMBRA

create table T_COIMBRA (COL_ID timestamp not null, COL_TXT varchar2(100));

create unique index COIMBRA_IDX_ID on T_COIMBRA(COL_ID);

alter table T_COIMBRA add constraint PK_COIMBRA primary key (COL_ID) using index COIMBRA_IDX_ID;

create index COIMBRA_IDX_TXT ON T_COIMBRA(COL_TXT) indextype is ctxsys.context;

Nothing special it seems. But we get an error:

create index COIMBRA_IDX_TXT ON T_COIMBRA(COL_TXT) indextype is ctxsys.context

Error report -
ORA-29855: error occurred in the execution of ODCIINDEXCREATE routine
ORA-20000: Oracle Text error:
DRG-10528: primary keys of type TIMESTAMP(6) are not allowed
ORA-06512: at "CTXSYS.DRUE", line 186
ORA-06512: at "CTXSYS.TEXTINDEXMETHODS", line 320
29855. 00000 -  "error occurred in the execution of ODCIINDEXCREATE routine"
*Cause:    Failed to successfully execute the ODCIIndexCreate routine.
*Action:   Check to see if the routine has been coded correctly.

Below I show how to workaround this and keep an “unsupported” column as unique identifier of the table.

Read More

Upgrade to 19c: only 6 months left with support from Oracle

This entry was posted in Oracle 11g Oracle 12c Oracle 19c and tagged Oracle support upgrade on by

Oracle updated on 7 June 2023 the Release Schedule of Current Database Releases (Doc ID 742060.1) was updated, clarifying that only until December 2023 is possible to get support from Oracle ACS to perform the Upgrade the databases to the version 19c, the current stable release.

Below the updated slide from Oracle showing the support timelines of each version. Oracle 19c has also “Waived Extended Fee” support until 30 April 2025, even if that is not yet marked in the slide.

Don’t miss this opportunity!

The OPatch, .patch_storage and its space issues: the solutions!

This entry was posted in OPatch Oracle Oracle 19c on by

[a new solution is available as of 2023. Read here about the new OPatch util DeleteInactivePatches option.]

I love database patching and apart of the tiring coordination work or the applications that keep to not automatically reconnect to the database, all is usually perfect and issue free. Well, almost. The most common error are space issues.

You can try to follow the Oracle guidelines and have a 100 GB partition for the $ORACLE_HOME(s). Initially it only uses 7 or 8 GB per home, but after few years you are fighting against the space pressure.

There are several strategies to prevent or act against this space problem when patching:

Solution 1 – Recreate separate Oracle Home from scratch

It is a clean solution, when you make really from scratch, meaning no home cloning, no opatchauto apply -outofplace, and then apply only the latest patch there. This solution is quite easy to do for DB home. However when you have Grid Home this is a bit more hassle.

Solution 2 – Use the opatch hidden “archive” feature

This feature allows to move out from .patch_storage folder some patches in a zip format. It was “documented” by Mike Dietrich in his blog. Unfortunately to have a common archive between different Oracle Homes you need to do some hand work: archive on one Oracle Home, delete the patches from remaining homes and copy the $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/.patch_storage/.patch_archive_mapping.xml file to the other homes. Of course this works when all Homes have exactly the same features installed and patches. Keep in mind that before rollback you need to use the “unarchive” option and that the rollback procedure will restore the files that were changed, and this can vary depending on the state of the oracle home at the moment of patch. Use opatch util archive -help for more info.

Here we are not saving any space, just moving the problem away. The other partition can be a remote slower location, but the patching will also then be slower, as it will need to copy files there. Use: TARGET=<partition>/patch_storage ; mv $ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage $TARGET ; ln -s $TARGET $ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage

Solution 4 – Remove unneeded patches from .patch_storage

In $ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage the whole history of patches you applied is kept. You can rollback one after the other and bring the Oracle Home several steps behind. However, the most of the cases you are ok to just be able to move one step backward. The older history of the home is past. If that is you case, then there is this nice Python script clean_patch_storage.py which is based on the premise of Oracle Doc ID 550522.1 which states you can “remove all the sub-directories from $ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage that are not present in the list of installed patches”. The list directories you can delete is exactly what the script do.

Maybe you have other solutions or tricks, please share in the comments.