(Note: if you are unsure of the type of upgrade you need to perform,
Please see our Database Upgrade FAQ.)
Before applying any Oracle
patch upgrades perform the following:
Cleanly
shutdown all databases on the machine you wish to apply the patch.
Backup
all database datafile, logfiles, and controlfiles. Also perform a backup
on the $ORACLE_HOME directory
(UNIX)
You will also need to obtain the patch upgrade files from Oracle. Patch
releases are available free of charge from Oracle's ftp site.
ftp://external-us.oracle.com/server/patchsets/
Once you obtain the patchsets, extract the files onto the target machine.
Unix patchsets are stored in *.tar.gz format. Once extracted, the patchsets
must be installed using the Oracle Installer Executable. Note
the location of the unix.prd file on Unix systems. You will
need to enter the location of this file later.
Before continuing, make sure the environment variable $ORACLE_HOME
are set properly and point the top level of the Oracle software codetree.
Start the Oracle Installer. Typically on this executable called orainst
is located under $ORACLE_HOME/orainst/.
Under the Oracle Installer, select the "Add/Remove Software" Option
from the appropriate menu, then select all default options.
After the Software Asset screen, choose->"New *.prd file" and
enter the location of the "unix.prd" file as described above. The
installer should then read the contents of the above directory and list
them at that time. Select the patch upgrade files and then proceed to install
them.
Once the installation is complete, restart your instance. You should
see the RDBMS & PL/SQL versions upgraded at that point.
Once the database is up, proceed to run the following scripts while
connected as internal:
$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/catalog.sql
$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/catproc.sql
Once theses scripts are run, the database upgrades are complete. If
you have mutiple databases, you MUST run these scripts on EACH database.
