[Oracle-l] how goes 10.1.0.4 testing?

I'm waiting for 10.2. There is no way I would recommend 10.1 to my current
employer.

We just applied the "January 2005" 1st quarter patch to one of our 9.2.0.4
databases. The patch process has a bug. It doesn't update the inventory
xml file properly. The work-around is to go in and update the file by hand.
Talk about crap. It's bad enough that Oracle can't test the database
software well enough and they have forced us into this monthly/quarterly
patching process. But now, they can't even create patching software that
works good enough without *it* having bugs in it.

Looks to me like Oracle has slipped back to the "bad old days" of releasing
stuff much too soon before it's ready. And we are stuck with cleaning up
after them.

uh, yeah.
my favorite is if one installed 8i/9i on win32 using defaults which
put the oracle home in say d:\oracle\ora92 and the inventory location
(inst_loc) in c:\program files\oracle\Inventory ... 10.1 won't even
install.
The solution is to uninstall/reinstall using 10g OFA.
Not a huge deal, just adds to the maintenance window and adds a reboot.
With an uninstall/reinstall, no sense jumping through the hoops of the
10.1.0.2, 9.2.0.5.0, 9.2.0.5.3 opatch fun, might as well go straight
to 9.2.0.6. Maybe.
setting %ORACLE_BASE%=D:\oracle sure works better, with the new 9.2
home being D:\oracle\product\9.2.0, just like on the *nix installs.
(feel free to chime in here MT).
9.2.0.5.3 was pretty good as far as we were concerned. Hit no bugs.
9.2.0.6 is no fun. 2 one-off patchsets already for win32 out there ...
didn't mess with them.
10.1.0.3 has lots of fixes (issues) ... which is why we're being
ambitious on testing 10.1.0.4
(I ignored 8.0.x entirely, as well as 8.1.5 and 9.0.1).
Figured with the downtime windows available last night/today that I'd
get 10.1.0.4 rolled out to some test servers.

gotta do something until the poker game tonight ...

Paul



On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 15:24:24 -0500, Mercadante, Thomas F
wrote:

Hi,

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 15:24:24 -0500, Mercadante, Thomas F
wrote:
A couple days ago I noticed a security rollup patch. It was after "Jan
2005" patch, but it might have been 10g only. I'm curious if it might
be related to the same thing?

Its too late on Friday to go looking, so it will wait till Monday. :-)

Regards,

Mike Thomas

Mike,

That was nearly entirely 10.1.0.3.1 stuff.
Most of it concerned revoking privileges from public on built-in packages.
The 10.1.0.4 patchset includes such fixes.

Paul

I'm curious, what makes you think 10.2 will be better from a software
quality and patching perspective? (as opposed to feature list).

It's probably the eternal human optimism or, as they put it, faith. People
believe in the things like the eternal life or reincarnation without a shre=
d
of an evidence, so why shouldn't they believe in The One who will come
and write a bug free version of Oracle?
--=20
Mladen Gogala
Oracle DBA

Mladen,

Actually, in 10.1 onward, they use the "alter system flush
shared_pool" liberally in routines like catpatch.
But yeah, I've read enough readmes that I don't skip that one.
something about the number 150 doesn't sit right with me, I use 160.

Paul

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 16:46:56 -0500, Mladen Gogala
wrote:

Here's another update to this mess. Not only does the patch process have a
bug, the updated database is throwing an ORA-600 bug caused by the patch.
Anybody want to guess Oracle's resolution?

Upgrade to 9.2.0.6 - but first back the patch out.

Un-freekin-believable.

We are going to back the security patch out.

Niall,

What Mladen said.

Also, and this is my opinion from experience only, Oracle tends to release
new features that are not yet fully realized in actual working code. All
you need to do is to take a look at how quickly patch set #1 comes out after
release #1 comes out. Sometimes, the patches that are available are for
things that were fixed in the prior release of the software (like 9.2.0.4
something works, and it's broken in 10.1, so a patch comes out to catch 10.1
up to 9.2.0.4). Please don't ask me for specific examples of this.

And the new features that are release may have passed beta testing. But
once they start getting hit by the rest of the world, the stuff really hits
the fan.

Of course, waiting for release 2 puts us in the position of installing
(probably) the final release of the software just before version 11.x comes
out. But I'd rather be a release behind running stable software than
spending my client's time patching buggy software.

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: Niall Litchfield
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2005 2:48 AM
To: thomas.mercadante_at_labor.state.ny.us
Cc: bdbafh_at_gmail.com; Oracle Discussion List
Subject: Re: how goes 10.1.0.4 testing?

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 15:24:24 -0500, Mercadante, Thomas F
wrote:
I'm curious, what makes you think 10.2 will be better from a software
quality and patching perspective? (as opposed to feature list).