Linker concerns while installing and distributing to other machines - patching later

I'm trying to determine what level of concern there is for installing Oracle database on one machine and then copying the installed files to another server. Specifically, one machine is a Solaris 2.8 machine whose last recommended patch bundle was applied about 2 years ago (yeah, I know but I was overridden on that)... another machine is a Solaris 2.8 machine whose last recommended patch bundle was applied about 6 months ago but was also jumpstarted from a later Solaris release.

Now, my concern is that when the installer is doing the linking process (unsure what this does exactly) that tar'ing up what is installed on the older OS and plopping it in the same place on the newer OS is asking for trouble.

I'm told that it makes no difference but to me it seems like it is not wise to do so because a machine whose kernel sits at 108528-12 will have old libraries, etc. and bringing across the Oracle install to a machine at 108528-29 will introduce the same problems that the 108528-12 machine has.

Doesn't it seem like the only way to do this correctly is to do a fresh install for each machine so that the linker links against the system's set of libraries?

Which brings up another point - what happens when you apply the recommended patch bundle a year after the initial install of Oracle - what happens to all of those things that Oracle linked against 12 months prior?

Thanks! Received on Tue Jul 20 2004 - 17:04:39 CDT