Question: Manually checking for application of patchsets

Hey, all.

I have 2 servers here (8.1.7.4 on AIX 5.2 64-bit) which are part of a failover system; they have a shared disk array.

I am tasked with confirming that both servers are up to the same patchset. My belief is that no CPUs have been relevant for this version/platform combination since Alert 68 back in the fall of 2004.

We don't have opatch on these boxes, and it seems that the $ORACLE_HOME/cpu directory has been cleaned out sometime in the past year; I'd hoped to find that directory and look for log files. So I have no real way to confirm with 100% certainty that these two servers are in sync from a patchset perspective.

So I figure I'd check the executable files themselves

I examine $ORACLE_HOME/bin, and check the date/size of "oracle*" and I see this:

Server 1:
-rwsr-s--x 1 oracle dba 37841074 Nov 27 2004 oracle*

Server 2:
-rwsr-s--x 1 oracle dba 39456108 Nov 27 2004 oracle*

Assuming that this is a key file which would indicate consistency of patch levels, I'd expect that if the same patchset were applied, that the size would be the same, as is the date.

Is there a reason the file size could be different if the same patchset had been applied at the same date back last fall?

Can anyone suggest a manual/low-level way of ensuring that the Oracle versions on 2 separate systems are at the same patchset revision, other than just reapplying the patchset on both boxes again?

Thanks,

BD Received on Thu Nov 24 2005 - 15:18:31 CST