B Cloning an Oracle Home

Cloning an Oracle home involves creating a copy of the Oracle home and then configuring it for a new environment. If you are performing multiple Oracle Database installations, then you may want to use this method to create each Oracle home, because copying files from an existing Oracle Database installation takes less time than creating a new version of them. This method is also useful if the Oracle home that you are cloning has had patches applied to it. When you clone the Oracle home, the new Oracle home has the patch updates.

When you clone Oracle homes using release 11.2 Database Control, you must update the exclude file list. This file list specifies files that need not be included when the source Oracle home is archived because these files are not required for the cloning operation. Do not include the following files in the archive:

  • sqlnet.ora

  • tnsnames.ora

  • listener.ora

  • oratab

Note:

In addition to cloning an Oracle home, you can clone individual Oracle Database installations by using Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Control. Oracle Database Administrator's Guide provides detailed information about cloning Oracle Database installations and Oracle homes.

This appendix includes information about the following topics:

B.1 Cloning an Oracle Home

Perform the following to clone an Oracle home:

  1. Verify that the installation of Oracle Database to clone is successful.

    You can do this by reviewing the installActionsdate_time.log file for the installation session, which is typically located in the /orainventory_location/logs directory.

    If you install patches, then check their status using the following:

    $ cd $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch
    

    Include $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch in $PATH

    $ opatch lsinventory
    
  2. Stop all processes related to the Oracle home. See "Stopping Existing Oracle Processes" for more information about stopping the processes for an Oracle home.

  3. Create a ZIP file with the Oracle home (but not the Oracle base) directory.

    For example, if the source Oracle installation is in the /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1, then you zip the dbhome_1 directory by using the following command:

    # zip -r dbhome_1.zip /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1
    

    Do not include the admin, fast_recovery_area, and oradata directories that are under the Oracle base directory. These directories are created in the target installation later, when you create a new database there.

  4. Copy the ZIP file to the root directory of the target computer.

  5. Extract the ZIP file contents by using the following command:

    # unzip -d / dbhome_1.zip
    
  6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for each computer where you want to clone the Oracle home, unless the Oracle home is on a shared storage device.

  7. On the target computer, change the directory to the unzipped Oracle home directory, and remove all the .ora (*.ora) files present in the unzipped $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin directory.

  8. From the $ORACLE_HOME/clone/bin directory, run the clone.pl file for the unzipped Oracle home. Use the following syntax:

    $ORACLE_HOME/perl/bin/perl clone.pl ORACLE_BASE="target_oracle_base" ORACLE_HOME="target_oracle_home"
    OSDBA_GROUP=OSDBA_privileged_group OSOPER_GROUP=OSOPER_privileged_group -defaultHomeName
    

    For example:

    $ORACLE_HOME/perl/bin/perl clone.pl ORACLE_BASE="/u01/app/oracle/" ORACLE_HOME="/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1"
    OSDBA_GROUP=dba OSOPER_GROUP=oper -defaultHomeName
    

    Oracle Universal Installer starts, and then records the cloning actions in the cloneActionstimestamp.log file. This log file is typically located in /orainventory_location/logs directory.

  9. To configure the connection information for the new database, run Net Configuration Assistant:

    $ cd $ORACLE_HOME/bin
    $ ./netca
    
  10. To create a new database for the newly cloned Oracle home, run Database Configuration Assistant:

    $ cd $ORACLE_HOME/bin
    $ ./dbca
    

See Also:

B.2 Configuring Oracle Configuration Manager in a Cloned Oracle Home

Perform the following to configure Oracle Configuration Manager for a cloned Oracle home:

  1. Run the following command from $ORACLE_HOME/ccr/state:

    $ rm -rf *.ll*
    
  2. Run the following command from $ORACLE_HOME/ccr/inventory:

    $ cp core.jar pending
    
  3. Run the following commands from $ORACLE_HOME/ccr/bin:

    $ ./emSnapshotEnv
    $ ./deployPackages
    
  4. Run the following command from $ORACLE_HOME/ccr/bin and provide the proper credentials:

    $ ./configCCR
    

If Oracle Configuration Manager was manually configured using setupCCR, then perform the following in the cloned Oracle home:

  1. Delete all the subdirectories of the $ORACLE_HOME/ccr/hosts directory to remove previously configured hosts.

  2. Run the following command from $ORACLE_HOME/ccr/bin:

    $ ./configCCR -a
    

If you installed Oracle Configuration Manager in the original Oracle home but have not configured it, then run the following command in the cloned Oracle home:

$ setupCCR