Cloning an Oracle Home
26 Jan 2015Cloning an Oracle home is required from time to time. The big advantage of using this approach is that it preserve the patches you might have been installed in that home. Of course, cloning is valid only for the same platform. Don’t expect to take a Windows Oracle home and clone it on a Linux box.
First step: backup the current Oracle home
It doesn’t matter what tool you use, but it’s important to pay attention to the files ownership. That tool needs to preserve that information. So, on Linux, we can use this:
cd $ORACLE_HOME
tar cf - * | gzip > /tmp/oracle_home.tar.gz
In $ORACLE_HOME is the home you want to clone, the source.
Second step: restore on the target
The target can be on the same host or on a different machine:
mkdir <target_new_oracle_home>
cd <target_new_oracle_home>
gunzip < /tmp/oracle_home.tar.gz | tar xf -
Third step: finalize the cloning process
Now, we need to reconfigure and attach the new home in the Oracle inventory. So, you need to do this:
[oracle@mercur 2e_db_cloned]$ oui/bin/runInstaller \
-clone \
-silent ORACLE_HOME=/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/2e_db_cloned \
ORACLE_HOME_NAME="Oracle_12c_cloned" \
ORACLE_BASE=/u01/app/oracle \
OSDBA_GROUP=dba \
OSPER_GROUP=dba
Starting Oracle Universal Installer...
Checking swap space: must be greater than 500 MB. Actual 4061 MB Passed
Preparing to launch Oracle Universal Installer from /tmp/OraInstall2015-01-26_06-19-33PM. Please wait ...
Oracle Universal Installer, Version 12.1.0.2.0 Production
Copyright (C) 1999, 2014, Oracle. All rights reserved.
... output truncated ...
Linking in progress (Monday, January 26, 2015 6:19:47 PM EET)
. 81% Done.
Link successful
Setup in progress (Monday, January 26, 2015 6:20:21 PM EET)
.......... 100% Done.
Setup successful
Saving inventory (Monday, January 26, 2015 6:20:22 PM EET)
Saving inventory complete
Configuration complete
End of install phases.(Monday, January 26, 2015 6:20:44 PM EET)
WARNING:
The following configuration scripts need to be executed as the "root" user.
/u01/app/oracle/product/12.1.0/2e_db_cloned/root.sh
To execute the configuration scripts:
1. Open a terminal window
2. Log in as "root"
3. Run the scripts
The cloning of Oracle_12c_cloned was successful.
Please check '/u01/app/oraInventory/logs/cloneActions2015-01-26_06-19-33PM.log' for more details.
Just run the root scripts and you’re good to go.