Steps to Recreate the Oracle Inventory

While deploying the bug patch to one of the staging server, I found the below error like 

No read or write permission to ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage

   Central Inventory is locked by another OUI instance

   No read permission to Central Inventory

   The lock file exists in ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage

   The Oracle Home does not exist in Central Inventory

-bash-3.2$ cd /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1/OPatch
-bash-3.2$ ./opatch lsinventory
Invoking OPatch 11.2.0.1.7

Oracle Interim Patch Installer version 11.2.0.1.7
Copyright (c) 2011, Oracle Corporation.  All rights reserved.


Oracle Home       : /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1
Central Inventory : /u01/app/oraInventory
   from           : /etc/oraInst.loc
OPatch version    : 11.2.0.1.7
OUI version       : 11.2.0.3.0
Log file location : /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch2014-03-27_14-05-09PM.log

List of Homes on this system:

Inventory load failed... OPatch cannot load inventory for the given Oracle Home.

Possible causes are:

   Oracle Home dir. path does not exist in Central Inventory

   Oracle Home is a symbolic link

   Oracle Home inventory is corrupted

LsInventorySession failed: OracleHomeInventory gets null oracleHomeInfo

OPatch failed with error code 73

Soon I come to know that my Oracle Inventory is got corrupted since its unable to read the "inventory.xml" file so it needs to be recreate in order to apply the patch.

Below are the steps to recreate the Oracle Inventory.

cd $ORACLE_HOME/oui/bin/

./runInstaller -silent -ignoreSysPrereqs -attachHome ORACLE_HOME="Oracle_Home_Location" ORACLE_HOME_NAME="Name_Of _Oracle_Home"

-bash-3.2$ ./runInstaller -silent -ignoreSysPrereqs -attachHome ORACLE_HOME="/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1" ORACLE_HOME_NAME="OraDb11g_home1"

Starting Oracle Universal Installer...

Checking swap space: must be greater than 500 MB.   Actual 995 MB    Passed

The inventory pointer is located at /etc/oraInst.loc

The inventory is located at /u01/app/oraInventory

'AttachHome' was successful.

-bash-3.2$ cd /u01/app/oraInventory/

-bash-3.2$ ls

ContentsXML  logs

-bash-3.2$ cd ContentsXML/

-bash-3.2$ ls

comps.xml  inventory.xml  libs.xml

-bash-3.2$ more inventory.xml

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>

<!-- Copyright (c) 1999, 2011, Oracle. All rights reserved. -->

<!-- Do not modify the contents of this file by hand. -->

<INVENTORY>

<VERSION_INFO>

   <SAVED_WITH>11.2.0.3.0</SAVED_WITH>

   <MINIMUM_VER>2.1.0.6.0</MINIMUM_VER>

</VERSION_INFO>

<HOME_LIST>

<HOME NAME="OraDb11g_home1" LOC="/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1" TYPE="O" IDX="1"/>

</HOME_LIST>

<COMPOSITEHOME_LIST>

</COMPOSITEHOME_LIST>

</INVENTORY>

-bash-3.2$ ./opatch apply

Invoking OPatch 11.2.0.1.7

Oracle Interim Patch Installer version 11.2.0.1.7

Copyright (c) 2011, Oracle Corporation.  All rights reserved.

Oracle Home       : /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1

Central Inventory : /u01/app/oraInventory

   from           : /etc/oraInst.loc

OPatch version    : 11.2.0.1.7

OUI version       : 11.2.0.3.0

Log file location : /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch2014-03-27_13-57-18PM.log

Applying interim patch '18483015' to OH '/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1'

Verifying environment and performing prerequisite checks...

Do you want to proceed? [y|n]

y

User Responded with: Y

All checks passed.

Please shutdown Oracle instances running out of this ORACLE_HOME on the local system.

(Oracle Home = '/u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1')

Is the local system ready for patching? [y|n]

y

User Responded with: Y

Backing up files...

Patching component oracle.rdbms, 11.2.0.3.0...

Patch 18483015 successfully applied

Log file location: /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/db_1/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch2014-03-27_03-32-52AM.log

OPatch succeeded.

Reference: 

OTN Doc: Doc ID 556834.1