Hi Sam,
It's not just the kernel updates you need to be concerned with, but also
the shared libraries. The Oracle binaries and libraries are dynamically
linked to several system libraries. In Linux, for example, Oracle is
linked to glibc (which is updated relatively often) and several others. So
any time those libraries are updated, it's best to make sure that Oracle's
binaries and libraries have the correct entry points into the system
libraries they are dynamically linked with.
Rich
p.s. In Linux, you can take a look at the libraries dynamically linked in
an executable using the "ldd" command. See man pages for usage, warnings,
etc.
On Fri, Oct 22, 2021 at 1:53 PM Tharmarajah, Sam <
sambavan.tharmarajah@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi All,
We are interested to know, what does the oracle community do when it comes
to databases and os patching, especially when there is no kernel patch? The
reason is that when there is no kernel patch, most of the times, our
database servers doesn’t get restarted. That would leave the databases up
and running, without a restart. When reading metalink document, Doc ID
1467060.1 “Relinking Oracle HOME FAQ” , oracle recommends manually
relinking the OH, after OS patching. Even though most of the times these OS
patches had not caused any issue, there are occasions, where some databases
have had performance degradations on these scenarios. Those times, just a
restart addressed the problems.
To me, at least a restart of the databases after the OS patching will help
to reinitialize the process with the new or updated libraries that are
dynamically linked. Though I would prefer to relink and restart. But the
systems folks think it could be an over kill, as most of the OS patches are
quiet stable.
What are your thoughts and justifications on doing the things the way you
do?
Thanks in advance to all your responses.
Thanx,
Sam
