R12.2 Upgrade Miscellaneous Stuffs

Autopatch Preinstall Mode:

Pre-install mode is generally used during the upgrade process to update AD utilities, apply pre-upgrade patches, or work around other patching issues. AutoPatch asks all startup questions except those relating to the database.

Note: Run AutoPatch in pre-install mode only if the patch readme instructs you to do so.
To run AutoPatch in pre-install mode, include preinstall=y on the AutoPatch command line. It performs the following actions:

• Compares version numbers
• Copies files
• Relinks FND and AD executables
• Saves patch information to the file system

Because AutoPatch does not read driver files in pre-install mode, it copies all product files in the patch to the APPL_TOP directory. Additionally, even if a file in the patch should be both in the APPL_TOP and in another directory (such as in $OA_HTML), AutoPatch copies the file only to the APPL_TOP.

Each patch run in pre-install mode will have its driver staged to a predetermined directory under the APPL_TOP. This allows AD Merge Patch to be run once for all pre-install updates, and merging with the upgrade driver only. See AD Merge Patch Enhancements for further details.

In preinstall mode, AutoPatch validates codelevels against the files Preinstall_Codelevel_AD.txt and Preinstall_Codelevel_MP.txt. These files are located in the $APPL_TOP/admin directory, and contain codelevel information about AD and other products registered in the database tables.

Since no database connection is available in pre-install mode, AutoPatch tries to validate whether the current patch should be applied based on the codelevel information in these two files, as follows:

• If Preinstall_Codelevel_AD.txt is missing from the APPL_TOP, AutoPatch will apply the patch in pre-install mode without validating the patch for codelevel compatibility.

• If Preinstall_Codelevel_MP.txt is missing from the APPL_TOP, AutoPatch will proceed with patch application without validating the patch for codelevel compatibility of the entities.

• If both files are missing, AutoPatch will not validate codelevels in pre-install mode.

AD Merge Patch Enhancements:

-preinstall

This option is used to run AD Merge Patch in pre-install mode, where it will only merge the patch driver files present in the $APPL_TOP/admin/$TWO_TASK/preinstall directory. The -preinstall option implicitly enables the -driveronly option, and takes the source directory as $APPL_TOP/admin/$TWO_TASK/preinstall directory.

The -s option can be used in conjunction with the -preinstall option to specify the source directory and merge critical driver files. As pre-install upgrade driver files are copied to the pre-install directory when AutoPatch is used in pre-install mode, the combination of these options merges pre-install upgrade driver files with the master upgrade driver file.

The -preinstall option means that there are associated changes in how AutoPatch is used. These are described in Pre-Install Mode.

--master
This option is used to specify the master upgrade driver that is to be merged with the pre-install upgrade drivers. It is only valid with the -preinstall or -driveronly options.

-admode
AD Merge Patch is now restricted to merge either AD-only patches or non-AD patches. By default, AD Merge Patch will run in non-AD mode unless the –admode option is specified. In non-AD mode, AD Merge Patch will merge the non-AD patches present in either the source directory specified by the -s option, or the pre-install directory if -preinstall is specified.

Note: When merging patches, AD patches present in the source directory are ignored in non-AD mode.

Examples

Merging the non-AD patch driver files that are present under the patchtop:
admrgpch -s source -d dest -driveronly

Merging the non-AD patch driver files with the non-AD upgrade driver file found under upg:
admrgpch -s source -d dest -driveronly –master upg/upgrade.drv

Merging non-AD patch driver files present in the "preinstall" directory with non-AD upgrade driver files, in pre-install mode:
admrgpch -preinstall -d dest -master upg/upgrade.drv

Merging AD patch driver files with AD upgrade driver files in pre-install mode:
admrgpch -preinstall -d dest -master upgrade/upgrade.drv –admode