When trying to patch OMS 12.1.0.5 in a VirtualBox environment with latest OMS PSU, I came across a strange problem which took quite a while to solve. The opatchauto apply and also -analyze commands failed every time with this error after several minutes of hanging:

opatchauto failed with error code 231

Manual connect to WLS console with relevant protocol/host/port/username/password was working fine. Then I realized that there was an issue with the entropy pool on the VirtualBox VM.

I followed this Note to resolve the isse:

E1: OS: Linux Servers Hang or Have Delays on Any JAVA Process Affecting Performance (Doc ID 1525645.1)

After implementing rngd, the patching worked successfully without any hangs.

During implementation of AWR Warehouse, I discovered that AWR warehouse is using temporary staging schemas in the AWR warehouse repository database. These schemas life approximately for the duration of a datapump import job and are then dropped again. Due to the fact that the used password is not compliant with customers password verification function, the jobs failed.

v_sql := ‘ CREATE USER ‘ || STAGING_SCHEMA || ‘ IDENTIFIED BY SYS_GUID ‘ ||
‘ DEFAULT TABLESPACE ‘ || tbsname;

The staging schemas are created with the password “SYS_GUID” in capital lettters. This looks to me like the developer tried to generate a random string as password but instead overlooked that the password is set to fixed string “SYS_GUID” instead.

Oracle support has noticed this issue and filed an enhancement request. It is a pity, that this is not filed as a bug, but an enhancement.

Well, I hope this improves in a future version together with dynamic retention and purging options as well as customizable staging directories.

Happy AWR´ing.