Tuesday, August 27, 2019

DBUA Does not Find parameter file to Start Database for Upgrade


While upgrading my database form using database upgrade assistant (DBUA), it showed me error that said following

The Upgrade Assistant failed in bringing up the database <db_name>. Oracle Home <ORACLE_HOME> obtained from file /etc/oratab was used to connect to the database. Either database is not running from Oracle Home <ORACLE_HOME> or correct initialization Parameter file (pfile) was not found.
To start the database, Oracle needs the pfile. Provide the full path name of the init file for the database <db_name>
Screenshot of DBUA can be seen bellow





























Although I provided the pfile path manually but still I was facing same issue and DBUA was not moving forward.

After googling, most of the people were advising to close DBUA, then delete all logs under $ORACLE_BASE/cfgtoollogs/dbua/log folder and then initiate DBUA again and problem should be resolved. This workaround did not work for me; you can try if it works for you.

Note that prerequisite of upgrading the database is that the database should be started from old ORACLE_HOME. I made sure that I set my ORACLE_HOME environment correctly and started database once again and tried executing DBA, but it still did not work for me.

On this single node environment I was also using GI (Grid Infrastructure) to manage ASM. Although my database was registered with the OHS (Oracle high availability service), yet I was starting my database from SQLPLUS (not srvctl command). Then I stopped my database and used srvctl from old ORACLE_HOME to start the database as follows.
/u01/app/oracle/product/11203/db1/bin/srvctl start database –d <db_name>

 Once I did that and invoked DBUA, DBUA was able to work smoothly without asking for the pfile.
Moral for the story is that you must always make sure that database has been started up from the old ORACLE_HOME before you should proceed to the upgrade. It is better to use “srvctl” (from old ORACLE_HOME) command to start the database if you are using Grid Infrastructure

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