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Use Silent Mode!

By Eric Gross | July 14, 2007

I simply refuse to do my database provisioning using interactive methods. Just about every Oracle command has an option to have no interactive steps.

These are the only times I think it makes sense to use interactive processes:

  1. When Oracle support tells you to.
  2. When you are learning how to do something.

Excluding those cases, do yourself a favor - be repeatable. Script everything, and never do it outside of your scripts. Version control your scripts so as they change, you can update all your systems to the proper version before running the scripts.

Installation Steps (OUI)
Contained in the media under “/response” are a few example response files that you can use as a starting place. It’s pretty easy to replace the values you desire in there for the predefined values and call “runInstaller” with the response file to install the home manually. The first time you perform an installation without clicking fifty times is a rush. See for yourself. This procedure is exactly the same for minor version upgrades where only the last number in the version changes in that you call “runInstaller” with a response file, you just need to use the “runInstaller” in the upgrade media rather than the base installation media.

Patching (OPatch)
OPatch supports a silent mode where no inputs are accepted interactively. You loose nothing by scripting out patches and you gain a world of repeatability. There are no response files here, all arguments are passed on the command line to OPatch.

Database Management (DBCA)
The DBCA can be called silently to perform most of the actions that are available interactively (including create database, remove database, add instance, remove instance, and managing ASM diskgroups). The action with the most inputs is the create database activity; this is the only action that accepts arguments via file rather then via the command arguments passed. The file passed into the DBCA is either a DBT file for standard creates or a DBC file for creates from a seed template.

Network Configuration (VIPCA, NetCA)
The NetCA has been around for a long time, and it hasn’t changed much. This command accepts arguments to perform activities silently but the functionality available silently is limited compared to the other tools. Another thing to note is that the arguments to this tool are prefaced by a “/” rather than “-”, as usual. The VIPCA also has a silent mode, but I do not use this tool at all because srvctl performs the same function except that it works for RFC 1918 addresses unlike the VIPCA.

Cluster Management (srvctl, crs_stat, etc.)
These tools only operate in silent mode and have no interactive mode (except for VIPCA which could be considered a CRS tool as well as a network configuration tool).

Topics: DBCA, NetCA, OPatch, OUI, Provisioning, Repeatability, VIPCA

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