Oracle Inventory collection error - unspecified edition

[thegedus]

Hello,

We have around 400 Oracle Database instances out of which only 60 can report its edition correctly. (FNMS 2021 R1 On-prem)

I implemented the report posted here: https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Knowledge-Base/Oracle-Inventory-Quality-Troubleshooting-Custom-Report/ta-p/185205 There are 3 unique errors:

Unable to gather Oracle database information, sqlplus or sqlnet.ora file may be missing for oracle home: /home/oracle/product/132Agent/agent_inst

A database instance was discovered but was not running at inventory time. Please check whether the instance should be running.

Unable to gather Oracle database information, sqlplus or sqlnet.ora file may be missing for oracle home: /home/oracle/product/19.6

I think the agent should be able to pick up oracle database paths from /etc/oratab, but it doesn't do it for every instance. Also, it is false that the database instance is offline, the DBAs showed me their online status. 132Agent is Cloud Control agent, so not a database, but the affected database servers have online instance(s) too, which should be inventoried.

Example:

servername[OracleInstance1]/home/oracle/admin/OracleInstance1> cat /etc/oratab
# OracleInstance1:/home/oracle/product/11.2.0.3:Y
OracleInstance1:/home/oracle/product/12.2.0.1:Y
OracleInstance2:/home/oracle/product/19.14:Y
OracleInstance3:/home/oracle/product/19:Y
OracleInstance4:/home/oracle/product/19:Y
OracleInstance5:/home/oracle/product/19:Y
OracleInstance6:/home/oracle/product/11.2.0.3:Y
1020:/home/oracle/product/10.2:N
1120:/home/oracle/product/11.2.0.3:N
1220:/home/oracle/product/12.2.0.1:N
19:/home/oracle/product/19:N
1914:/home/oracle/product/19.14:N
# servername_a12:/home/oracle/product/121Agent/agent_inst:N
servername_a:/home/oracle/product/132Agent/agent_inst:N

Flexera agent:
1220, 1914, 19, 1120, 1020: A database instance was discovered but was not running at inventory time. Please check whether the instance should be running.

What should we check so that Oracle DB is correctly inventoried by the agent? The agents are installed with root privileges.

Thanks,
thegedus

[ChrisG]

The primary place to start when investigating problems with the agent gathering Oracle Database inventory is in the tracker.log file generated when the inventory gathering ndtrack process runs on a computer. This log file shows lots of information about what details have been found about running Oracle database processes - the troubleshooting report you've referenced will point you in the general direction, but the log file will fill in more gaps.

If you're diving in to this area, treat the documentation on and under the following page as mandatory pre-reading: https://docs.flexera.com/fnms/EN/SystemRef/index.html#SysRef/OracleInventoryCollection/topic/intro_Agent.html

This documentation will help you understand how the process for discovering and inventorying Oracle Database instances works, and how to troubleshoot problems.

Here are some specific comments in relation to a couple of the points you've asked about:

• A message like "database instance was discovered but was not running at inventory time" suggests that a database instance was identified (probably from the oratab file), but no matching Oracle smon process was found to be running on the computer at the time inventory was gathered.
• The ORAHOME directory for a running instance is most commonly determined based on the directory in which the executable of the instance's smon process is found (not from the oratab file).

The tracker.log files on the computers that inventory has been gathered from will contain more detail related to both of these points.

[thegedus]

Thanks for the help.

I got a tracker.log from the admin team, however there is no further info regarding these databases. For example :

+-- "/home/oracle/product/19": Discovered by = Process,Oratab,Osdbagrp, Executable ID = 13041665:198827, DBA group = "dba", Home owner = "oracle", Has SQLPlus = true, SQLNet Authentication Services = "", Can Inventory = true, Real Home = ""
+-- Instance "19": Discovered by = Oratab, Process ID = 0, State = unknown, Process owner = "<N/A>"
WARNING: Did not detect instance "19" in "/home/oracle/product/19" to be in a running state.
Failed to inventory Oracle instance "19" in "/home/oracle/product/19" as the instance does not appear to be in a running state.

We don't have an instance called 19 - we have instances on version 19, however to me it looks like Flexera creates a DB instance with unspecified edition based on the first line in the above excerpt. It also creates instances based on oracle homes that aren't connected to Oracle DB but other products. I decided to open a case on this topic, as I don't think this is how the agent is intended to work.

Thank you,

thegedus

[durgeshsingh]

I have also reported the same case(Case Number: 02541555) & it with flexera engineering team.

I have opened this case on Jan 22 & still going on. 

[ChrisG]

---

@thegedus wrote:

[...] We don't have an instance called 19 - we have instances on version 19, [...]

This comment is inconsistent with the information noted earlier about what is in your oratab file. In particular, the following line from the oratab file identifies an instance named "19", which is what is getting picked up by the inventory gathering process:

19:/home/oracle/product/19:N

I'm thinking that the comment that you don't have an instance called 19 is likely correct, and the information in the oratab file is likely incorrect - in which case it would be appropriate to remove or change the line from the file that identifies an instance named "19".