After the installation of the ODA bundle patch 2.4.0.0.0, the /boot filesystem on the ODA nodes was filled up to 84% (16 MB of 99 MB was free) and so Oracle Enterprise Manager started sending warnings about the default 80% warning threshold being overridden for the /boot filesystem.
Although the /boot filesystem is, while not patching or so, not growing. I could have just increased the threshold for the /boot filesystem. But what worried me more, was that with the next ODA bundle patch there would be a big chance of the /boot filesystem becomming completely filled up, because of a new kernel version that probably gets installed. And I don’t like the idea of yet another ODA patch failing because of this and hoping that Oracle has good error handling built-in that makes sure everything still works after the failed kernel update installation!
Although the installation of the ODA bundle patch 2.4.0.0.0 on all our ODA’s went completely fine this time, I wouldn’t put my money on it!
Anyway I had opened a Service Request asking what I could safely cleanup from this /boot filesystem without getting problems with booting my ODA nodes and with future ODA bundle patches that expect certain files to be there. Oracle Support got development involved and they came up with the following answer:
- Development will add a cleanup procedure in the future ODA bundle patches
- (Re)move all /boot/*.dup_orig
- Move all /boot/*2.6.18* files to a backup directory
What I’ve done (on each ODA node), as user root:
Only move this files if you ODA 2.4.0.0.0 running!!!!
mkdir -p /root/backup/boot mv /boot/*.dup_orig /root/backup/boot mv /boot/*2.6.18* /root/backup/boot
I’ve rebooted the ODA node to make sure we don’t have a problem the next time the ODA nodes gets rebooted (during the next bundle patch installation)!
I’m not sure if people having ODA’s that have been delivered more recently have the same problem because they probably didn’t have to upgrade from ODA version 2.1.0.0.0 and so don’t have that much different kernel updates in the /boot filesystem.
If you do have the same “problem” you could also wait for the next ODA bundle patch, but
make sure that the cleanup procedure (that development has promised) is really implemented!