Opatch or Opatchauto takes long time Due to High Number of Inactive Patches


“opatch lsinventory -inactive” shows many inactive patches.
Large number of inactive patches can slow down the opatch apply process.
Issue still reproduce after executing “opatch util deleteinactivepatches” in this case opatch.properties:retain was set to retain=2.
There is also known issue with certain oracle homes where there are more than 1 inactive PSU or RU, a user needs to run deleteinactivepatches multiple times.

SOLUTION

Execute deleteinactivepatches without setting opatch.properties to retain=2 (default is retain=1)

$ cat $ORACLE_HOME/dbhome_1/OPatch/config/opatch.properties

OPATCH_HEAP_MEMORY=3072
PS_OBFUSCATION=true
RETAIN_INACTIVE_PATCHES=1
SKIP_FUSER_WARNINGS=true

$ opatch util deleteinactivepatches -silent

Display inactive patches:

$ opatch lsinventory -inactive

Repeat previous steps until only 1 inactive patch (for each product) is left.