Hello Readers,

Few days ago, I was installing OEM agent version 13.3.0.0.0 on my DEV box with OS AIX version 7.2. I was using silent method using agentDeploy.sh.

Previously I had installed it successfully on multiple machines without any issues but this one failed with below error:

java.io.IOException: OUI-10039:Unable to access the inventory /u01/app/oraInventory on this system. Please ensure you have the proper permissions to read/write/search the inventory.

I tried to see if there are any permissions issue on folder /u01/app/oraInventory, I found mentioned directory was not present. So this error is expected one. But why Oracle is searching inventory at incorrect location???

When I dug into associated log file, I found more details about these errors.

2019-10-07 12:20:48,465 WARNING [34] oracle.sysman.oii.oiip.oiipg.OiipgPropertyLoader - The inventory pointer location /var/opt/oracle/oraInst.loc is either not readable or does not exist
2019-10-07 12:20:48,475 INFO [34] oracle.sysman.nextgen.utils.NextGenInventoryUtil - Setting default inventory location to: '/u01/app/oraInventory'
2019-10-07 12:20:48,475 WARNING [34] oracle.sysman.oii.oiip.oiipg.OiipgPropertyLoader - The inventory pointer location /var/opt/oracle/oraInst.loc is either not readable or does not exist
2019-10-07 12:20:48,475 WARNING [34] oracle.sysman.oii.oiip.oiipg.OiipgPropertyLoader - The inventory pointer location /var/opt/oracle/oraInst.loc is either not readable or does not exist
2019-10-07 12:20:48,477 SEVERE [34] oracle.sysman.oii.oiii.OiiiInstallAreaControl - OUI-10039:Unable to access the inventory /u01/app/oraInventory on this system. Please ensure you have the proper permissions to read/write/search the inventory.
2019-10-07 12:20:48,477 SEVERE [34] oracle.sysman.nextgen.impl.NextGenInstallerImpl - java.io.IOException: OUI-10039:Unable to access the inventory /u01/app/oraInventory on this system. Please ensure you have the proper permissions to read/write/search the inventory.

So basically, Oracle tries to check oraInst.loc under folder /var/opt/oracle & if it doesn’t find any, then it sets default inventory location to ‘/u01/app/oraInventory’.

I feel, This is somewhat agent software BUG, as loaction of oraInst.loc in AIX is ‘/etc’ not ‘/var/opt/oracle’.

Now there are two questions. First one, how to resolve this & second one, why my other installations went successful.

Reason behind other installation to be successful was Oracle indeed find oraInventory at its default location. So whenever oraInventory is located at ‘/u01/app/oraInventory’, you wont face this issue.

Now how to resolve this. You can always create softlink oraInst.loc to “/var/opt/oracle”.

Steps are given below:

Login using root:
1. mkdir -p /var/opt/oracle/
2. cd /var/opt/oracle/
3. ln -s /etc/oraInst.loc oraInst.loc
4. ls -lrt oraInst.loc

Once you perform above steps, you will be install OEM agent successfully.

Hope u will find this post very useful. 🙂

Cheers

Regards,
Adityanath