Upgrading Oracle Clusterware: [INS-40406] The installer detects no existing Oracle Grid Infrastructure software on the system

Upgrading Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11.2 (it’s just another marketing name for the Oracle Clusterware, formerly known as Cluster Ready Services CRS) usually is easy: The runInstaller offers an upgrade mode, and discovers nodes and versions without further effort.

But what, if not? The message will be “[INS-40406] The installer detects no existing Oracle Grid Infrastructure software on the system” and runInstaller just refuses to continue.

Finally I found out, that the culprit may be in the
“$ORACLE_BASE/../oraInventory/ContentxXML/inventory.xml” file. The Clusterware home may not be flagged as CRS there (CRS=”true” missing):

<HOME NAME="Ora11g_gridinfrahome2" LOC="/u01/app/11.2.0/grid"
                                 TYPE="O" IDX="6" CRS="true">
   <NODE_LIST>
      <NODE NAME="bs-klugdb1"/>
      <NODE NAME="bs-klugdb2"/>
   </NODE_LIST>

To repair it, the GI runInstaller has an UpdateNodeList parameter, so the command in this case looked like:

./runInstaller -updateNodeList
              ORACLE_HOME="/u01/app/11.2.0/grid" CRS=true

Well, that’s it. Easy if you know, and worth 3 hours of nighttime research, if not.

Have a good uptime
Martin