OPatch Failed with error code 73

Oracle OPatch  Error

Error:

Oracle Home       : <ORACLE_HOME> Path 

Central Inventory : The inventory that is being used by this opatch session

   from           : The inventory that is stored in the Oracle Home

OPatch version    : 12.2.0.1.44

OUI version       : 12.2.0.7.0

Log file location : /u01/oracle/product/19.3.0/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch<date>.log

OPatchSession cannot load inventory for the given Oracle Home <oracle_home>. Possible causes are:

   No read or write permission to ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage

   Central Inventory is locked by another OUI instance

   No read permission to Central Inventory

   The lock file exists in ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage

   The Oracle Home does not exist in Central Inventory

UtilSession failed: OPatch failed to locate Central Inventory.

Possible causes are:

    The Central Inventory is corrupted

    The oraInst.loc file specified is not valid.

This is because, sometime the /etc/oraInst.loc is pointing to the ora inventory in a temp location which the $ORACLE_HOME/oraInst.loc is not aware.

cat /etc/oraInst.loc

cat $ORACLE_HOME/oraInst.loc

check if both the files are pointing to the same location. if not, take a backup of the file and update the central inventory in $ORACLE_HOME/oraInst.loc.

cp -p $ORACLE_HOME/oraInst.loc $ORACLE_HOME/oraInst.loc.old

Modify the file accordingly for parameter inventory_loc=<Full PATH of the inventory, which can be copied from /etc/oraInst.loc>

Note: One more observation on the file permission, if you are running the grid with different usernames, the same group and sharing the same inventory, make sure, the files under /u01/oraInventory/ContentsXML have 644 permissions. So that while doing patching with Oracle users, it can modify those XML files.

Hope this helps resolve the error, happy patching!!

Best Wishes!!