How to Pre-Process SYS.AUD$ Records Pre-Upgrade From 10.1 or later to 11.2.0.1 or later to Avoid Hungs/Slow While Running catupgrd.sql ? (Doc ID 1329590.1)

Last updated on JUNE 13, 2023

Applies to:

Purpose

In systems with auditing actively running, upgrade performance can be adversely effected by the number of auditing records.

There have been traditionally two options available:
1: Let the upgrade process take the time it needs to process these records
    (depending on the number of records, this can take hours).
2: Truncate the Audit tables pre-upgrade.  This option results in a loss of historical security data.
     While NEVER a recommended action, this is some times necessary due to upgrade outage window. 
      Before consideration, customers need to review this with their security administrators, and is done at
      the customers own risk.

A new process and script have been developed to allow customers to pre-process the audit records.  This note provides the  process and script for customers to pre-process the audit records, reducing the amount of time needed for this step in the upgrade process.

Scope

This process is valid for pre-upgraded instances 10.1 and later (Both Standard and Enterprise Edition) to 11gR2 or later.

This script should be considered if the number of Audit records  are excessive  (over 250,000) in either:
sys.aud$             <system.aud$       <                                 Database Vault (DV) is installed
sys.fga_log$       <
This process is NOT VALID for 9.2 pre-upgraded  instances.
In 9.2 to pre-process you must place the instance in upgrade / restricted mode to prevent deadlocks which  negates the purpose of pre-processing.

This process is NOT VALID for issues with audit records during the actual upgrade process.

Details