By default, Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk display only the most critical checks in the report output.

The critical checks are those which Oracle judges to have the most severe potential impact.

All other checks are still run and available in the report. You can view them by selecting appropriate option under the control Show checks with the following status.

./orachk -profile oratier1
./exachk -profile exatier1

Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk now include full REST support allowing invocation and query over HTTPS.

To facilitate REST support, Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) is included within the install.

./exachk -d start -ords

https://host:7080/ords/tfaml/orachk/start_client

https://host:7080/ords/tfaml/orachk/profile/profile1,profile2

https://host:7080/ords/tfaml/orachk/check/check_id,check_id

Any request returns a job ID that you can use to query the status or to download the result.

https://host:7080/ords/tfaml/orachk/status/job_id

https://host:7080/ords/tfaml/orachk/download/job_id

If you do not wish to use passwordless SSH to connect to remote nodes, Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk can auto-generate the private key files for the remote nodes.

Alternatively, you can provide the private key file yourself.

Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk now support Python 3.6.

Python 3.6 provides better security and performance over the older python versions.

Oracle EXAchk now provides support for Oracle Autonomous Database.

This release includes new health checks for both Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk including a number of Oracle Exadata critical issues.

• Oracle ORAchk Health Check Catalog

• Oracle EXAchk Health Check Catalog

The Health Check Catalog is also contained within the download.

This release includes Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk command-line options to encrypt and decrypt diagnostic collection zip files.

You can run these command only on Linux and Solaris platforms.

Oracle EXAchk now provides beta support for checks covering Oracle Private Cloud Appliance.

You can view the new checks listed in the EXAchk Health Check Catalog under Engineered systems of Private Cloud Appliance and Private Cloud Appliance Plane.

Installing Oracle Trace File Analyzer as root on Linux or Solaris on non-engineered systems automatically sets up and runs the Oracle ORAchk daemon.

The daemon restarts at 1 am every day to discover any environment changes. The daemon runs a full local Oracle ORAchk check at 2 am every day, and a partial run of the most impactful checks every 6 hours through the oratier1 profile.

The daemon automatically purges any collections older than 2 weeks.

You can change the daemon settings after enabling auto start. To remove auto start any time, run tfactl run orachk -autostop.

Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk can now be run against specific individual PDBs.

To run against specific PDBs, use:

-pdbnames {pdb_name1,pdb_name2}

User-defined checks can now have custom check names, pass and fail messages, all declared dynamically at run time.

Set the dynamic values, for example,

---CHECK STARTS---
{existing_check_code}

echo "CUSTOM_CHECK_NAME={customized_check_name}" >> CUSTOMIZE_CHECK_PARAMS
echo "CUSTOM_PASS_MSG={customized_pass_message}" >> CUSTOMIZE_CHECK_PARAMS
echo "CUSTOM_FAIL_MSG={customized_fail_message}" >> CUSTOMIZE_CHECK_PARAMS
---CHECK ENDS---

Additionally, user-defined checks that are on hold will no longer be exported by default. You can still choose to export on hold checks by selecting the relevant check boxes.

The summary section of report output now displays the role of each Oracle Database (Primary or Standby)

In the DB Home - Version - Names section, click the number of databases to expand details and view the role of each Oracle Database.

Starting with 18.3.0 release, the Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk checks for EBS feature has been deprecated.

This means running health checks against EBS feature is no longer enhanced, but it is still supported until the Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk 19.3.0 release (approximately one year).

In the Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk 19.3.0 release, the EBS checks feature will be desupported, meaning Oracle will no longer fix bugs in Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk related to EBS checks, and the EBS checking feature will be removed altogether.

Run all EBS health checks using the EBS Analyzers, which is available at My Oracle Support Note 1545562.1.

This release includes new health checks for both Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk including a number of Oracle Exadata critical issues.

• Oracle ORAchk Health Check Catalog

• Oracle EXAchk Health Check Catalog

The Health Check Catalog is also contained within the download.

Installing Oracle Trace File Analyzer on Oracle Exadata automatically sets up and runs the Oracle EXAchk daemon on the user domain (DomU).

The daemon restarts at 1 am every day to discover any environment changes. The daemon runs a full local Oracle EXAchk check at 2 am every day, and a partial run of the most impactful checks every 6 hours through the exatier1 profile.

The daemon automatically purges any collections older than 2 weeks.

If you install Oracle EXAchk in stand-alone mode, then run exachk -autostart to enable auto start for quick setup on Oracle Exadata user domain.

You can change the daemon settings after enabling auto start. To remove auto start any time, run exachk -autostop or tfactl run exachk -autostop.

This release adds Oracle EXAchk support for the latest Oracle Exadata release 19.1.0.

Starting in this release, Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk will provide only the checks that are less than a year old.

Health Check information is constantly changing over time. What is applicable today, may not be applicable several months later. This is the reason Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk have always had a quarterly release cycle.

The older Health checks are the more risk of them containing out of date information. So from this release onwards Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk will provide only the checks that are less than a year old.

If Oracle ORAchk or Oracle EXAchk is more than six months old, then the tool (as per previous releases) presents a warning message advising you to upgrade and offers you the ability to download a new version. If Oracle ORAchk or Oracle EXAchk is more than a year old, then the tool will not run any checks.

Starting in this release, Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk cache the discovery data.

Internal testing on Oracle Exadata systems has shown caching of discovery data improved runtime performance by cutting the execution time of critical checks in half.

The following command options are included in this release:

• -discovery: Cache discovery data.
• -checkdiscovery: Optionally verify discovery.
• -usediscovery: Use discovery data.
• -refreshdiscovery: Refresh discovery data.
• -rmdiscovery: Remove discovery data.

Starting in this release, Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk has the ability to patch between the releases. The patching allows for updates to both health checks and code.

When the patches are ready to deploy, they will be made available through the regular patching mechanisms on https://support.oracle.com and https://updates.oracle.com.

The following command options are included in this release:

• -applypatch exachk_{bug_num}.zip | orachk_{bug_num}.zip: Apply a new patch.
• -querypatch all: Find all patches installed.
• -querypatch {bug_num}: Find if a specific patch is installed.
• -rollbackpatch {bug_num}: Rollback a specific patch.

Health Checks are skipped sometimes because the check takes longer to run than the default timeout value.

This release adds check specific timeout values.

When checks are written by Oracle a check specific timeout value is applied. This timeout value is based on our understanding of how long we expect that check to take to run.

If you find certain checks are still timing out, then you can override the individual check timeout value using: export RAT_TIMEOUT={value_in_seconds}

This release includes new health checks for both Oracle ORAchk and Oracle EXAchk including a number of Oracle Exadata critical issues.

• Oracle ORAchk Health Check Catalog

• Oracle EXAchk Health Check Catalog

The Health Check Catalog is also contained within the download.

Oracle Trace File Analyzer includes new One Command SRDCs (Service Request Data Collections).

New Service Request Data Collections (SRDC) make it fast and easy to collect exactly the right diagnostic data when you need help from Oracle Support.

Oracle Trace File Analyzer now includes REST support allowing invocation and query over HTTPS.

To facilitate REST support Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) is included within the install.

To enable REST, start ORDS: tfactl rest -start.

REST supports printing details, starting a diagcollect, and downloading collections.

Oracle Trace File Analyzer now integrates with Oracle Cluster Health Advisor and consumes the problem events that Oracle Cluster Health Advisor detects.

When Oracle Cluster Health Advisor detects a problem event, Oracle Trace File Analyzer automatically triggers relevant diagnostic collection and sends an email notification.

Email notification is configured through the standard Oracle Trace File Analyzer notification process.

This release includes new SRDCs.

As with all other SRDCs, use tfactl diagcollect -srdc srdc_name.

All metadata stored in the Oracle Trace File Analyzer index is now searchable using tfactl search -showdatatypes|-json [json_details].

tfactl search -json 
'{
  "data_type":"event",
  "content":"oracle",
  "database":"rac11g",
  "from":"01/20/2017 00:00:00",
  "to":"12/20/2018 00:00:00"
 }'

To list all index events: tfactl search -json '{"data_type":"event"}'

To list all available datatypes: tfactl search -showdatatypes

Oracle Trace File Analyzer will now automatically run the relevant SRDC when it detects the following events:

• ORA-00600

• ORA-04030

• ORA-04031

• ORA-07445

This means the diagnostic collections captured will be automatically targeted specifically to the event that occurred.

When other critical events are detected, Oracle Trace File Analyzer performs a default diagnostic collection.

Over future releases the automatic collection of specific SRDCs will be extended to cover other events.

The REST service API includes new run commands.

You can access the new run commands as follows:

https://host:port/ords/tfactl/run/alertsummary
https://host:port/ords/tfactl/run/calog
https://host:port/ords/tfactl/run/changes
https://host:port/ords/tfactl/run/events
https://host:port/ords/tfactl/run/history

There is also a new upgrade feature for the existing ORDS REST implementations.

tfactl rest -upgrade

Running the commands tfactl rest -upgrade stops ORDS, upgrades it to support the latest API updates, and then restarts it again.

The Oracle Trace File Analyzer install includes a Web Application Resource (WAR) file to enable the REST service via Apache Tomcat.

1. Deploy the WAR file located at TFA_HOME/jlib/tfa.war to your Tomcat server.
2. Change the tfaadmin user password.

   curl -k --user tfaadmin:tfaadmin -X POST "https://host/tfa/tfactl/user/update" '{ "password" : "some_new_password" }'

3. Change the tfarest user password.

   curl -k --user tfarest:tfarest -X POST "https://host/tfa/tfactl/user/update" '{ "password" : "some_new_password" }'

4. Add the Tomcat user to the Oracle Trace File Analyzer access list.

   tfactl access add -user tomcat_user

This release includes new SRDCs.

• dbimpdpperf for Data Pump import performance problems.

• dbsqlperf for SQL performance problems.

• dbtde for Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) problems.

• emagentperf for Enterprise Manager Agent performance problems.

• emomscrash for Enterprise Manager crash problems.

• emomsheap for Enterprise Manager java heap usage, or performance problems.

• emomshungcpu for Enterprise Manager OMS crash, restart, or performance problems.

As with all other SRDCs use tfactl diagcollect -srdc srdc_name.

Installing Oracle Trace File Analyzer as root on Linux or Solaris on non-engineered systems automatically sets up and runs the Oracle ORAchk daemon.

The daemon restarts at 1 am every day to discover any environment changes. The daemon runs a full local Oracle ORAchk check at 2 am every day, and a partial run of the most impactful checks every 6 hours through the oratier1 profile.

The daemon automatically purges any collections older than 2 weeks.

You can change the daemon settings after enabling auto start. To remove auto start any time, run tfactl run orachk -autostop.

This release includes new SRDCs.

As with all other SRDCs use tfactl diagcollect -srdc srdc_name.

• dbdatapatch for Datapatch issues
• dbspatialinstall for Oracle Spatial Installation issues
• dbrmanperf updated to include diagnostic data collection for RMAN Backup, RMAN Maintenance, RMAN Restore and Recover, RMAN-08137 or RMAN-08120, and RMAN Performance issues
• dbtextupgrade for Oracle Text version 12.1.0.1 and later upgrade issues
• ORA-04023 for ORA-04023 issues
• ORA-04063 for ORA-04063 issues
• dbspatialexportimport for Oracle Spatial Export/Import issues
• dbstandalonedbca for Database Configuration Assistant issues

If Oracle Trace File Analyzer detects a significant event, then it waits five minutes to check any other events, which occur as a result, and collects all of these.

If there are multiple SRDC related events, which occur on the same database within that five minute period, then Oracle Trace File Analyzer performs one merged SRDC collection for all of them.

For example, if an ORA-00600 event occurs and 30 seconds later an ORA-04031 event occurs, then Oracle Trace File Analyzer performs one SRDC that collects everything necessary to resolve both the errors.

Merging of SRDCs applies to the following:

• ORA-00600
• ORA-07445
• ORA-04030
• ORA-04031

Over future releases the automatic collection of specific SRDCs will be extended to cover other events.

SRDCs have prompts for problem details, which are specific to the SRDC type.

SRDCs can now be run in silent mode by providing answers to prompts using the command-line. This will be very useful in scenarios where a tool automatically triggers Oracle Trace File Analyzer collection.

tfactl diagcollection -srdc {srdc_type} -help