Fault-tolerant patching system

• US 20070006208A1
• Filed: 06/30/2005
• Published: 01/04/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 06/30/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Ganguly, Shamik, Saha, Debashis, Nguyen, PhiDien
• Granted Patent: US 7,908,600 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/168
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1433 during software upgrading
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1451 by selection of backup contents

Abstract

Techniques that promote a fault-tolerant patching system are described. According to one such technique, a patching operation is performed in two phases. During the first phase, before the updates specified in the patching operation are actually applied, an attempt is made to backup files, or portions thereof, which are going to be updated by the patching operation. If a failure is detected during the first phase, then the patching operation aborts without proceeding to the second phase. During the second phase, an attempt is made to perform the updates that the patching operation specifies. If a failure is detected during the second phase, then all of the updated files, or portions thereof, are restored; those files or file portions are replaced with their corresponding backed-up copies, which were made during the first phase. The foregoing technique is extensible to a system in which prospectively affected files are distributed among nodes.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of patching a computer program, comprising:

determining, automatically, which portions of the computer program are going to be updated by a patch;

in response to determining which portions of the computer program are going to be updated, automatically making a copy of one or more portions that are going to be updated;

after making the copy, attempting to apply the patch to the computer program;

determining, automatically, whether a failure occurred during the attempt to apply the patch to the computer program; and

in response to determining that a failure occurred during the attempt to apply the patch to the computer program, automatically restoring the computer program to a previous state by replacing one or more previously copied portions of the computer program with the copy.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the computer program accesses data, and further comprising:

determining, automatically, which portions of the data are going to be affected by the patch;

in response to determining which portions of the data are going to be affected, automatically making a copy of one or more portions of the data that are going to be affected; and

in response to determining that a failure occurred during the attempt to apply the patch to the computer program, automatically replacing, with the copy of the one or more portions of the data, one or more portions of the data that were affected by the patch.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein determining which portions of the computer program are going to be updated by the patch comprises reading metadata that indicates which portions of the computer program are going to be updated by the patch.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

generating the metadata automatically by automatically comparing the computer program to one or more files that incorporate modifications that will be made to the computer program when the patch is applied to the computer program.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein making the copy of the one or more portions that are going to be updated comprises making a copy of less than all of the computer program so that one or more other portions of the computer program are not copied.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein restoring the computer program to the previous state comprises restoring the computer program to the previous state without restoring any file that was not affected by the patch.

10. A computer-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 1.

11. A computer-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 2.

12. A computer-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 3.

13. A computer-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 4.

14. A computer-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 5.

15. A computer-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 6.

7. A computer-implemented method of preparing to patch a computer program, comprising:

determining, automatically, which portions of the computer program are going to be updated by a patch;

in response to determining which portions of the computer program are going to be updated, automatically attempting to make a copy of one or more portions that are going to be updated;

determining, automatically, whether a failure occurred during the attempt to make the copy of the one or more portions; and

in response to determining that a failure occurred during the attempt to make the copy of the one or more portions, aborting a patching operation before the patching operation modifies any of the one or more portions.

16. A computer-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 7.

8. A computer-implemented method of preparing to patch files, comprising:

instructing two or more nodes to make copies of two or more file portions that are going to be updated by a patch, wherein at least two of the two or more file portions reside on different nodes of the two or more nodes;

determining whether any of the two or more nodes was unable to make a copy of a file portion that resides on that node;

if any of the two or more nodes was unable to make a copy of a file portion that resides on that node, then instructing the two or more nodes to abort a patching operation before any of the two or more file portions has been updated by the patch; and

if none of the two or more nodes was unable to make a copy of a file portion that resides on that node, then instructing the two or more nodes to proceed with the patching operation.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

determining whether a failure occurred, during the patching operation, on any of the two or more nodes; and

in response to determining that a failure occurred, during the patching operation, on any of the two or more nodes, instructing the two or more nodes to reverse the patching operation by replacing, with corresponding copies of file portions that were made before the patching operation was performed, all file portions that were modified by the patching operation.

17. A computer-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 8.

18. A computer-readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more processors to perform the method recited in claim 9.