orabasetab is wrong if you install as grid

Traditionally when you install the Oracle Grid Infrastructure for RAC, the owner of the GI software is a user named grid and the owner of the database software is a user named oracle.

With the 19c version of the GI, the software is shipped as a zip file that you extract. Unfortunately, there is a bug (if you are doing a traditional install) in this extract where the orabasetab file (located here if you are using a traditional OFA compliant install:   /u01/app/19.0.0.0/grid/install/orabasetab) has the following contents:

#orabasetab file is used to track Oracle Home associated with Oracle Base
/u01/app/19.0.0/grid:/u01/app/oracle:OraGI19Home1:N:

Which is fine if you are going to use only the oracle user as the owner of both the GI software and the database software, but if you want to install the GI software as the grid user and the database software as the oracle user then you’ll need to modify the file as so:

#orabasetab file is used to track Oracle Home associated with Oracle Base
# 2019-09-29 Rich Soule updated the original value below to the new value
# so the GI could be installed as the grid user
#/u01/app/19.0.0/grid:/u01/app/oracle:OraGI19Home1:N:
/u01/app/19.0.0/grid:/u01/app/grid:OraGI19Home1:N:

If you don’t do this then there is a real good chance you’ll see the following when you attempt your GI install: Error 49802 initializing ADR

Good luck with your RAC installs…

Rich