Oracle Audit Vault Database Firewall 12.1 Errors with network card on Oracle Virtual Machine

To get round a problem with Oracle Audit Vault Database Firewall appliance not finding the network interface after completing the initial configuration it is necessary to change the type of network of the NIC. The problem is seen when AVDF boots for the first time after the install, a screen is shown for selecting a management interface, even though this has been configured already, the NIC hardware address shows as 00:00:00:00:00:00 instead of the valid address. Dropping to a console and searching for the hardware device shows no Ethernet controller. If there are multiple NICs defined they will all be listed as 00:00:00:00:00:00.

For how to debug audit vault in the console look at http://notastrophe.blogspot.com/2013/06/oracle-audit-vault-database-firewall.html .
The command lspci | grep -i Ether xx shows no results, and ifconfig -a shows eth0 with HWADDR of 00:00:00:00:00:00

To get past this problem its necessary to use Fully Virtualized network configuration in OVM for the initial install. Then after the first reboot (just after the IP Config screen), shutdown the VM and change to Paravirtualized networking. Trying to do the install with Paravirtualized networking will fail because the install detects no interfaces. A Fully Virtualized configuration shows on OVM 2.0 as "ioemu" in the Network Interface column on the Network configuration page, Paravirtualized configuration shows as "netfront".

Managing Oracle Middleware ORACLE_HOME and opatch

On a test system with Oracle 11gR2 and Oracle OBIEE 11.1.1.6 running opatch gives the following error -

 OPatch version  : 11.1.0.9.0
OUI version : 11.2.0.2
The OUI version is not applicable for the current OPatch version

I have an ORACLE_HOME for the database at /u01/app/.... and an ORACLE_HOME for the middleware piece. The ORACLE_HOME for the middleware needs to be correctly set as /u01/MiddlewareLocation/oracle_common to corretly find the middleware home and not revert to the database home.

The Oracle inventory location is stored in /etc/oraInst.loc
The inventory.xml file at <inventory_loc from oraInst.loc>/ContentsXML/inventory.xml store all Oracle homes.

For Oracle Middleware OPatch download is available from support site patch 6880880 or 5912518 for standalone installs like JDeveloper and Web Logic Server 10.3.6 (Read support note 224346.1)

For running OPatch with WLS 10.3.6 unpack the 5912518 patch and copy the OPatch folder into the wls_server10.3 location.
Make sure $ORACLE_HOME is set to point to the wls_server10.3 folder and run
opatch apply -jdk /usr/local/jdk1.6 /path/to/wls_patch