Opatch LsInventorySession Failed: Inventory Load Failed

Today I have hit the following issue while executing the 'opatch lsinventory'  command in 11gR2  database.

-bash-3.2$ $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch lsinventory -invPtrLoc $ORACLE_HOME/oraInst.loc
Oracle Interim Patch Installer version 11.2.0.3.4                                    
Copyright (c) 2012, Oracle Corporation.  All rights reserved.                        


Oracle Home       : /u01/db_hyd/11.2.0.4
Central Inventory : /u01/db_hyd/oraInventory
   from           : /u01/db_hyd/11.2.0.4/oraInst.loc
OPatch version    : 11.2.0.3.4
OUI version       : 11.2.0.4.0
Log file location : /u01/db_hyd/11.2.0.4/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch2020-06-23_05-36-23AM_1.log

List of Homes on this system:

Inventory load failed... OPatch cannot load inventory for the given Oracle Home.
Possible causes are:
   Oracle Home dir. path does not exist in Central Inventory
   Oracle Home is a symbolic link
   Oracle Home inventory is corrupted
LsInventorySession failed: OracleHomeInventory gets null oracleHomeInfo

OPatch failed with error code 73
-bash-3.2$ 

Based on the error message "LsInventorySession failed: OracleHomeInventory gets null oracleHomeInfo", it seems to be ORACLE_HOME '<ORACLE_HOME>' is not registered in the Central Inventory i.e 'Central Inventory : /u01/db_hyd/oraInventory'. To fix this issue we can register or attach the database ORACLE_HOME information to the existing Central Inventory.

Execute following steps to fix this issue:

1) Backup the existing oraInventory (Central Inventory : /u01/db_hyd/oraInventory)

-bash-3.2$ cp -r oraInventory oraInventory.Orig
-bash-3.2$ 

2) Register or Attach the database ORACLE_HOME information to the existing Central Inventory using following command.

-bash-3.2$ cd $ORACLE_HOME/oui/bin                        
-bash-3.2$ ./attachHome.sh                                
Starting Oracle Universal Installer...                    

Checking swap space: must be greater than 500 MB.   Actual 32767 MB    Passed
The inventory pointer is located at /etc/oraInst.loc                         
The inventory is located at /u01/db_hyd/oraInventory                             
'AttachHome' was successful.    
-bash-3.2$ 

3) Now execute 'OPatch lsinventory' command to check the ORACLE_HOME details

-bash-3.2$ $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch lsinventory -detail 

Hope this article will help you :-)