Recreating the Central Inventory for Oracle DB Home

Today, when i was about to upgrade the 10.2.0.1 database to 10.2.0.4, i found no home registered in the inventory as told by the OUI.

The OS was formated with root, boot and swap partitions and leaving the oracle software partition unchanged. This removed the central inventory in Linux BOX.

I searched thro the $ORACLE_HOME/Opatch/opatch lsinventory
we got the error message as
[oracle@cvsserver OPatch]$ ./opatch lsinventory
Invoking OPatch 10.2.0.1.0
Oracle interim Patch Installer version 10.2.0.1.0Copyright (c) 2005, Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved..
Oracle Home : /oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1
Central Inventory : /home/oracle/oraInventory from : /oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/oraInst.loc
OPatch version : 10.2.0.1.0OUI version : 10.2.0.1.0
OUI location : /oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/oui
Log file location : /oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch-2009_Jul_08_13-06-10-IST_Wed.log
LsInventory Session failed:
OPatch failed to locate Central Inventory.
Possible causes are: The Central Inventory is corrupted
The oraInst.loc file specified is not valid.
OPatch failed with error code 72

We recreated the Central Inventory using
$ORACLE_HOME/oui/bin/runInstaller

[oracle@cvsserver bin]$ ./runInstaller -silent -attachHome -invPtrLoc /etc/orainst.loc ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_HOME ORACLE_HOME_NAME=OraDBHome_1
Starting Oracle Universal Installer...
No pre-requisite checks found in oraparam.ini, no system pre-requisite checks will be executed.
Please execute the '/home/oracle/oraInventory/orainstRoot.sh' script at the end of the session.
'AttachHome' was successful.

When I search again the opatch lsinventory, i got
[oracle@cvsserver OPatch]$ ./opatch lsinventory
Invoking OPatch 10.2.0.1.0
Oracle interim Patch Installer version 10.2.0.1.0
Copyright (c) 2005, Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved..
Oracle Home : /oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1
Central Inventory : /home/oracle/oraInventory from : /oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/oraInst.loc
OPatch version : 10.2.0.1.0
OUI version : 10.2.0.1.0
OUI location : /oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/oui
Log file location : /oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/cfgtoollogs/opatch/opatch-2009_J ul_08_13-46-03-IST_Wed.log
Lsinventory Output file location : /oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1/cfgtoollogs/opatc h/lsinv/lsinventory-2009_Jul_08_13-46-03-IST_Wed.txt
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Installed Top-level Products (1):
Oracle Database 10g
10.2.0.1.0
There are 1 products installed in this Oracle Home.
There are no Interim patches installed in this Oracle Home.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OPatch succeeded.

Cheers!!!