Error During OEM Agent Install On RAC with XML-20108: (Fatal Error) Start of root element expected. Completed with Status=102

During install of an agent on RAC environment we hit following error.

ERROR: <Line 1, Column 1>: XML-20108: (Fatal Error) Start of root element expected.

Completed with Status=102

Looked at MOS but that didn’t gave up any clues and has to look around a bit. Eventually when trying to look at installed products on one of the nodes in cluster, I found that entire inventory.xml file is missing.

So that might the cause of problem here.

Though I was not sure whether the problem is due to missing file so decided to go step by step. First thing first, I need an inventory.xml.

Now the standard way is to create inventory is to run runInstaller executable with attachHome option. However, I decided to try another work around, much simpler than earlier one.  The reason being that, this is functional node and cannot do any changes to current configuration without change approval.  So I decided to copy the inventory.xml from another node to the current node(assuming that both have ideal ORACLE products installed as they are part of same cluster).

Following is the snippet of the XML file copied.

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>

<!-- Copyright (c) 1999, 2010, Oracle. All rights reserved. -->

<!-- Do not modify the contents of this file by hand. -->

<INVENTORY>

<COMPOSITEHOME_LIST>

</COMPOSITEHOME_LIST>

<VERSION_INFO>

   <SAVED_WITH>11.1.0.8.0</SAVED_WITH>

   <MINIMUM_VER>2.1.0.6.0</MINIMUM_VER>

</VERSION_INFO>

<HOME_LIST>

<HOME NAME="Ora11g_gridinfrahome1" LOC="/u01/app/11.2.0/grid" TYPE="O" IDX="1" CRS="true">

   <NODE_LIST>

      <NODE NAME="xxxxxxxxx01"/>

      <NODE NAME=" xxxxxxxxx02"/>

   </NODE_LIST>

</HOME>

<HOME NAME="OraDb11g_home1" LOC="/oracle/rdbms/11203" TYPE="O" IDX="2">

   <NODE_LIST>

      <NODE NAME=" xxxxxxxxx01"/>

      <NODE NAME=" xxxxxxxxx02"/>

   </NODE_LIST>

</HOME>

</HOME_LIST>

</INVENTORY>

Now with inventory.xml file in place when I tried installation, it worked.

Lesson learned –

Inventory.xml file is needed as any new product installed will add an entry in that file hence missing file may cause failures…