There are situations where it makes sense to run an “empty” patch cycle in E-Business Suite R12.2. For example, I will run an empty patch cycle after a major operation (R12.1.3 to R12.2 upgrade, platform migration, etc.) to confirm that I can, successfully run a patch cycle.

The other “trick” that I tend to use is a tail.txt file to indicate when a process has finished.  It is a simple ASCII text file that contains the following:

 ####### ### #     # ###  #####  #     # ####### ######  
 #        #  ##    #  #  #     # #     # #       #     # 
 #        #  # #   #  #  #       #     # #       #     # 
 #####    #  #  #  #  #   #####  ####### #####   #     # 
 #        #  #   # #  #        # #     # #       #     # 
 #        #  #    ##  #  #     # #     # #       #     # 
 #       ### #     # ###  #####  #     # ####### ######  

There are several ways to create it.  I used to use the Unix banner command (which isn’t generally present on Linux systems). Because of that, the easiest way now is to use an online ASCII art generator:

https://www.patorjk.com/software/taag/#p=display&f=Banner&t=FINISHED

By having tail -f ${DL}/tail.txt run at the end of a long command, it is pretty easy to notice when the process completes.  This is particularly useful when you may have the window in the background, be running from a different machine, or maybe you’re just glancing at the screen from across a room.

As an example, let’s say you wanted to run an “empty patch cycle” as described in MOS 2316218.1:

. /oracle/${TWO_TASK}/EBSapps.env run
date;{ echo ${APPSPW}; echo ${SYSTEMPW}; echo ${WLADMIN}; }|\
adop phase=prepare,finalize,cutover; date; tail -f ${DL}/tail.txt

. /oracle/${TWO_TASK}/EBSapps.env run
date;{ echo ${APPSPW}; echo ${SYSTEMPW}; echo ${WLADMIN}; }|\
adop phase=cleanup cleanup_mode=full;date;tail -f ${DL}/tail.txt

IMPORTANT: Simply printing the FINISHED text block does NOT indicate SUCCESSFUL completion.  Only that the command has finished.  As always, be sure check for errors.