Recently I faced an issue in my new environment where ORACLE_BASE was pointing to wrong location in a particular environment.

To correct this we have two options:

1. Either change the environment variable ORACLE_BASE on server  to the new location.
    export ORACLE_BASE=/newlocation

2. We can also change the ORACLE_BASE variable using the ‘orabase’ utility. It can be done in 11g and above version. 

Steps to change using orabase

a) Check the current value of the ORACLE_BASE using below command:

$ORACLE_HOME/bin/orabase

/oracle/apps


The value can be verified from  oraclehomeproperties.xml file. File is located at $ORACLE_HOME/inventory/ContentsXML/

oracle@test :/oracle/app/TEST/product/11.2.0.3/inventory/ContentsXML]
$ cat oraclehomeproperties.xml
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>
<!-- Copyright (c) 1999, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates.
All rights reserved. -->
<!-- Do not modify the contents of this file by hand. -->
<ORACLEHOME_INFO>
   <GUID>252246286.7539233482</GUID>
   <HOME/>
   <ARU_PLATFORM_INFO>
      <ARU_ID>123</ARU_ID>
      <ARU_ID_DESCRIPTION>Linux</ARU_ID_DESCRIPTION>
   </ARU_PLATFORM_INFO>
   <PROPERTY_LIST>
      <PROPERTY NAME="ARCHITECTURE" VAL="64"/>
      <PROPERTY NAME="ORACLE_BASE" VAL="/oracle/apps"/>
   </PROPERTY_LIST>
</ORACLEHOME_INFO>

b) Backup the oraclehomeproperties.xml

oracle@test :/oracle/app/TEST/product/11.2.0.3/inventory/ContentsXML]
$ cp -ip oraclehomeproperties.xml oraclehomeproperties.xml_him

c) Change ORACLE_BASE to new location using orabase utility

oracle@test :/oracle/app/TEST/product/11.2.0.3/inventory/ContentsXML]
$ $ORACLE_HOME/bin/orabase -s /u01/TEST

Once the command is executed successfully oraclehomeproperties.xml value is updated.

We can verify the new value in oraclehomeproperties.xml file as well.

oracle@test :/oracle/app/TEST/product/11.2.0.3/inventory/ContentsXML]

$  cat oraclehomeproperties.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- Copyright (c) 1999, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates.
All rights reserved. -->
<!-- Do not modify the contents of this file by hand. -->
<ORACLEHOME_INFO>
    <GUID>252246286.7539233482</GUID>
    <HOME/>
    <ARU_PLATFORM_INFO>
        <ARU_ID>123</ARU_ID>
        <ARU_ID_DESCRIPTION>Linux</ARU_ID_DESCRIPTION>
    </ARU_PLATFORM_INFO>
    <PROPERTY_LIST>
        <PROPERTY NAME="ARCHITECTURE" VAL="64"/>
        <PROPERTY NAME="ORACLE_BASE" VAL="/u01/TEST"/>
    </PROPERTY_LIST>
</ORACLEHOME_INFO>

 This is only applicable for 11g version. For version 12.1 and later it will not work.

 For any incorrect path of Oracle Base , Please also check below file:

 /oracle/app/product/12.1.0.2/install/orabasetab