Installing Using Gold Image Results in [FATAL] [INS-35952] or [FATAL] [INS-42505]

Creating a gold image is a good way to have a standardized starting point for an installation, either oracle home or grid infrastructure. The gold image creation process itself eliminate lot of unnecessary files from the final image and if needed some could be explicitly excluded (i.e. patch_storage). However, it is still possible that the image would contain some host specific files such as s_crsconfig_<host_name>_env.txt in oracle restart or password file in a oracle home.
It is possible to clean up these files before running a new installation from the gold image. However, this would result in error as shown below (on Oracle restart)

./gridSetup.sh -createGoldImage -destinationLocation /opt/installs -silent -exclFiles $ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage
Launching Oracle Grid Infrastructure Setup Wizard...

[FATAL] [INS-42505] The installer has detected that the Oracle Grid Infrastructure home software at (/opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/grid) is not complete.
   CAUSE: Following files are missing:
[/opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/grid/crs/install/s_crsconfig_sandpit-oracle-db_env.txt, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/grid/crs/utl/sandpit-oracle-db, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/grid/crs/utl/sandpit-oracle-db/crsconfig_dirs, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/grid/crs/utl/sandpit-oracle-db/crsconfig_fileperms, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/grid/evm/log/sandpit-oracle-db_evmProcessEventSource, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/grid/install/root_sandpit-oracle-db_2019-07-12_11-48-15-995329600.log, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/grid/opmn/conf/ons.config.bak.sandpit-oracle-db.oracle, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/grid/opmn/conf/ons.config.sandpit-oracle-db, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/grid/opmn/conf/ons.config.sandpit-oracle-db.bak, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/grid/opmn/logs/ons.log.sandpit-oracle-db, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/grid/opmn/logs/ons.out.sandpit-oracle-db]
   ACTION: Ensure that the Oracle Grid Infrastructure home at (/opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/grid) includes the files listed above.

In this case the installer is complaining missing files that were suffixed with the hostname on which the gold image was created.
Similarly following output shows the similar error occurring when running an installation using a oracle home gold image. In this case the dg config files and password files have been removed as they were not relevant to the current installation.

./runInstaller -createGoldImage -destinationLocation /opt/installs/dbhome -silent -exclFiles $ORACLE_HOME/.patch_storage
Launching Oracle Database Setup Wizard...

[FATAL] [INS-35952] The installer has detected that the Oracle Database home software at (/opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/dbhome_1) is not complete.
   CAUSE: Following files are missing:
[/opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/dbhome_1/dbs/dr1sandpitm.dat, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/dbhome_1/dbs/dr2sandpitm.dat, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/dbhome_1/dbs/hc_sandpitm.dat, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/dbhome_1/dbs/init.ora, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/dbhome_1/dbs/lkSANDPITM, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/dbhome_1/dbs/orapwsandpitm, /opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/dbhome_1/dbs/snapcf_sandpitm.f]
   ACTION: Ensure that the Oracle Database home at (/opt/app/oracle/product/19.x.0/dbhome_1) includes the files listed above.

Reason for these errors is that a full list of all the files that are part of the image is kept in $GI_HOME/install/files.lst or $OH_HOME/install/files.lst. At run time installer validates if all of these files are present in the unzipped location.
Therefore solution to these errors is to remove from the files.lst the entries that are not relevant. This would allow installers to run without above errors.
A SR raised confirmed that it is fine to manually edit the files.lst.

Related Posts
Creating Gold Images on 18c