Oracle Applications DBA Blog

Release 12 Installation on Sun Solaris

Ever since the release of Oracle Applications release 12 i have been waiting do a post on the installation but never did get the chance. Now finally here it is.
The current post is a step by step documentation of install ting Oracle Applications Release 12 on Sun Solaris 8, 64 bit.

Before you begin the installation make you have staged your software. If you are staging from the DVD pack you can use the adautostg.pl script.
If you have downloaded from edelivery you can just unzip the various parts.

The staged directory structure should look something similar.
oraAS/
oraAppDB/
oraApps/
oraDB/
startCD/

Creating OS Users
The next step is to create two OS users for the database and the primary application tier.

useradd -g dba -d /home/applsam applsam
useradd -g dba -d /home/applsam orasam

Oracle Inventory.
Next i will set up my global inventory to a different location. It better to have this specially when you have multiple instances of different versions on the same box.

cd /var/opt/oracle/
vi oraInst.loc
inventory_loc=/d01/rel12/rel12inv
inst_group=dba

Pre requisite Patches and Packages
Make sure you have all the pre requisite patches and the packages for your OS platform.
You can find the list in the metalink note 402312.1
also you will need an approximate of 140GB to complete a VISION installation of Release 12.More Detailed space requirements can be found in the above mentioned release notes.

Starting The installation.
You can start the installation by setting the appropriate DISPLAY and the running rapidwiz. In a multi user installation you must start the installation from root

/startCD/Disk1/rapidwiz
./rapidwiz

The first screen is the rapid install welcome screen



Next you will be asked to select the type of installation you want to go ahead with. You can choose a standard or an express install. you can also choose to upgrade you oracle applications.



Release 12 comes bundled with Oracle Configuration Manager(OCM).OCM is a tool which allows oracle to gather system information about your instances to help provide support. In case you are planning to install OCM make sure the user through which the installation is  is being done is access to crontab.



If you have chosen to install OCM you will be provided with a screen to enter your CSI number and metalink account name.  Also your proxy details to connect to the internet.



If you have an existing configuration file yo can choose that here or choose to create a new config file for your installation.



Next you specify the port pool for your instance.



The Next screen allows you to specify your Database tier configuration details.



Now you specify the configuration details of your primary application tier.



The following screen shows your nodes and configuration, it also allows you to add a new server to this configuration.



After this a quick pre installation validation check is done,



The next screen allows you to review the components you are about to install.



The installation now begins.




After the installation a post validation similar to 11.5.10 is done and you can log on into the instance.

Posted by Sam at 01:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Something Weird .. Somewhere?

Sometime ago we had implemented a DMZ configuration at one of our clients. This was a simple configuration which involved configuring an external tier in the DMZ.
Now as a part of this DMZ configuration we had disabled all the services on this tier except the Web service.

There was this requirement to implement SSL on the internal tier first, this was done after converting the forms to servlet mode first. This went off quite smoothly as expected.
Now the next logical step was to implement SSL on the external tier, that is the tier on the DMZ to secure the external tier.

Obviously a more secure option would have been to put up a couple of secure reverse proxys in front of the external tier. But since this particular client had his own application before the external tier we decided to go ahead and implement SSL on the external tier which we had configured.

The method that i choose to implement SSL was through the command line using the txkrun.pl as most of the services including GCS were not enabled on this external node.

To my surprise the validation part of the SSL script failed with the error that currently i did not have forms servlet enabled in my external tier and neither did i use a forms wallet so implementation will not be secure.
Now practically i do not have a forms server running on the external node so it made me wonder the need to forms servlet on this node.

Now not sure how to proceed further we decided to run the forms servlet enabling script anyways to see if it helped in someway. Maybe the SSL script looked for some values in the XML file wrt to the forms servlet which it did not find and hence resulted in the failed validation. So we ran the servlet conversion script first and then run the SSL conversion script.

Alas! it failed again with the same message. This was really not expected.
Finally we decided to enable all the forms services on this external node temporarily and then run the SSL conversion script on the external node.

The result: IT WORKED.

So after SSL was successfully implemented on the external node we again went back and disabled our forms services.

Now the whole process of enabling the forms services on the external node and then enabling forms servlets on the external node just for the sake of SSL validation can pass through seemed a bit weird to me.

So it still makes me wonder Something Weird .. Somewhere? did we miss something?

Do drop in a comment as i would like to here your views on this..

Posted by Sam at 02:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

AppsDbaBlog Search Plug-in for Firefox and IE7

Few days back i was going through a interesting post about the metalink search plug-in post at the AppsLabBlog(through Steven Chan's Post).That got me kicking into making a search plug-in for this blog.
Once added this search plug-in will allow you to lookup the AppsDbaBlog.com form the search box in your top right conner of your browser.

The functionality currently works with Firefox and IE7 only.
 
   


On Firefox, while you are reading this post locate the Quick Search box on the top right side of your browser, In the drop down list click on the Add "AppsDbaBlog.com" to add it in your quick search list.



After this you should be able to see the search along with your existing search providers




In case of IE7 choose the "Add Search Provider" from the quick search drop down list




You would get a dialog confirming your selection



After this the AppsDbaBlog.com search will be there in your quick search box and you can look up for anything on this blog without actually having  to go to it first.

Posted by Sam at 03:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Of Versions and Figuring Them Out

One of the things that you come across quite frequently when you work with oracle support is to need to tell them the product versions or the platform versions which run your oracle applications.
since it is possible for Oracle to simulate your environment completely or not aat all in most cases its vital that you feed them with as accurate information about your environment as possible.

The current post focuses on getting the version information which are commonly asked by during a service request.

I am categorizing this post into three sections

• Oracle Applications Components
• Oracle Database Components
• Operating System and Utilities

Oracle Applications Components

Oracle Applications version.
You may never need this but in case you are looking at a new environment then the simplest way to figure out your application version is by navigating to
Help-> About Oracle Applications from any of the forms sessions.

Version of a Oracle Applications Form (fmx) or report
To find the version of any oracle applications files
strings -a ICQTYED.fmx | grep Header   
alternatively you can also use the adident command

Version of a Java class File
To find the version of a java class file
$ strings <enter class file> | grep '$Header'

JDBC version
In your middle tier, edit the jserv.properties file located in the iAS_ ORACLE_HOME/Apache/Jserv/etc directory
- Locate the wrapper.classpath that is pointing to the jdbc zip file
/u01/applsam/samcomn/java/jdbc14.zip

How to find the Apache version?
Go to the $iAS/Apache/Apache/bin directory and enter the following command:
$ httpd -version

Version Of The OA Framework
To find out the version of your Oracle appplication Framework
http://[host].[domain]:[portnumber]/OA_HTML/OAInfo.jsp
OA Framework Version Information
OA Framework Version 11.5.10.2CU.
MDS Version 9.0.5.4.81 (build 481)
UIX Version 2.2.18
BC4J Version 9.0.3.13.51

Oracle Application Product Version or Patch Set Level.
One of the most common things you will asked by your support engineer is the version or commonly known as the patch set level of your Oracle Applications product, while or after raising your service request. You can query this by logging on to your application database as the apss user.
select patch_level from fnd_product_installations where patch_level like '%AD%';

OJSP Version
Log in to the application server as the applmgr user
cd $OA_HTML
edit the jtflogin.jsp file to add the following line
OJSP Version: <%= application.getAttribute("oracle.jsp.versionNumber") %>
clear your cache and bounce your apache server
soruce the jtflogin.jsp from your browser
http://hcslnx03.satyam.com:8002/OA_HTML/jtflogin.jsp
OJSP Version: 1.1.3.5.2

XML Parser Version
You can find out the version of your XML Parser using the following query
SQL> select WF_EVENT_XML.XMLVersion() XML_VERSION
  2  from sys.dual;
XML_VERSION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oracle XDK Java      9.0.4.0.0      Production

XML Publisher Version
To check weather XML publisher is installed or not you can query the FND_PRODUCT_INSTALLATIONS table or you can lookup the  
reports in Oracle Applications Manager. You can find out the version for your XML publisher from the output of your report or  from MetaInfo.class file.
$OA_JAVA/oracle/apps/xdo/common/MetaInfo.class.

WorkFlow Version
You can find out the version of your workflow using the following query
SQL> select TEXT Version from WF_RESOURCES
  2  where  TYPE = 'WFTKN' and NAME = 'WF_VERSION';
VERSION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.6.0

Oracle Database Components

Oracle RDBMS Version
You can query the version of your database user the dynamic view V$VERSION
SQL> SELECT * FROM V$VERSION;
BANNER
----------------------------------------------------------------
Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.2.0.6.0 - Production
PL/SQL Release 9.2.0.6.0 - Production
CORE    9.2.0.6.0       Production
TNS for Solaris: Version 9.2.0.6.0 - Production
NLSRTL Version 9.2.0.6.0 - Production

Version of OPATCH
$ perl $ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch.pl version
/oracle/product/v9.2.0.6_doeb10s/OPatch/opatch.pl version: 1.0.0.0.51

Listener Version
$ lsnrctl version
LSNRCTL for Solaris: Version 9.2.0.6.0 - Production on 06-JUL-2007 09:34:53
Copyright (c) 1991, 2002, Oracle Corporation.  All rights reserved.
Connecting to (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=samsolx)(PORT=1527))
TNSLSNR for Solaris: Version 9.2.0.6.0 - Production
        TNS for Solaris: Version 9.2.0.6.0 - Production
        Unix Domain Socket IPC NT Protocol Adaptor for Solaris: Version 9.2.0.6.0 - Production
        Oracle Bequeath NT Protocol Adapter for Solaris: Version 9.2.0.6.0 - Production
        TCP/IP NT Protocol Adapter for Solaris: Version 9.2.0.6.0 - Production,,
The command completed successfully

Operating Systems and Utilities

Sun Solaris Version
To check the version of you Solaris you can use the following file.
$ cat /etc/release
                Solaris 8 2/02 Fujitsu_3 s28s_u7fjsv3wos_04 SPARC
           Copyright 2002 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
                           Assembled 08 December 2002

RedHat Linux Version
You can check the version and release of Linux from the following file
view /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 4 (Nahant Update 2)

Perl Version
You can use the perl -v or the perl - version command to find out the version of perl on your environment.
$ perl -version
This is perl, version 5.005_03 built for sun4-solaris
Copyright 1987-1999, Larry Wall

Java Version
To fine the version of Java used
$ java -version
java version "1.4.2_04"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2_04-b05)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_04-b05, mixed mode)

Version of Installed packages on Solaris
To find the version of the packages on Solaris
$ pkginfo -i|grep perl
application MCperl584            PERL 5.8.4 with Modules 64bit with Threads
optional    VRTSperl             Perl 5.8.6 for VERITAS

Version of Installed packages on Linux
To find the version of the packages on linux
rpm -qa|grep <package name>

Kernel Version of Unix
You can find the version of your kernel on UNIX by the following command
uname -a

Bit of Operating System
You can check the bit size of your OS by using the following command
$ isainfo -b
64

Bit of your Oracle Software
To check if your Oracle Binary is 32 bit or 64 bit you can use the file command on any of the oracle executables like
$ file $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oracle
/oracle/product/v9.2.0.6_doeb10s/bin/oracle:    ELF 32-bit MSB executable SPARC Version 1, dynamically linked, not stripped

Posted by Sam at 01:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)