Tag: Oracle Application R12

Oracle E-Business Suite | Should you clone on your desktop using Virtual Machine?

On By windows7bugsIn Linux, Oracle Applications(R12), Oracle relatedLeave a comment

Hello guys

A long thread name? Well the topic is vast, hence the long name. I’ve been dealing with Oracle EBS or applications R12 from last 9 years. Initially I was ONLY developing for the new infrastructure, that gradually changed to taking care of the whole instance.

Painfully, however definitely I did familiarize myself with Linux (RHEL) & the database, exposing myself to building systems with copies of EBS running for development & testing.

Our instance is approximately 650GB as on date, including both application stack and database & a cold backup is hardly 125GB in tar balls. I have attempted & succeeded to build the cloned instances on my home desktop machine many times, however the performance was a huge issue, forcing me to discard the setups quite often.

This time, I decided NOT to discard as my new desktop at home is a beast compared to my previous machine, that was neither less a best ;) & to figure out “something” that will address the “performance” bottleneck.

I created a new VM using Oracle VirtualBox with following specs

6 processors, 20GB memory & 2 fixed size VDI files (120GB, 600GB) respectively for application and database repositories. I was aware of a limitation already, I was setting up the VDI files on a Western Digital Green series 2TB drive! which spins at 5400RPM!

Well, everything went smooth & and I had the instance up and running in couple of hours time & this time, the response of the instance was awesome. I even boasted about finally winning over the “biatch” to my team & sat back feeling “too proud” for the moment.

Next day (Month End 30th April 2019)

I am all excited after figuring out a way to flush GNOME desktop environment & replace it with Xfce & new tricks…

Started the VM at home, started the EBS instance and tried to access the instance from the same machine. I couldn’t even get the login page…something was gravely wrong. I decided to check the performance monitor and found the following:

Slowly I was forced to recognize the terror! The Standard Concurrent manager was configured to process 25 requests at the same time with a cache of 5 & 30 seconds sleep between the requests. Our month end has a number of scheduled jobs + Gather schema statistics in the queue. My VM was breaking up with the I/O. My 2TB storage oriented disk was NOT spinning fast enough to provide the data for the processes & I was left with the BIGGEST question of the hour “Now what?”

I stopped the Concurrent manager, adjusted the processes to 5 for Standard manager & restarted the instance. Left the instance running whole night and 1st May morning, the instance was back to normal performance as whole the scheduled jobs were finished during the night.

Next day I added one 1TB SSD & moved the application & database VDI files over to it. I was able to get the login screen within 2-3 seconds once after the application started from the VM. I submitted number of create accounting and other resource hungry jobs, which were completed in few seconds time…

Now, my setup is ONLY for the sake of it. It doesn’t have many users, it is idle most of the time & almost every day I shutdown the desktop machine after a day’s usage. This might not be the scenario at a real TEST environment. You may need to implement archive logging & RMAN, those all requiring more space & faster access to storage. A Desktop has less resources & the ONLY positive element you are going to live with is the pleasure of building it & knowledge gained while fixing few new issues.

So, can you build a performance oriented R12 using Desktop environment, the short answer is yes. Does it worth the efforts? Well, definitely YOU are the ONE who have to answer it.

Follow the space & soon I will post a thread explaining the entire exercises. If you are in a hurry, you may refer this

The above article loosely explains how to clone R12 instance on Linux 7. However the same could be followed for Linux 6 as well (both RHEL & OEL)

regards,

rajesh

 

Oracle Application R12(12.0.x) | JRE | UNKNOWN Publisher

On By windows7bugsIn Oracle Applications (R12.0.4), Oracle Applications(R12), Windows 102 Comments

Hi guys

This time I am going to post a solution towards one of the nagging annoyances with Oracle application R12 (12.0.6 in our specific case) & JRE securities those were implemented by JRE 7 (1.7.x)

Our instance was upgraded to use JRE 6 almost 5 years back during 12.0.4 to 12.0.6 upgrade and ever since there were dozens of JRE updates & the current JRE 1.8.0_161 (AS on 19th January 2018) & with each update, whatever the runtime parameters we add specifically for Oracle Application used to get removed, forcing us to renter it for each user.

I’ve been searching for a proper solution, not only towards the runtime parameter fix, for the security prompts those started annoying our end users whenever they tried to launch the forms, once after we forcefully updated many users who were sticking to 1.6 JRE

So after referring many documents, using some of the past experiences dealing with security certificates, I believe, have figured out how to get rid of those annoyances, minimum for a while.

Solution 1

Runtime parameters being removed after each JRE update

jre

Add a new environment JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS with a value -Djava.vendor=”Sun Microsystems Inc.”

You may add it under your specific user or system wide, which I usually prefer so that I don’t have to worry about the next user who will be using the same system (for some reasons)

ENV

Solution 2

Addressing JAVA security prompts

Trying to open the forms with latest JRE without adding exceptions will produce the following JAVA security error

1.png

Now we need to add the application URL with complete port details to the security tab of JRE

2

Now, we will be presented with the “toughest” situation to resolve, which will be explained later.

3

Clicking the More Information, JAVA presents more details about the digital certificate issues, stating the publisher of the digital certificate as UNKNOWN, hence this warning appears for the end user each time whenever the user tries to open a Forms based module.

4

You may require Domain Administrator/Administrator privileges to continue the below fixes

1st we have to retrieve the certificate from Oracle application server. Login as application manager user to LINUX environment (We’re setting up the entire stuffs for R12 application that is running on 64Bit Linux)

download $APPL_TOP/admin/appltop.cer file to local computer (If your implementation team has cloned the instances across, the appltop.cer will remain the same across different servers, so the single certificate integration with the user computer should deal with all different instances of the Oracle application (Test, Development & Production)

Once the certificate is downloaded or copied to the local computer, you need to install it. We’ll install the certificate twice, in two different locations.

Follow the images below for more details

5

We will install the certificate for the “Local Machine”, so that all users using the same computer will get benefitted

6

For the 1st instance, We MUST install this certificate to “Trusted Root Certification Authorities” Container.

For 78

 

9

Once the certificate is imported, We should install the certificate once again, Select “Local System” and follow the prompts. We don’t have to specify the container this time.

10

Now, trying to open a forms based module will present you another warning

11

Checking “Do not show this again for apps from the publisher and location above” will suppress this dialog until the certificate remains the same for the application server.

Hope this helps few out there!

regards,

rajesh

 

 

Oracle Application R12 | HTML Page load issues with Internet Explorer 11 | Windows 10

On By windows7bugsIn Oracle Applications(R12), Windows 10Leave a comment

Hi guys

Our Oracle application R12 (12.0.6) instance has JDK 6 environment & We don’t have any plans to migrate to any recent versions of Oracle Application those are supported by later Java environments.

Almost all users those use Oracle applications are using JRE for many other engineering programs (Calculations programs by Vendors) & frequent updates of the JRE happens automatically at the user ends. We have a significant crowd that is still using JRE 1.6_20 as base JRE, who seldom have the following issue(s) discussed below.

Over Windows 10, Internet Explorer 11 fails to load HTML pages properly & many times after the logon to the application, the HTML menu page is loaded in the explorer, leaving a 4-5 white space lines. Refer the image below

halfpage

Basically this issue is observed with boxes those have latest JRE (x86) installed and used with parameter -Djava.vendor=”Sun Microsystems Inc.”

image

Oracle blogs strictly says, Compatibility view for Oracle applications R12 shouldn’t be enabled for Internet Explorer 11. I have tried enabling the Compatibility view for the Oracle applications, without any positive changes.

As a last resort, I reset the Internet Explorer 11

image

and after restarting the computer, Oracle Application HTML pages started loading correctly, without leaving white spaces between the IE Window and application top frame.

Hope this helps few folks out there!

rajesh

R12 | Clone response file | adcfgclone automation

On By windows7bugsIn Linux, Oracle Applications(R12), UncategorizedLeave a comment

Hi guys

If you are familiar with R12 cloning, the entire process requires loads of input from a DBA before the cloning really starts kicking in. Now, there could be hundreds of reasons for the cloning process to fail and keeping on entering the responses for the cloning prompts are NOT at all fun, minimum for me.

So I started searching for “R12 clone response file” & google landed me in this post

https://community.oracle.com/thread/2142127?start=0&tstart=0

Excellent way Hussein Sawwan-Oracle has explained how to create the response files for both db, apps tier.

clone

First of all, context file to response file creation has a validation flag, which confirms the responses provided are valid throughout the response collection. This validate has a downside with the port pool selection. You will receive a port is not free error while the Oracle application is online, for which a system reboot is most recommended (rather than selecting “No” for the validation process”) after graceful shutdown of both application and database tiers.

I’m using .bash_profile files to source the environment for both my Oracle (oraprod) and Application Manager (applprod) accounts, hence I was able to shorten the efforts like following

As Oracle user (oraprod)

# cd $ORACLE_HOME/appsutil/clone/bin
# perl adclonectx.pl contextfile=$CONTEXT_FILE outfile=/u02/db.xml

Provided the responses and the db.xml was successfully created under /u02 and the context file creation log was created under /u02/log folder.

Please make sure you do “echo $CONTEXT_FILE” to check whether you $CONTEXT_FILE returns a meaningful file name!

As Application Manager user (applprod)

# cd $COMMON_TOP/clone/bin
# perl adclonectx.pl contextfile=$CONTEXT_FILE outfile=/u02/appl.xml

Now you should able to run the cloning processes using the newly cloned context files, for example

# perl adcfgclone.pl dbTier /u02/db.xml
# perl adcfgclone.pl appsTier /u02/appl.xml

That’s all folks, it works like a charm & you are NOT anymore typing in whole those lengthy paths and other variables :)

regards,

rajesh

RC-50004, AC-00005: No write permissions for creating the Context file – /tmp/temp.xml

On By windows7bugsIn Linux, Oracle Applications(R12)10 Comments

Hi guys

Linux file/folder permissions could be very confusing for a beginner, minimum for me! After these many years of interacting with Linux I still get confused deciding what rights should be given to users or groups on certain folders :)

I came across a situation where the application tier cloning was continuously failing with the title error

RC-50004, AC-00005: No write permissions for creating the Context file – /tmp/temp.xml ?

I checked the for the /tmp folder permissions and realized the application user (applmgr/appltest) had proper right permissions on /tmp folder, yet the adcfgclone will not proceed after

[code language=”text”]

Do you want to preserve the Display [erp-prod:0.0] (y/n) ? : n

Target System Display [erp-prodbak:0.0] :
RC-50004: Error occurred in CloneContext:
AC-00005: No write permissions for creating the Context file – /tmp/temp.xml
Raised by oracle.apps.ad.context.AppsContext
Check Clone Context logfile /u01/applprod/PROD/apps/apps_st/comn/clone/bin/CloneContext_1208121418.log for details.

[/code]

After few attempts I came against another blog, that was explaining the situation in a different way. http://newgendba.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-quick-solve-this-post-clone.html

Blogger has suggested to check whether temp.xml created by another user exist in the /tmp folder, which was the actual reason in my case. I found temp.xml file created by “root” and deleted the same and cloning process just went all the way fine.

 

Hope this info helps few of those once in a bluemoon DBAs out there :)

 

regards,

rajesh

 

Oracle Applications R12 “Emergency” Rapid Clone

On By windows7bugsIn Linux, Oracle Applications(R12)Leave a comment

There could be occasions when as an apps DBA you would be asked to provide a fresh clone either over test or development environment to address a serious issue.

Rapid Clone hierarchy usually requires a DBA to pre-clone both application & database tiers, shutting down the source system and then souring the relevant folders to target system.

Today we are going to share a minor hack which could help you, when you cannot JUST shutdown a Production instance, however the cloned instance is a mandatory element to deal with a particular situation.

(Please note, this hack is ONLY applicable to situations where the backups were made without running PRE-CLONE or errors were raised stating

  1. Control file creation failed : ORA-01503: CREATE CONTROLFILE failed
  2. Certain database files were not recognized as part of the database : ORA-01565: error in identifying file)

Errors and example scenarios as mentioned with this thread

#cd /backup

#time tar –zcvf apps.tar.gz /u01/applprod/PROD/apps/*

(use “time” to check how much time the activity has taken)

Once the application tier has been tar balled

#time tar –zcvf db.tar.gz /u01/oraprod/PROD/db/*

Wait until the tar ball created

Now you can SCP the tar balls to your target system

scp –pr *.tar.gz root@targetsystem:/backup

The approximate time to transfer a database tar ball in 100GB size should be 33-35 minutes and the application tar ball in size 31GB around 9-10 minutes

Backup (if required after running the pre-clone) of your TEST/Development instance and delete the application and database folders (make sure you have shutdown the application and database instances)

#cd /u02/oratest/TEST/db

#rm –rf *

#cd /u02/appltest/TEST

#rm –rf *

Now extract the tar balls to respective base paths

#time tar –zxvf /backup/apps.tar.gz

We are already in the folder /u02/appltest/TEST so the application instance files will be extracted in the same location

Once the extraction is over, we can go ahead with extracting the database tier files

#cd /u02/oratest/TEST/db

#tar –zxvf db.tar.gz

Wait until the extraction part is over

The real hack starts from here

#cd /u02/oratest/TEST/db/tech_st/10.2.0/appsutil

#rm –rf *

Switch to source system (Aka Production instance)

#su – oraprod

If the .bash_profile has an exclusive call for the environment sourcing, your environment will be automatically sourced, else source it

Run pre-clone for the database tier now

$perl adpreclone.pl dbTier

Once the pre-clone activities completed successfully, switch to

$cd $ORACLE_HOME/appsutil

Create a tar file

$tar –zcvf appsutil.tar.gz *

Now move the new tar file to your TEST/Development instance

$scp –pr appsutil.tar.gz root@targetsystem:/backup

From the target system, move to

#cd /u02/oratest/TEST/db/tech_st/10.2.0/appsutil

Unzip the appsutil.tar.gz

#tar –zxvf /backup/appsutil.tar.gz

Once the files are extracted, change the ownership of the base path once again

#chown –R oratest:oinstall /u02/oratest

Change the access permissions

#chmod –R 777 /u02/oratest

Now as user “oratest” you can start the database tier cloning

#su – oratest

$cd /u02/oratest/TEST/db/tech_st/10.2.0/appsutil/clone/bin

$perl adcfgclone.pl dbTier

Once the database tier cloning completes successfully, you can proceed with application tier cloning, which doesn’t require any specific hacks

Side notes:

In my case I found that the “Gather schema statistics” program was missing from the scheduled jobs list. If you are experiencing slowness with your freshly cloned instance, it is highly recommended to run the said program prior going ahead with any other activities.

Make sure you would clear the cache under global configurations.

Hope you enjoyed another “hack” from us! Our sincere thanks and gratitude to Ravi Purbia (Sr. Apps DBA Consultant) who has provided us the details about this particular hack.

regards,

for Windows7bugs

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