Becky’s BI Apps Corner: OBIA install Perl Script Patching and troubleshooting when they fail

Becky Wagner -

During a recent project installing Oracle BI Applications, I became much better acquainted with OPatch, Oracle’s standard tool for managing application patches. By acquainted, I mean how to troubleshoot when OPatch patching fails. Since, at last count, there are around 50 patches total for Oracle BI Applications 11.1.1.9.2, the first patching attempt may not apply all patches successfully. There are any number of reasons for a failure, like an extra slash at the end of a path, a misspelled word, Weblogic or NodeManager still running, or some other reason. We will take a look at the logs for each section, learn where additional logs can be found, and learn how to turn on OPatch debugging to better understand the issue. Then, following the ideas from a previous OPatch post by Robin, I’ll describe how to manually apply the patches with OPatch at the command line for any patches that weren’t applied successfully using the provided perl script.

*Disclaimers - Please read the readme files for patches and follow all Oracle recommendations. Patch numbers are subject to change depending on OS and OBIA versions. Commands and paths here are of the linux/unix variety, but there are similar commands available for Windows OS.

Perl Script patching

Unzip the patch files to a patch folder. I have included the OBIEE patch as well.

unzip pb4biapps_11.1.1.9.2_.zip -d patches/
unzip pb4biapps_11.1.1.9.2_generic_1of2.zip -d patches/
unzip pb4biapps_11.1.1.9.2_generic_2of2.zip -d patches/
unzip p20124371_111170_.zip -d patches/

While installing the Oracle BI Applications versions 11.1.1.7. and up, patches get applied with a perl script called APPLY_PATCHES.pl. Following Oracle’s install documentation for 11.1.1.9 version of Oracle BI Applications here, there is a text file to modify and pass to the perl script. Both the perl script and the text file reside in the following directory: $ORACLE_HOME/biapps/tools/bin. In the text file, called apply_patches_import.txt, parameters are set with the path to the following directories:

JAVA_HOME
INVENTORY_LOC
ORACLE_HOME
MW_HOME
COMMON_ORACLE_HOME
WL_HOME
ODI_HOME
WORKDIR
PATCH_ROOT_DIR
WINDOWS_UNZIP_TOOL_EXE (only needed if running on Windows platforms)

Some pro tips to modifying this text file:

  1. Oracle recommends you use the JDK in the ORACLE_BI1 directory.
  2. Use ORACLE_BI1 as the ORACLE_HOME.
  3. Ensure WORKDIR and PATCH_ROOT_DIR are writeable directories.
  4. Don’t add a path separator at the end of the path.
  5. Commented lines are safe to remove.

Then you run the APPLY_PATCHES.pl passing in the apply_patches_import.txt. If everything goes well, at the end of the perl script, the results will look similar to the following:

If this is the case, CONGRATULATIONS!!, you can move on to the next step in the install documentation. Thanks for stopping by and come back soon! However, if any patch or group of patches failed, the rest of this post is for you.

Log file location

First, the above patching report does not tell you where to find the logs, regardless of success or failure. If you remember though, you set a WORKDIR path in the text file earlier. In that directory is where you will find the following log files:

  1. final_patching_report.log
  2. biappshiphome_generic_patches.log
  3. odi_generic_patches.log
  4. oracle_common_generic_patches.log
  5. weblogic_patching.log

Open the final_patching_report.log to determine first if all patches were applied and identify ones that were not successful. For example, looking that this log may show that the Oracle Common patches failed.

cd $WORKDIR
vi final_patching_report.log

However, this doesn't tell you what caused the failure. Next we will want to look into the oracle_common_generic_patches.log to gather more information.

From the $WORKDIR:

vi oracle_common_generic_patches.log

Here you will see the error, that a component is missing. Patch ######## requires component(s) that are not installed in OracleHome. These not-installed components are oracle.jrf.thirdparty.jee:11.1.1.7.0. Notice also that in this log there is a path to another log file location. The path is in the $COMMON_ORACLE_HOME/cfgtoollogs/opatch/ directory. This directory has more detailed logs specific to patches applied to oracle_common. Additionally, there are logs under $ORACLE_HOME/cfgtoollogs/opatch/, $WL_HOME/cfgtoollogs/opatch/, and $ODI_HOME/cfgtoollogs/opatch/. These locations are very helpful to know, so you can find the logs for each group of patches in the same relative path.

Going back to the above error, we are going to open the most recent log file listed in the $COMMON_ORACLE_HOME/cfgtoollogs/opatch/ directory.

cd $COMMON_ORACLE_HOME/cfgtoollogs/opatch/
vi opatch2015-08-08_09-20-58AM_1.log

The beginning of this log file has two very interesting pieces of information to take note of for use later. It has the actual OPatch command used, and it has a path to a Patch History file. Looks like we will have to page down in the file to find the error message.

Now we see our missing component error. Once the error occurs, the java program starts backing out and then starts cleanup by deleting the files extracted earlier in the process. This log does have more detail, but still doesn't say much about the missing component. After some digging around on the internet, I found a way to get more detailed information out of OPatch by setting export OPATCH_DEBUG=TRUE. After turning OPatch debugging on, run the OPatch command we found earlier that was at the top of the log. A new log file will be generated and we want to open this most recent log file.

Finally, the results now get me detailed information about the component and the failure.

Side Note: If you are getting this specific error, I’ll refer you back to a previous blog post that happened to mention making sure to grab the correct version of OBIEE and ODI. If you have a wrong version of OBIEE or ODI for the Oracle BI Apps version you are installing, unfortunately you won’t start seeing errors until you get to this point.

Manually running Oracle BI Application patches

Normally, the error or reason behind a patch or group of patches failing doesn't take that level of investigation, and the issue will be identified in the first one or two logs. Once the issue is corrected, there are a couple of options available. Rerunning the perl script is one option, but it will cycle through all of the patches again, even the ones already applied. There is no harm in this, but it does take longer than running the individual patches. The other option is to run the OPatch command at the command line. To do that, first I would recommend setting the variables from the text file. I also added the Oracle_BI1/OPatch directory to the PATH variable.

export JAVA_HOME=$ORACLE_HOME/jdk
export INVENTORY_LOC=
export COMMON_ORACLE_HOME=$MW_HOME/oracle_common
export WL_HOME=$MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3
export SOA_HOME=$MW_HOME/Oracle_SOA1
export ODI_HOME=$MW_HOME/Oracle_ODI1
export WORKDIR=
export PATCH_FOLDER=/patches
export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch:$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

Next, unzip the patches in the required directory. For example, the $PATCH_FOLDER/oracle_common/generic might look like this after unzipping files:

Below are the commands for each group of patches:

Oracle Common Patches:

cd $PATCH_FOLDER/oracle_common/generic
unzip "*.zip"

$COMMON_ORACLE_HOME/OPatch/opatch napply $PATCH_FOLDER/oracle_common/generic -silent -oh $COMMON_ORACLE_HOME -id 16080773,16830801,17353546,17440204,18202495,18247368,18352699,18601422,18753914,18818086,18847054,18848533,18877308,18914089,19915810

BIApps Patches:

cd $PATCH_FOLDER/biappsshiphome/generic
unzip "*.zip"

opatch napply $PATCH_FOLDER/biappsshiphome/generic -silent -id 16913445,16997936,19452953,19526754,19526760,19822893,19823874,20022695,20257578

ODI Patches:

cd $PATCH_FOLDER/odi/generic
unzip "*.zip"

/$ODI_HOME/OPatch/opatch napply $PATCH_FOLDER/odi/generic -silent -oh $ODI_HOME -id 18091795,18204886

Operating Specific Patches:

cd $PATCH_FOLDER/
unzip "*.zip"

opatch napply $PATCH_FOLDER/ -silent -id ,,

Weblogic Patches:

cd $PATCH_FOLDER/suwrapper/generic
unzip "*.zip"

cd $PATCH_FOLDER/weblogic/generic

$JAVA_HOME/bin/java -jar $PATCH_FOLDER/suwrapper/generic/bsu-wrapper.jar -prod_dir=$WL_HOME -install -patchlist=JEJW,LJVB,EAS7,TN4A,KPFJ,RJNF,2GH7,W3Q6,FKGW,6AEJ,IHFB -bsu_home=$MW_HOME/utils/bsu -meta=$PATCH_FOLDER/suwrapper/generic/suw_metadata.txt -verbose > $PATCH_FOLDER/weblogic_patching.log

Even though this is a very specific error as an example, understanding the logs and having the break-down of all of the patches will help with any number of patch errors at this step of the Oracle BI Applications installation. I would love to hear your thoughts if you found this helpful or if any part was confusing. Keep an eye out for the next Becky’s BI Apps Corner where I move on from installs and start digging into incremental logic and Knowledge Modules.