How to install patches
is something I’m asked about quite frequently. Like many Oracle patches it can
be a bit daunting if you’ve not done it before, but actually it is quite
straight forward. Here’s how.
In this example I’m
installing the OBIEE 11.1.1.6.8 patch on top of a base OBIEE 11.1.1.6.0
installation.
The process uses
Oracle’s standard ‘opatch’ tool and basically consists of four steps:
- Download the required patch files from oracle support
- Perform any pre-patch tasks
- Perform the patch
- Perform any post-patch tasks
Start by downloading
the required patch files from support.oracle.com. The patch set consists of
seven zip files, each of which patches a different part of OBIEE – always
install all of them, don’t try to just load those you think you need! These are the patch numbers:
13952743
16094198
16094192
16080520
16094205
16094211
16067995
16097082
They can be found on
oracle support by searching for the product Oracle Business Intelligence,
version 11.1.1.6.8 along with your operating system.
Note: there is always
a ‘master’ patch file which contains the installation instructions – usually
this is a very small file and is usually referred to by the other patch files.
For patch 11.1.1.6.8 this file has the patch number 16094198. Its readme.htm
file contains the full instructions for installing the patch set, including
listing the other patch files you need.
In addition to the
seven patch files, there is an additional patch for the JDeveloper deployment
within weblogic that is required. All OBIEE 11g patch sets mention including
this, but you only need to install it the once – you can ignore it if you have
already patched OBIEE beyond 11.1.1.6.0. If you try to install it again the opatch
tool will merely report that it’s already installed and discard it.
In this case I have
downloaded the patch files for Windows 64bit. The top file 13952743 is the
JDeveloper patch, the other seven are for 11.1.1.6.8. I will try to give instructions below for
both windows and unix/linux.
There are multiple
references below to <obiee_home>. This should be
replaced with the actual directory where OBIEE resides, e.g.
c:\app\oracle\product\obiee, under which are the obiee directories instances,
Oracle_BI1, oracle_common, user_projects etc.
Once downloaded the patch files
need to be unzipped.
Unzip the Jdeveloper
patch file (p13952743_111160_Generic.zip) to the
<OBIEE_HOME>/oracle_common directory. This will create a subdirectory in
this folder:
Unzip the rest to
<ORACLE_HOME>\Oracle_BI1:
Make sure you have
connected to the server using the user-id that the software is installed under
- not administrator or root on Linux unless is was installed under these (which
it probably wasn’t).
Stop all OBIEE and
Weblogic services – the way you normally do using whatever script/processes
that were setup when OBIEE was installed.
There are a couple of
pre installation tasks that need to be performed.
Firstly take a backup
of the OBIEE files that would have been modified for your installation (unless
this is a new build):
Either backup the
entire <OBIEE_HOME> directory structure, or as a minimum the following
folders:
<OBIEE_HOME>\bifoundation<OBIEE_HOME>\instances\instance1\bifoundation\OracleBIServerComponent\coreapplication_obis1\repository
<OBIEE_HOME>\instances\instance1\bifoundation\OraclePresentationServerComponent\coreapplication_obis1\catalog
(or wherever the
catalog is located if you have moved it)
Also one specific file
which will be overwritten by the patch if you have modified it:
Now you need to clear
the Catalog Manager binary cache files from the
directory
<OBIEE_HOME>\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\web\catalogmanager\configuration\
delete the subdirectories org.eclipse.osgi and org.eclipse.equinox.app if they exist:
We are now ready to
proceed with the patch installation.
Firstly we need to
ensure that the oracle_home, java_home and path variables are set correctly.
The best way to do this is create a batch/script file to set them.
In the install patch
file directory - <obiee_home>\Oracle_BI1\16094198 – create a batch file called
setpaths.bat (or setpaths.sh for Linux)
Enter the following
commands, replacing the <obiee_home> reference on the first line with the
actual directory path:
set ORACLE_HOME=<obiee_home>\Oracle_BI1
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\bin;%PATH%
set JAVA_HOME=%ORACLE_HOME%\jdk
set PATH=%JAVA_HOME%\bin;%PATH%
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\OPatch;%PATH%
on Linux this commands
should be:
ORACLE_HOME =<obiee_home>\/Oracle_BI1;export ORACLE_HOME
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH;export PATH
JAVA_HOME=$ORACLE_HOME/jdk;export PATH
PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH;export PATH
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch:$PATH;export PATH
Then run “chmod 777 setpaths.sh” to
make the script executable.
In windows open a
command window using the ‘Run as Administrator’ option – right click on the
command window icon and you’ll see this option in the drop down. In Linux/Unix
open a terminal window or a putty session and login as the obiee installation
user.
Change directory to
the <obiee_home>/Oracle_BI1 directory then 16094198 beneath it.
Now run the
setpaths.bat file (. setpaths.sh for Linux)
You are now ready to
apply the patches.
Whilst still in the
16094198 directory apply the 16094198 patch first by running:
opatch apply
This will run some
pre-requisite checks and then ask if you want to proceed. Enter y
The patch will then be
applied and you will see the files being copied. When complete you will see the
‘Opatch succeeded’ message.
Now you can apply the
second patch – 16094192.
Change to the 16094192 directory - cd ..\16094192
Then run opatch apply again.
This will run through
in exactly the same way as the first patch.
When complete move to
the third patch directory, then carry on and repeat this for all the remaining
patch files in this order:
16080520
16094205
16094211
16067995
16097082
Note some of these
patch files are very large and can take a while to run.
You may see the
following warning on some patch files “Given patch xxxxx is a bug superset of
patch xxxxx but not s file superset”, this can be ignored - it is just a warning, which as long as the
patch is applied long with the other patch files in this patch set is ok.
If you’ve not done so
on a previous patch then you need to apply the JDeveloper patch next.
In the <obiee_home>\oracle_common\13952743 directory create another new batch file (or shell file on linux) called
setpaths.bat (setpaths.sh) with the following commands (again substituting <obiee_home> with
the actual directory path):
set ORACLE_HOME=<obiee_home>\oracle_common
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\bin;%PATH%
set JAVA_HOME=%ORACLE_HOME%\jdk
set PATH=%JAVA_HOME%\bin;%PATH%
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\OPatch;%PATH%
For Linux use:
ORACLE_HOME =<obiee_home>/oracle_common;export ORACLE_HOME
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH;export PATH
JAVA_HOME=$ORACLE_HOME/jdk;export PATH
PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH;export PATH
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch:$PATH;export PATH
And "chmod 777 setpaths.sh" to
make it executable.
In the same command
window following the earlier patches change to the <obiee_home>\oracle_common\13952743 directory, run the setpaths.bat (setpaths.sh) file and run opatch apply. This will run
through in the same way as the earlier patches.
The patch has now been
installed and there are a few post installation tasks to perform.
The patch includes a
new version of the BI Publisher desktop client tools. To enable users to
download this from the OBIEE home page the executables need to be copied to the
correct location.
Copy the two files BIPublisherDesktop32.exe and BIPublisherDesktop64.exe from the directory
<obiee_home>\Oracle_BI1\clients\bipublisher\repository\Tools
To
<obiee_home>\user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain\config\bipublisher\repository\Tools
Next copy the file msmdacc64.dll from the directory:
<obiee_home>\Oracle_BI1\clients\bipublisher\repository\Admin\DataSource
To
<obiee_home>\user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain\config\bipublisher\repository\Admin\DataSource
We now need to delete the jsp_servlet directory associated to Oracle BI Publisher if it exists.
Change to the following directory:
<obiee_home>\user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain\servers\bi_server1\tmp\_WL_user\bipublisher_11.1.1
Now look in each sub-directory under here and if you find a directory called jsp_servlet then delete it.
In the pre installation instructions above there was mention about backing up the file mapViewerConfig.xml if you have altered it in your installation. If so then now you need to restore it to its original location, overwriting the new version that the patch has placed there:
<OIBEE_HOME>\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\jee\mapviewer.ear\web.war\WEB_INF\conf
Finally
if you have customised the look and feel of OBIEE then you need to update the BIChart.swf file in your custom directories.
Copy
the BIChart.swf file from the
directory:
<OIBEE_HOME>\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\web\app\res\sk_blafp\dvt
To
the equivalent custom directory
<OIBEE_HOME>\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\OracleBIPresentationServicesComponent\coreapplication_obips1\analyticsRes\sk_xxxxxx\dvt
Where sk_xxxxxxis the name of your custom directory.
That’s it, the patch
is complete. Now re restart weblogic and the OBIEE services. To check the patch
has been upgraded to the correct version login to OBIEE with a administrator
user, click the ‘Administration’ link in to the top right corner of the screen
and check the version number in the Administration screen:
