How to install OBIEE 11g patch 11.1.1.6.8

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:

1. Download the required patch files from oracle support
2. Perform any pre-patch tasks
3. Perform the patch 
4. 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:

<OIBEE_HOME>\Oracle_BI1\bifoundation\jee\mapviewer.ear\web.war\WEB_INF\conf\mapViewerConfig.xml

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: