Installing Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 with shared APPL_TOP on CFS Oracle Headquarters Redwood Shores1 e1698667100526

Installing Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 with shared APPL_TOP on CFS

As soon as EBS Release 12 became available, I started with the installation, eager to find out what the differences were compared to 11i.

I had had the opportunity to attend some trainings sessions and presentations about the new technology features, and, well, you know how things go when you are a techy… You cannot wait until you get the opportunity to get your hands on it..

I was planning to install it in a Multi-node installation, on two nodes, having RAC in mind for the future (two database servers and two application servers, all on 2 nodes).
Since I do not have sufficient hardware at my direct disposal, I decided to give it a try on VMware Workstation 5.5. I used this environment earlier when I implemented Oracle EBS 11.i on 9i/RAC and 10g/RAC and ASM/RAW/CFS. This is my test environment to get experienced with the technology.

So, I removed my existing 11.i environment and started all over again with Release 12 🙂

The first impression: What a huge chunk of software that is! phew… In order to install a Vision Demo environment, I was required to free up no less than 175GB of diskspace…

Then the installation finally started. I was using GPFS to install the shared APPL_TOP, and put the database on local storage, to migrate it to ASM as soon as the installation was done.

However, after the installation of the first node, DB and AS (which took surprisingly “short”, by the way;-), I ended up with an Apache server that failed to start.

The log files showed me that it wanted to create a file which it could not, for no aparent reason:

Apache logfile (adapcctl.txt) showed me the following:

Error
–> Process (index=1,uid=5,pid=4264)
failed to start a managed process after the maximum retry limit
Log:
/apps/inst/apps/PROD_db01/logs/ora/10.1.3/opmn/HTTP_Server~1

The HTTP_Server~1 logfile showed me the follwing information

Ouch! ap_mm_create(1048576, “/apps/inst/apps/PROD_db01/logs/ora/10.1.3/Apache/mm.3658”) failed
Error: MM: mm:core: failed to memory map memory file (Invalid argument): OS: No such file or directory

The “Error:” was a result of the failure in creating the file. That was clear enough. However, the question that remained (and still remains…) unanswered is: Why is it impossible to create this file? The directory is there, the ownership and permissions are set correctly (by rapidinstall), and still it is impossible to create a file? Ok, 1G in size, I guess from the log, but still, that should not be a problem, should it?

After 4 weeks of research, I decided to give up RedHat Enterprise Linux 3 AS, and give Oracle Enterprise Linux a try. I didn’t feel like configuring GPFS this time (no experience yet, and the pressure is gaining…), so I gave OCFS2 a try. This comes with the OEL distro.
I configured 2 volumegroups, each with one logical volume. One for the staging area, the other to hold the Shared APPL_TOP. I configured OCFS2 (There are some nice articles describing the setup of OCFS available on various websites), and started the installation.

To my big surprise I found out that I bumped into exactly the same error message as before…!?!?
I upgraded to (actually completely reinstalled) Oracle Enterprise Linux, moved away from GPFS, took OCFS2 instead, and still it was failing on me. With exactly the same error message…
I decided to take one more look into the system, and thought of one last trick. I didn’t consider it to work, but still, one can never be certain… After this, I would have given up the idea of at least having a shared APPL_TOP….

My absolute last trick saved me at last…

Desperate as I was, I deleted /apps/inst/apps/prod_db01/logs/ora/10.1.3/Apache and put a symbolic link into its place, pointing to /oracle/Apache, which was on local filesystem.

Tadaa! That worked. Now my Apache Server started without problems.

I will now try to find out whether this reproduces on actual hardware. I will keep you updated on this.

10 Comments

  1. Sasidhar February 14, 2010
  2. Arnoud May 27, 2009
  3. Arnoud Roth September 4, 2007
  4. timothy carroll September 3, 2007
  5. Arnoud June 29, 2007
  6. timothy carroll May 17, 2007
  7. Arnoud Roth May 3, 2007
  8. timothy carroll May 2, 2007
  9. Arnoud Roth March 12, 2007
  10. Naqi March 9, 2007