Installing Oracle Applications Release 12 on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10

Please have 250GB of Disk free and 3GB of ram. It might install with 2GB of ram, but will likely swap heavily until SGA and concurrent managers are scaled back.

Install and configure SLES10 per the note below:

Installing Oracle10g R2 Database on SLES10 for i386
http://www.novell.com/products/server/oracle/oracle10g_install.html

Verify the following packages are installed, either during install or after.

• glibc
• gcc-
• gcc-c++
• libaio
• libaio-devel
• libgcc
• libstdc++
• libstdc++
• openmotif21-libs-2.1.30MLI4
• pdksh
• make
• gnome-libs
• gnome-libs-devel
• sysstat
• binutils
• db1
• compat
• xscreensaver
• orarun

Can skip Editing the /etc/SuSE-release file

Work down to Set the right kernel parameters

Verify that the /etc/hosts file is formatted as follows:

      127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain
      <ip_address> <node_name>.<domain_name> <node_name>

Modifying the Number of Open File Descriptors

Open the /etc/security/limits.conf file and change the existing values for “hard” and “soft” parameters as follows. Restart the system after making changes.

hard nofile 65535
soft nofile 4096
hard nproc 16384
soft nproc 2047

Download the Release 12 installation media from http://edelivery.oracle.com

Figure 1: Oracle E-Delivery Web Site

Search for E-Business Suite on the Linux x86 platform. Click on the Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Release 12.0 Media Pack for Linux x86. Download each CD image into the same directory until you get to the Documentation DC. Once all the CD images have been downloaded, unzip each one. The proper staging directory structure will be created as long as you unzip with no options other than the filename. The Documentation Library is available online at
http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B34956_01/current/html/homeset.html

Once all of the CD images have been unzipped, cd to /startCD/Disk1/rapidwiz, and run rapidwiz as root.

Figure 2: Initial Rapid Install Welcome Screen

Select Next to proceed to the next screen.

Figure 3: Select Wizard Option

Chose Install Oracle Applications Release 12 skipping the Use Express Install if you want more control over the installation process.

Figure 4: Oracle Configuration Manager

At this point, decline the Oracle Connection Tools Agreement as SLES10 is not yet a certified Operating System for Oracle Applications Release 12.

Figure 5: Configuration Choice

If you had already completed an installation of Release 12, you could reload the configuration file from the previous installation.

Figure 6: Global System Settings

Select a Port Pool here. Since using the database port 1521 is a known security risk, select a port pool of 1 or higher. If there are any existing 11i systems on the same server, select a port pool that is not already in use.

Figure 7: Database Node Configuration

Select the host name, database SID, and base directory for installation.

Figure 8: Primary Applications Node Configuration

If the applications OS group is different from the database OS group, the base directory will need to be writable to others. If the host name is the same as the database host name, then the installation will be single node, otherwise, you will have a multiple node installation.

Figure 9: Node Information

Additional nodes can be configured on this screen.

Figure 10: System Checks

Rapid Install performs some system checks to verify disk space, permissions, ports and availability of system utilities.

Figure 11: Validate System Configuration

If all went well, you will see six green check marks indicating you may proceed with the installation.

Figure 12: Component Installation Review

Press Next to proceed to the next screen

Figure 13: Rapid Install Wizard Alert

Last chance to back out.

Figure 14: Installing Oracle Applications

The Rapid Install process will begin unzipping files into the previously selected locations.

Figure 15: Configuration of 10.2.0 Oracle Home

Figure 16: Unzipping of Datafiles

Figure 17: Configuration of the Database

Figure 18: Installation of the 10.1.2 and 10.1.3 Oracle Homes

Figure 19: Installation of $APPL_TOP and $COMMON_TOP

Figure 20: Autoconfig and Services Startup Phase

Figure 21: Validate System Configuration

At this point all 11i services have been verified to be working.

If the Connect to Oracle Applications Release 12 button does not spawn a browser correctly, use Firefox and navigate to host.domain:8000 (+ port pool). If port pool was 1, as shown above, use 8001. You will be redirected to http://host.domain:8001/oa_servlets/AppsLogin.

At this point, use standard Vision login accounts, sysadmin/sysadmin, operations/welcome, wtucker/welcome, mfg/welcome. etc.

Log in and verify everything is working.

Figure 23: Oracle Applications R12 Login Screen

Figure 24: R12 OA Framework Navigator Page

If you want to open the professional forms from Suse Linux Machine (Suse 10.1 or higher), you need to verify that the Sun Java Plugin is installed and working. In a terminal window, cd to /usr/lib/jvm/jre/bin, and type ./ControlPanel. If you do not see the Sun Java Plug-in Control Panel as shown in figure 25, there is a problem with the default look and feel configured in /usr/lib/jvm/jre/lib/swing.properties. If the file is not there, it may be in a directory from a previously installed plug-in like /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_07/jre/lib.

Change the line swing.defaultlaf=com.birosoft.liquid.LiquidLookAndFeel to swing.defaultlaf=com.sun.java.swing.plaf.motif.MotifLookAndFeel, and try to open the Control Panel again.

On Suse 10.1, you may need to register the Sun Java Plug-in with the browsers. In a terminal window, cd to /usr/lib/browser-plugins, and create a soft link to the current plugin directory via ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0_10/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so.

Oracle Applications Release 12 is configured to render forms applets via the Sun Java Plug-in 1.5.0 Update 10. Fortunately, this is currently the same version used by Suse 10.1 and Suse 10.2. If the OS version gets updated to a version higher than 1.5.0 Update 10, update the context file of the applications. This file is located in your base install directory /inst/apps/{sid}_{host}/appl/admin. The file is called {sid}_{host}.xml. Search for sun_plugin_ver, and change 1.5.0_10 to your current version.

Figure 25: Sun Java Plug-in Control Panel

Once the plug-in is working, Click on a forms link like System Profile Options, and allow popups from the R12 host if popup blocking is enabled.

Figure 26; Allow popups from your host

You need to trust the java from Oracle Applications.

Figure 27: R12 Java Security Warning

Forms will not open without Always trust content from this publisher checked. Then hit run.

Figure 28: R12 Professional Applet forms in the swan color scheme

There are a few links in the R12 (and 11.5.10) applications that only open on the Windows operating system. If you do not have a Windows PC handy, go to http://virtualbox.org, and download the binaries for the VirtualBox virtual machine. VirtualBox is considerable faster than qemu, even with kqemu kernel acceleration, and is easier to configure and install on Suse Linux compared to vmware. Hardware virtualization support on the CPU is not required.

Once VirtualBox (or your favorite virtual machine) has been installed, you can install CADView 3D plugin, Oracle Product Workbench, Oracle Workflow Builder, Oracle Discoverer Admininstrator, XML Publisher, etc.

Figure 29: R12 Navigator under VirtualBox

Figure 30: Installation of CADView 3D Desktop Plugin

Figure 31: CADView 3D Motorcycle Model Displayed in a VM

Figure 32: Oracle Product Workbench under displayed in a VM

The last few screen shots should get you started navigating around the Oracle Applications Release 12 environment under Suse Linux. The Online Documentation Library at http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B34956_01/current/html/homeset.html is a good place to view user and administration guides for the various products you may be interested in learning more about.

The environment file for the applications is located in the base directory /apps/apps_st/appl/APPS{sid}_{host}.env. Source this environment file and cd to $ADMIN_SCRIPTS_HOME to start/stop the applications.

The environment file for the database is located in the base directory /db/tech_st/10.2.0/{sid}_{host}.env. Source this file to start/stop the database and listener.

If you want to recompile R12 executables linked to the ILOG CPLEX libraries (MSC, MSO, MSR, etc), modify the $AD_TOP/bin/adrelinknew.sh script. Look for LINUX, and add -Wl,–noinhibit-exec to the end of CPP_LDFLAGS line.

You now have a fully functional ERP demonstration system on a current OS. Since SLES10 is kernel equivalent to Suse 10.1, these instructions also work on that desktop version as well.