| Oracle® Smart Update Applying Patches to Oracle WebLogic Server Release 3.3.0 Part Number E14143-12 |
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| Oracle® Smart Update Applying Patches to Oracle WebLogic Server Release 3.3.0 Part Number E14143-12 |
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View PDF |
This chapter describes how to apply the patches that you have downloaded from My Oracle Support and stored in the patch download directory.
This section includes the following topics:
Smart Update displays a Target Installation panel, shown in Figure 4-1, that shows all of the WebLogic product installations that were detected on the system on which you started Smart Update. In this example, WebLogic Platform 10.3 MP2 (that is, 10.3.2) is the currently selected target installation.
The subsequent operations you can perform with Smart Update are specific to the installation you have selected as the target installation. For example:
The set of patches that are listed in the Downloaded Patches panel are specific to the selected target installation. Smart Update prevents you from applying a patch created for a product other than the one that is currently selected as the target installation.
Patch validation, which is the built-in ability of Smart Update to use the validation data provided by My Oracle Support to eliminate the chances of applying a patch with a known conflict, is specific to the selected target installation.
Patches that you apply to one target installation are not applied to any other installation listed in this panel. For example, if you have duplicate installations of one product, either in the same Middleware home directory or in a different Middleware home directory, you can apply patches to only one of those installations at a time. Note that having multiple Middleware home directories on a system is generally not recommended.
When selecting a target installation, keep the following information in mind:
The set of Middleware home directories displayed in this panel is not restricted to those detected on the current system. If you have used the current system to install products on remotely mounted disks hosted on other systems, the Middleware home directories for those remote products are displayed as well. This complete listing makes it easy to install maintenance updates on remote systems.
Note:
The Smart Update graphical interface does not detect Middleware home directories created by systems other than the one from which you are running Smart Update.
You can install patches on only one target installation at a time; patches cannot be installed on multiple installations in a single step. You can, however, install patches to multiple target installations in a single Smart Update session. After installing patches on one target installation, you do not have to restart Smart Update before installing patches to another target installation.
The most recently selected target installation is saved when you exit Smart Update, and is highlighted the next time you start Smart Update. When a single Middleware home directory hosts multiple product installations, you may update those installations in any sequence you like.
The list of product installations in a Middleware home directory can be expanded or collapsed, as preferred. By default, it is expanded.
If you are using the Smart Update command-line interface, be sure to include the -prod_dir=path parameter to set the target installation directory when you start Smart Update. See Chapter 8, "Using the Command-Line Interface."
You can also specify other Middleware home directories that are not listed in the Target Installation panel.
Note:
The Middleware home can only be a directory on a local drive, or a locally mounted volume.
If there is no valid installation target when you start Smart Update, a dialog box is displayed in which you must specify a Middleware home before proceeding.
To specify the Middleware home directory:
Choose File > Target Installation > Find Other BEA Home
Specify a valid Middleware home directory navigate the hierarchy and select a directory, or type the path in the Location field.
Click OK. The new directory is added to the Target Installation panel.
If the directory you specified does not include a valid installation target, an error message is displayed.
Smart Update offers you the option of reading detailed information about a patch before applying it. Specifically, Smart Update provides this option for patches in two categories. These categories are those that are publicly available for download from My Oracle Support and those that have been downloaded by you, either to your system or to a networked disk drive that you can access.
Note:
To obtain a list of patches that are publicly available for download, you must be logged in to My Oracle Support.
The Manage Patches tab lists all patches that are currently residing in the patch download directory.
Patches that have been applied to the target installation through the currently selected patch profile are listed in the top panel. Patch profiles are described in About Patch Profiles.
Patches that have not been applied to the target installation within the context of the currently selected patch profile are listed in the Downloaded Patches panel.
For an explanation of the information displayed in the Downloaded Patches panel, see Viewing Currently Downloaded Patches.
You can also view lists of patches that have been downloaded into a directory other than the current patch download directory by specifying the desired directory in the Preferences dialog box. For more information, see Choosing a Patch Download Directory.
Table 4-1 describes the information displayed in each column of the top and bottom panel of the Manage Patches tab. Some columns are not available in each panel.
Table 4-1 Information about Patches Available for Download
| Column Title | Description |
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Patch ID |
The patch identifier is a unique string that is associated with a patch. The following information icon is displayed beside the patch identifier: |
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Bug |
The Oracle bug number that is associated with the patch identifier. |
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Description |
A brief description of the patch. |
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Product |
The name of the product to which the patch applies, such as WebLogic Server, Workshop for WebLogic, WebLogic Portal, JRockit, or Oracle Service Bus. |
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Category |
The product category to which the patch applies. For example:
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Remove |
To remove an installed patch, click the icon in the Remove column. |
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Apply |
To apply a downloaded patch, click the icon in the Apply column. |
The Manage Patches tab displays a list of the patches that are available in the current patch download directory for the currently selected target installation. It contains the following panels:
A patch profile panel—Displays a list of the patches that have already been applied to the current target installation. The Default patch profile, which lists the patches that have been applied to the entire target installation, is described in About Patch Profiles. This panel also contains one additional tab for each custom profile you created.
Note:
Custom profiles have been deprecated as of Smart Update 3.3.0. Oracle recommends that you no longer use custom profiles. Custom profiles increase the complexity of installing installation-wide WebLogic Server patches.
Downloaded Patches—Displays a list of the patches that currently reside in the patch download directory but have not yet been applied to the current target installation for the currently selected patch profile. After you apply a patch to the target installation, the entry for that patch is removed from the list in the downloaded patch panel of the Manage Patches tab for the appropriate patch profile. For more information, see Applying a Patch to the Target Installation.
If you designate a different directory as the patch download directory, the list of patches shown in the Downloaded Patches panel updates accordingly. If patches have been downloaded to multiple locations in your system environment, and those locations are accessible through networked disk drives, you can access those patches simply by designating a new patch download directory. For more information about designating a different patch download directory, see Choosing a Patch Download Directory.
For detailed information about a patch, click the information icon beside the appropriate patch identifier. A Patch Details dialog box, similar to what is shown in Figure 4-2, "Patch Details Dialog Box", is displayed.
Smart Update displays a dialog box with the details defined in Table 4-2.
Table 4-2 Key to Patch Details
| This detail | Specifies |
|---|---|
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Product |
The product to which the patch applies. |
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Version |
The version of the product for which the patch is intended. |
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Severity |
Whether the patch is critical or optional. |
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Category |
The product category to which the patch applies. |
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Restart |
The software component that must be restarted after the patch is applied. |
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Size (KB) |
Identifies the size, in kilobytes, of the patch. |
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Status |
Availability of the patch. All patches that you download from My Oracle Support have a status of Public. |
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OS |
The operating system on which the patch is designed to run. |
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Description |
A brief description of the issued that the patch resolves. |
When done viewing the patch details, click OK to close the Patch Details dialog box and return to the main Smart Update window.
After you download patches into the patch download directory, you can apply them to a target installation. The following sections explain how to apply and manage patches:
Smart Update uses the notion of a patch profile to help manage sets of patches. A patch profile contains a list of patches that have been applied. Every target installation has a default patch profile defined. Patches listed in the default patch profile are in effect installation-wide, and are also in effect, by default, for all applications, WebLogic domains, and WebLogic Server instances that run from that installation.
To meet typical maintenance requirements, the default patch profile is the only profile that most users need to work with. The default patch profile is available out-of-the-box and does not need to be configured.
You may also choose to create custom patch profiles. Custom patch profiles enable you to associate specific servers, domains, or applications in an installation with a set of one or more patches that are not intended to be in effect installation-wide. However, the use of custom patch profiles raises the level of complexity of maintaining your product installations. Custom patch profiles are described in Chapter 6, "Patching Individual Applications, Domains, or Servers."
Note:
Custom profiles have been deprecated as of Smart Update 3.3.0. Oracle recommends that you no longer use custom profiles. Custom profiles increase the complexity of installing installation-wide WebLogic Server patches.
To apply a patch to the target installation, click the Apply icon next to that patch in the Downloaded Patches panel.
Note:
To avoid unexpected errors, stop the server when applying a patch.
When you apply a patch to the target installation, the following events occur:
The patch is validated against patches in the current patch profile.
Note:
If you have multiple patch profiles for the target installation, and you apply a patch that affects installation-wide resources, Smart Update displays a warning popup to alert you. Examples of patches that are in effect for an entire installation include those that replace system resources, or that address a security advisory. If you choose to proceed, Smart Update automatically applies the patch to all patch profiles defined in the target installation.
If there are no patch conflicts, the patch is applied.
If there are conflicts, the Patch Installation Validation dialog box is displayed, summarizing conflicts. The patch is not applied.
If the patch is applied, the patch is added to the current patch profile. The patch is no longer listed in the Downloaded Patches panel of the Manage Patches tab for this profile.
If conflicts are detected during validation, you must resolve those conflicts before you can apply the patch. For more information, see Resolving Patch Conflicts.
For certain patch types, the applied maintenance may not get activated automatically in the user applications and WebLogic domains. Depending on the patch type, regardless of whether it was applied to the default profile or a custom profile, and the system environment and configuration, administrators may need to do one or more of the following:
Start or restart a server
Start or restart an application
Undeploy/deploy an application
Edit a WebLogic domain or server start script
Deploy a library module to an application
Edit a domain configuration file
Edit an application descriptors file
If you have applied a patch that you need to remove from the target installation—for example, the patch does not correct the problem as expected, the patch is not needed, or the patch creates new problems and you are awaiting a replacement patch from My Oracle Support—click the Remove icon next to the listing of that patch in the corresponding patch profile.
Note:
To avoid unexpected errors, stop the server when removing a patch.
When you remove a patch from the target installation, the following events occur:
The removal operation is validated, similar to the validation that occurs when you apply a patch. When you remove a patch from the target installation, Smart Update checks the current patch profile to determine if any other patches depend on the one you are removing.
If a conflict is detected, Smart Update displays the Patch Removal Validation dialog box and identifies the specific conflict. If you have a conflict, you must resolve it before you can remove the patch.
If no removal conflict is detected:
The patch is removed from the target installation and from the current patch profile.
The patch is added to the list displayed in the Downloaded Patches panel, in the Manage Patches tab, under the current patch profile list.
When removing patches, note that:
If you have multiple patch profiles for the target installation and you remove a patch that affects installation-wide resources, Smart Update displays a warning popup to alert you. If you choose to proceed, Smart Update automatically removes the patch from all patch profiles defined in the target installation.
If you remove a patch that is not installation-wide, that patch is removed from the current patch profile.
After removing a patch that affects the run-time behavior of server instances in the product installation, restart the servers for the patch removal to take effect.
For information about correcting removal conflicts, see Resolving Patch Conflicts.
Smart Update protects your system by validating the compatibility of any patch that you want to apply or remove with the other patches that have been applied to the target installation. Any validation problem that occurs is reported as a patch conflict, which you can resolve before completing the patch operation.
This section describes the types of conflicts that may be identified during the following validation processes:
Each section also provides instructions for resolving each type of conflict.
During the process of applying a patch, various conflicts may be reported. Once a conflict has been reported, it must be resolved before you can apply the patch.
Table 4-3 describes the types of conflicts that may be reported when a patch is being validated when you attempt to apply it, and it provides procedures for correcting each type.
Table 4-3 Conflict Conditions When Applying a Patch
| If this conflict is reported | The patch you have selected to apply | To resolve this conflict and apply the selected patch |
|---|---|---|
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Prerequisite not met |
Cannot be applied until you apply one or more other patches |
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Out of sequence |
Cannot be applied until you remove one or more patches that you applied earlier |
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Mutually exclusive |
Cannot coexist with one or more patches that you applied earlier |
Choose the patch that you want applied to the target installation and, if necessary, apply it. |
Table 4-4 describes the conflict that may be identified when you attempt to remove a patch, and a procedure for resolving that conflict.
Table 4-4 Conflict Condition When Removing a Patch
| If this conflict is reported | The patch you have selected for removal | To resolve this conflict and remove the selected patch |
|---|---|---|
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Is required by one or more patches that have been applied |
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To make it easy for you to provide the information needed by My Oracle Support to help you resolve problems, Smart Update provides a way to capture information about the patches that have been applied to a specific patch profile. This is called a maintenance snapshot, a plain ASCII file that contains information about the patch profile selected in the Manage Patches tab, including the identity of each patch that has been applied to that profile.
If you report a problem, My Oracle Support requests this snapshot as the first step in providing you with a solution. Therefore, if you experience a problem, Oracle strongly recommends that you prepare a maintenance snapshot before contacting Customer Support.
It takes only a moment to create a maintenance snapshot, using the Smart Update graphical interface:
In the Target Installation panel in the main Smart Update window, select the product installation for a problem that is being reported.
From the Manage Patches tab, select the patch profile with which you are reporting a problem.
Choose Patches > Patch Profiles > Save Snapshot
A dialog box prompts you to specify the name and location of the maintenance snapshot. By default, the maintenance snapshot file is created in MW_HOME\utils\bsu. If you specify a different location, ensure that you have the privileges required to access a file there.
You can also use the Smart Update command-line interface to create a maintenance snapshot. For an example, see Command-Line Interface Examples.
Oracle recommends that you observe the following practices whenever you create a maintenance snapshot:
Save all maintenance snapshots for a particular product installation in a place where you can find them easily.
Use a file name for the maintenance snapshot that helps you distinguish among other snapshots. For example, indicate the patch profile name, such as MyCustomProfile.txt.
Whenever you send a maintenance snapshot to My Oracle Support, keep a log of your support-related activities.
WebLogic Server patches can be applied to the server, client, or both. This section describes what you must do to apply the patch to the client.
Download the patch as described in Chapter 2, "Downloading Patches."
Extract the patch JAR file as described in Chapter 3, "Unzipping Downloaded Patches."
Copy the class files that are in the patch JAR file to the appropriate directory, or reference the class JAR in the JMS client environment by placing the path of the directory in which it is located at the beginning of the classpath.
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