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Release Notes

This document includes information about the following topics:

 


What’s New in WebLogic Operations Control

The following sections describe new and changed functionality in this release of WebLogic Operations Control (WLOC).

Additional Support for Managed Endpoints

WLOC added support for any JVM hosted by the JRockit 6.0 JDK or Sun Java 2 JDK 6.0. WLOC also added enhanced support for the following managed endpoints:

See the Supported Configurations for WLOC documentation.

Quickly Create Multiple Java Processes Using Templates and Variables

To simplify the task of creating multiple copies of Java processes in a service, WLOC provides the capability to define the common characteristics of the process in a template, and to use variables to replace common parameters. You can then use the template to generate multiple copies of the process without having to physically configure duplicates in the metadata configuration. See Creating Multiple Java Processes Using Templates in the WLOC Configuration Guide.

For instructions about creating variables in the Administration Console, see Defining variables for multiple Java processes in the WLOC Administration Console Online Help.

Enhanced Resource Monitoring

The following WLOC Administration Console enhancements were made to improve resource monitoring:

See Select resources to monitor in the WLOC Administration Console Online Help.

Enhanced Event Monitoring

The Tasks and Events viewer, located at the bottom of the WLOC Administration Console, now provides the same ability to filter messages that appear in it as provided on the Events page. The filter can be collapsed or expanded for use by clicking the + icon on the right side of the viewer.

You can also create custom viewing tabs with unique filters by clicking on the + tab and providing a custom tab name when prompted. The currently-selected tab becomes the active tab and that tab’s filter (if specified) is automatically applied to the viewer.

See Monitor events in the WLOC Administration Console Online Help.

Enhanced Inventory Component Management

The following WLOC Administration Console enhancements were made to the Inventory pane to improve component management.

Automatic Console Notification for Service Policy Violations

When creating a policy or assigning a policy to a service, the Automatic Console Notification checkbox indicates whether to automatically generate a console notification when the specified action for the policy is violated. A notification is also automatically generated when the action taken to rectify the SLA violation has completed.

See Assign policies to services in the WLOC Administration Console Online Help.

Improved Configuration for Non-WLS Endpoints

The JMX service URL attribute has been added to use instead of specifying a WLS host and port. This URL is used to connect to the MBean server of a non-WLS endpoint. This option is available when defining a process group template or a connection to a JMX-managed MBean server.

See Define process groups for a service and Define a connection to a JMX-managed MBean server in the WLOC Administration Console Online Help.

 


WebLogic Operations Control Known and Resolved Issues

The following sections describe known problems in WebLogic Operations Control 10.3, as well as problems that were resolved in earlier versions. Entries include a description of the problem, and a workaround or solution where appropriate, and are organized into the following categories:

Core

Change Request Number
Description and Workaround or Solution
Found In
Fixed In
377510
When a new service is created (for example, someservice), WLOC creates a group named ServiceAdministrators_someservice and a role named ServiceAdmin_someservice. If you add a user (who is not already a member of the Administrators or ServiceAdministrators groups) to the ServiceAdministrators_someservice group, to allow that user to manage the someservice service, WLOC does two things: 1) it allows the user to manage someservice; 2) it allows the user to access to the Administration Console.
Workaround or solution:
The ConsoleAccess role has been removed in version 10.3. This is a change in behavior from version 1.0, whereby access to someservice would have been granted by adding the user to the ServiceAdmin_someservice role, while access to the Administration Console was granted by the ConsoleAccess role.
1.0
10.3
375856, 347319
Plain JVMs would fail to start if there was no valid JRE bin folder in the system path. Additionally, there was no way to constrain a service process to run on a specific JRE.
Workaround or solution:
This issue was resolved by adding a new jre-software element in the Agent configuration that allows you to specify available JREs. There is also a new jre-constraint element in the Controller metadata configuration that allows you to constrain a service JRE version and type, such as Sun and JRockit.
1.0
10.3
CR363445
A Plain Agent cannot be restarted if its previous incarnation leaves one or more running service process instances. This occurs only when a Plain Agent is restarted with the Windows startAgent.cmd start script and redirects the STD err and STD out to the same file as its previous incarnation, which generates the following error message:
The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.
Workaround or solution:
  • Redirect the STD out and STD err to different files when using the Windows startAgent.cmd start script to restart a Plain Agent.
  • Use the MKS Korn shell to execute a Plain Agent start script.
1.0
 

Installation

Change Request Number
Description and Workaround or Solution
Found In
Fixed In
376887
Because there is currently an incompatibility between Java 5 and Java 6, the WLOC Agent must be run with the same version of Java as the endpoint to which the WLOC Agent is communicating. Therefore, you will need to choose between the two kits when installing a WLOC Agent.
  • A WLOC 10.3 installer that includes a Java 5 JDK (indicated by the _jdk5 suffix)
  • A WLOC 10.3 installer that includes a Java 6 JDK (indicated by the _jdk6 suffix)
Either of these kits may be used to install a WLOC Controller. To determine which kit you need to use to install a WLOC Agent, you first need to determine the version of Java being run by the endpoint that the Agent will manage. If the managed endpoint will be running Java 5, then pick the kit with the _jdk5 suffix and install the WLOC Agent using that kit. If the managed endpoint will be running Java 6, then pick the kit with the _jdk6 suffix and install the WLOC Agent using that kit.
1.0
 
345632
WLOC should not be installed on Windows into a BEA_HOME directory that contains more than one contiguous space. Multiple contiguous spaces in the directory name will cause problems for the WLOC Configuration Wizard.
1.0
 
345690
When installing WLOC, the maximum length of the BEA_HOME directory is 95 characters.
1.0
 
361185
When you uninstall WLOC, a subset of files may remain on disk, such as the WLOC Administration Console preference store and other console files.
Workaround or solution:
Manually delete the files.
1.0
 

Using the Configuration Wizard

Change Request Number
Description and Workaround or Solution
Found In
Fixed In
362779
The WLOC Configuration Wizard does not display multi-byte characters in the Japanese Windows environment.
1.0
 
364329
Copying and cutting passwords out of WLOC Configuration Wizard fields to the Windows clipboard is not supported. If attempted, the system will beep indicating that it is prohibited.
1.0
 

Using the WLOC Administration Console

Change Request Number
Description and Workaround or Solution
Found In
Fixed In
380156
When creating a custom metric for a process group, if you attempt to create another custom metric without an intervening page refresh, the list of process groups is not populated.
Workaround or solution:
Refresh the page before trying to create another custom metric.
1.0
 
380150
When toggling a chart’s Show Title preference from on to off, and then back to on again, the title does not appear until the page is refreshed. The Show Title preference value is saved correctly however.
Workaround or solution:
Refresh the page after toggling the Show Title option on or off.
1.0
 
380144
When pausing a chart on the Monitoring page, the text “Pause” appears in the chart title and is replicated while the chart is paused.
1.0
 
380140
Upon selecting a chart on the Monitoring page, the chart is given visual focus with a blue border. However, the only way to remove that focus is to choose another chart, leave the page and come back, or set preferences for the chart, which also clears it. The chart having focus only affects preferences currently being read and/or set on the chart.
1.0
 
380073
When using the Coherence Smart Pack sum metric (ClusterNodeMBean.MemoryAvailableMB), the metric value is not plotted in the graph on the Monitoring page.
Workaround or solution:
Try to construct a comparable custom metric or monitor values individually for each endpoint.
1.0
 
380055
When importing service metadata from a WebLogic domain configuration, the Administration Console does not validate that the path and file entered are valid from a file-system perspective, which results in an error.
Workaround or solution:
Verify that the entered path and filename are correct before attempting to re-import the service metadata again.
1.0
 
380008
On the Process Group page, when clicking the Remove Process Group button without first selecting a process group, no message is printed indicating a choice must be made; therefore, the operation is a NOOP.
1.0
 
379995
If you click Run Action on the Actions page or Run Pipeline on the Pipelines page without first selecting an action or pipeline, you are presented with the appropriate dialog, but the action or pipeline name is blank. This is because the user is not first prompted to select an action or pipeline.
Workaround or solution:
Cancel out of the dialog and select an action or pipeline to run.
1.0
 
379986
If you select Unassign Policy on the Active Policies page without first selecting a policy, a subsequent attempt will fail even if you select a policy.
Workaround or solution:
Refresh the Active Policies page before trying to unassign a policy again.
1.0
 
346359
While browsing the Interactive topology view, the focus of the node users are attempting to click on may not be clear, which can cause incorrect expansion of selected node.
1.0
 
379873
When a CRON process constraint is used to stop multiple instances, the Administration Console’s count of running processes for that service may not be updated.
1.0
 
379869
When performing approval actions using the Approvals table, no confirmation message appears at the top of the page. A message should appear in the Event Viewer indicating whether the approval was approved or denied.
1.0
 
379858
When performing actions using the Service Detail page, a warning message may appear indicating further action is required, such as “Please select a process group”. After selecting a process group and finishing the action, the message may still appear.
Workaround or solution:
Manually refresh the page to remove the message.
1.0
 
379778
In some cases, the visual state of a running process may not change without a manual refresh of the page.
1.0
 
379689
When creating a new Agent binding you cannot set its initial state.
Workaround or solution:
Use the Agents table to change the Agent state.
1.0
 
379279
When cloning a process group from the service details page, if you click Cancel, and then try to re-enter the clone process again, you may experience an exception.
Workaround or solution:
Try navigating to the service details page again or simply refresh the page.
1.0
 
379273
When defining new JVMs for a service, you can create variables, but you cannot specify the variable in the Port field during the same assistant/wizard flow.
Workaround or solution:
You can later go into the JVM definition and specify the Port variable name to use.
1.0
 
378890
In Firefox browsers, the chart resize icon may appear misaligned with the lower-right corner of the chart that it resides in.
1.0
 
377593
While creating a new action, if you use the Back button to return the first page, the previously selected action type is not persisted.
Workaround or solution:
While creating a new action, if you back up to the first page, you will need to explicitly reselect the action type that you want to create.
1.0
 
333678
In certain scenarios, a session may time out while using the Administration Console. For example, you may click a button or link and be prompted to authenticate before continuing. Upon re-authenticating, you may be directed to the last resource you clicked on, but without the full context or decoration of the console application window.
Workaround or solution:
Re-enter the main Administration Console URL again.
1.0
 
331190
Depending on the complexity of the user’s inventory, the Interactive topology view (Tree) diagram in the Inventory pane may overlap nodes, making them difficult to read.
Workaround or solution:
Collapse nodes to reduce the complexity of the diagram and minimize overlap.
1.0
 
331209
When viewing the interactive view of the Inventory pane, if a JVM or service life cycle change occurs (for example, the service gets undeployed) the topology diagram does not dynamically update to reflect the life cycle change.
1.0
10.3
331583
If you attempt to log in to the WLOC Administration Console using a user account that is not assigned to any roles and subsequently receive a 403 error, you must open a new browser before attempting to log in again.
1.0
 
339053
When an Agent is restarted, the WLOC Administration Console may show the state of JVMs managed by that Agent as unreachable even after the Agent is fully running. In addition, when the Controller is restarted, the JVMs that it manages may not show up in the Inventory pane.
Workaround or solution:
Refresh the browser window.
1.0
10.3
343083
You may experience problems viewing configuration information in the following situations:
  • When a JVM is added to the Inventory pane initially, the full association of the JVM instance to its service and process group may not be known. Consequently, when you click the name of the JVM instance, the complete details of the JVM instance may not display on the JVM instance page.
  • Workaround or solution:

    Refresh the browser page.

  • If one or more spaces are used in the service, process group, or JVM instance name, the complete details of the JVM instance may not display on the JVM instance page.
  • Workaround or solution:

    Delete and recreate the service, process group, or JVM instance without using spaces in the name.

1.0
10.3
346399
If you manually start a JVM instance using the Run Action method, the JVM instance may not appear dynamically or its performance chart may not appear correctly in the WLOC Administration Console.
1.0
10.3
348205
WLOC does not support nested groups. If you use nested groups, you may encounter the following issues:
  • Users that are members of a nested group do not get the permissions that they should.
  • Deleting a group that is a member of a second group does not remove the group name from the second group.
Workaround or solution:
Oracle recommends that you do not create nested groups in WLOC 1.0.
1.0
 
349705
When viewing a chart with a large Y-axis values, the values may overlap with the Y-axis label.
Workaround or solution:
Position the mouse pointer over a data point to view the current value. You can hide the axis labels using the chart preferences, if necessary.
1.0
10.3
354759
While viewing the Inventory pane, in certain circumstances a node labeled loc may appear. This node represents internal state that the WLOC Administration Console uses to contain inventory nodes and can be ignored.
1.0
10.3
361485
When defining a process group, if you are importing from another service, running WebLogic domain, or WebLogic domain configuration, if you select the following flags:
  • Allow me to choose instances to import
  • Show me a summary of uncollectable metadata from config.xml
and then click the Back button, you are returned to the Service Properties page (the first page of the service assistant).
1.0
 
361981
When viewing the Inventory pane, entries do not appear in alphabetical order.
1.0
 
362305
When viewing the interactive view of the Inventory pane, when a service life cycle change occurs, for example, a service gets added or deleted, the change may not be reflected in the currently viewed diagram.
1.0
10.3
362684
Deleting the JVM file copy operations from the File Management page using the WLOC Administration Console has no effect. The entries are not removed.
Workaround or solution:
Delete the file copy operations directly from the metadata-config.xml file located in the config directory of the Controller installation.
1.0
10.3
362884
In some high availability circumstances, the performance graphs for a service may not reflect a problem condition. For example, when the chart is plotting a negative value (-1). Under normal circumstances, the message Problem Detected would be displayed next to the data series in the chart legend.
Workaround or solution:
Check the Tasks and Event viewer, Events tab, or log files for potential error conditions.
1.0
 
362892
When creating a file copy operation for an ISO constraint, the Copy Type drop-down list includes the At Shutdown option. This option is not valid for an ISO constraint file copy operation.
Workaround or solution:
Do not select this option for an ISO constraint file copy operation.
1.0
10.3
362964
If you do not have the appropriate permissions to view the Agent configuration (for example, if your user account is assigned to the ServiceAdmin role only), you will not be able to view the configured software when you click the Available Software tab for the associated resource pool. The Available Software table will appear empty even if there is software configured for the Agent.
1.0
 
363389
When creating a new constraint, after you select a type and click Next, if you go back to the initial screen using the Back button, the Type value returns to the default value.
Workaround or solution:
Reselect the type and proceed.
1.0
10.3
363405
When importing service metadata from a running WebLogic domain, the host parameter may include the DNS and IP address form of the host address. This may occur when connecting to the Administration server in some environments.
Workaround or solution:
Edit the address, as required.
1.0
10.3
363409
In some circumstances, you may receive a Javascript error in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 when attempting to save a JVM instance configuration.
Workaround or solution:
Try the operation using the Mozilla Firefox (or another) browser.
1.0
10.3
363442
When using Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or above, you may experience repaint problems on smaller or laptop monitors when scrolling pages with tab controls at the top.
Workaround or solution:
Resize the browser window by dragging its edges or maximizing it.
1.0
 
363666
When deleting connection or connection factory entries, the Connections page may refresh too quickly causing the entries to reappear as if they were not deleted.
Workaround or solution:
Refresh the browser window.
1.0
10.3
363673
When you configure a console notification to add an icon to an element in the user interface (for example, the Services table), upon subsequent visits to the Service table, Monitoring tab, or Inventory pane, the icon is not present.
Workaround or solution:
The icon should appear the next time the constraint is triggered and the console notification is executed.
1.0
10.3
363862
When viewing a constraint in the Constraints table that was configured with an event status of succeeded, the configured status appears as failed.
Workaround or solution:
Clicking on the rule definition shows the correct status.
1.0
10.3
363912
When navigating a table with more than 10 entries, the to value (shown below) in the table page navigation located above the table may reflect an incorrect value.
Showing from-to of total
1.0
10.3
364038
The Tasks and Events viewer displays the most current entries at the top of the viewer by default. If you refresh the browser window the order is reversed and the most current entries are displayed at the bottom.
1.0
10.3
364138
When adding a process group to a service, if you select Import from another service, you may experience an error on the service selection screen.
Workaround or solution:
Try importing from a different service or from another source, such as a running WebLogic domain, creating the process group from scratch, or cloning another process group or JVM instance from the Service page.
1.0
10.3
364160
You may encounter an error when importing a process group from a service if you rename the process group during the import process.
Workaround or solution:
Try importing the process group from a service without changing its name.
1.0
10.3
364275
When adding two process groups or JVM instances to a service back-to-back (without refresh), both items may not be registered as being added.
Workaround or solution:
Refresh the page between each add operation to ensure all process groups and JVM instances are added.
1.0
10.3
364356
In some cases, following a Controller restart the Inventory pane may appear empty on initial display because of problems reading the user inventory.
Workaround or solution:
Refresh the browser window.
1.0
 
364775
When creating a policy, if you select the “Based on the value of an attribute or function” option, click Define Custom to define a custom metric, and you modify the instance portion of the generated metric prior to clicking the Finish button to create the policy, the change is not recognized.
1.0
 
365102
If you attempt to log in to the WLOC Administration Console using a user account that is not assigned to any roles, you will see entries in the Inventory pane including resource pools and JVMs representing runtime data. However, when you click on the entries, you will not see any data because you are not authorized.
1.0
 
365402
If you save a blank password when configuring a JVM instance, when viewing the configuration you may see a string with the value of null in the JVM password field.
Workaround or solution:
Clear the password field and save the JVM configuration.
1.0
10.3
365443
The Filter tool that appears at the top of some pages in the WLOC Administration Console only sorts information on the current page.
1.0
 
365480
If you attempt to delete a monitoring view that has charts associated with it, you may encounter an error.
Workaround or solution:
Delete all charts associated with the view before deleting it.
1.0
10.3
365577
Use of multi-byte character sets for the display and update of data may cause problems with the WLOC Administration Console.
Workaround or solution:
Whenever possible, use English Locale when using the WLOC Administration Console.
1.0
 

Logging and Auditing

Change Request Number
Description and Workaround or Solution
Found In
Fixed In
326115
If the Controller or Agent does not have access to the log rotation directory that is configured, no error will be logged and no logs will be rotated.
1.0
 
361988
When using the WLOC Administration Console, you may notice a message similar to the following:
<Error> <org.apache.beehive.netui.pageflow.internal.AdapterManager> <BEA-000000> <ServletContainerAdapter manager not initialized correctly.> <Feb 19, 2008 3:41:53 PM EST> <Info>
This message is emitted from one of the frameworks used by the console and can be ignored.
1.0
 
365325
[Fatal Error] - premature end of file message may appear in the Controller log file during WLOC Administration Console usage.
Workaround or solution:
This message can be ignored.
1.0
 

Monitoring

Change Request Number
Description and Workaround or Solution
Found In
Fixed In
377590
Messages in the event viewer for service placement failures do not wrap or truncate, which can cause the scroll bar to appear out of view.
Workaround or solution:
The complete service placement failure messages can be viewed in the Events tab, and eventually the message will roll out of the viewer.
1.0
 
348658
By default, if there is an error collecting a metric for an observer constraint, the constraint will not match existing metric values. To resolve this issue, a setting, ignore-observer-errors, was added to all observer constraints. If this is set to true, then existing metric values will match the constraint. This means that events will be fired based on the last known value of the metric before the error occurred.
1.0
10.3
365683
When using the monitoring feature, if you add a chart based on a custom metric to the active view, the data may not be monitored correctly.
1.0
10.3

Running the Controller or Agent as a Windows Service

Change Request Number
Description and Workaround or Solution
Found In
Fixed In
340911
When running a WLOC Agent as a Windows service it must be run on a local disk drive. Running the Agent as a Windows service from a mapped drive is not supported.
1.0
 
361367
The WLOC Configuration Wizard does not create Start Menu items for the following operations:
  • Starting the Controller or Agent
  • Installing the Controller or Agent as a Windows service
Workaround or solution:
Execute the following scripts that are located in the bin directory of the Controller and Agent installation. For example:
BEA_HOME\user_projects\controller\bin
BEA_HOME\user_projects\agent1\bin.
  • Start the Controller: startController.cmd
  • Install the Controller as a Windows service: install_ControllerService.cmd
  • Remove the Controller as a Windows service: remove_ControllerService.cmd
  • Start the Agent: startAgent.cmd
  • Install the Agent as a Windows service: install_AgentService.cmd
  • Remove the Agent as a Windows service: remove_AgentService.cmd
For more information about the above topics, see Starting and Stopping the Controller and Agents.
1.0
 


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