Installation Guide

     Previous  Next    Open TOC in new window  Open Index in new window  View as PDF - New Window  Get Adobe Reader - New Window
Content starts here

Preparing for the Installation

The following sections provide information that you need to know before installing your BEA software:

 


Installation Overview

The BEA Products installation program provides a complete framework for the installation and uninstallation of your entire BEA software product, or individual components, as desired.

Two versions of the installation program are available:

Both programs provide the same functionality; all installation procedures described in this document apply to both versions of the installation program.

WebLogic Express Support

You can use either of the two BEA Products installation programs to install BEA WebLogic Express™. WebLogic Express is a cost-effective entry point to the WebLogic product family, creating a productive ramp for you to begin using BEAs market-leading application server technology. From WebLogic Express, you can easily upgrade to other products in the WebLogic family, which allows you to take advantage of a wide variety of enterprise-level functionality.

To install WebLogic Express, you install WebLogic Server and then install a WebLogic Express license. The WebLogic Express license activates WebLogic Express features. For additional information about WebLogic Express, see the WebLogic Express documentation at the following URL:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13222_01/wls/docs92/wlx.html

Note: BEA WebLogic Express is not available in the 9.2 BETA release.

Installation Modes

The BEA Products installation program can be used in the following modes:

 


Installable Product Components

There are two types of BEA Products installation programs to install:

Note: If you are using the BEA Products installation program for BEA WebLogic Server, only the WebLogic Server components are available for installation.

For additional information about:

WebLogic Server

BEA WebLogic Server® provides the core services that ensure a reliable, available, scalable, and high-performing execution environment for your application. It includes Apache Beehive, a cross-container framework that provides a consistent, abstract, and easily toolable programming model, providing a way for developers to build applications more productively.

WebLogic Server consists of the following subcomponents that can be installed on your system:

WebLogic Integration

BEA WebLogic Integration 9.2 is a unified solution to integrating business systems within an enterprise. WebLogic Integration provides a development and run-time framework that unifies the following components of business integration into a single flexible environment:

WebLogic Integration 9.2 is an Integrated Development Environment based on Eclipse platform, which aims at reducing the cost of management and operations by providing highly reliable, stable, scalable, and mission critical integration solutions.

WebLogic Integration combines the divergent pieces of the business integration picture, including ERP, CRM, legacy applications, business users, supply chains, and trading partners, by providing a versatile development environment to deliver rapid business integration with simplified production and management.

WebLogic Integration comprises the following subcomponents that can be installed on your system:

Workshop for WebLogic Platform

BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform provides a unified development environment that enables you to develop web applications and Web services regardless of your experience in developing applications using J2EE. It provides you with a suite of tools for developing, debugging, and deploying sophisticated enterprise applications.

BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform is an integrated development environment for building enterprise-class J2EE applications on the WebLogic Platform. BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform provides an intuitive programming model that enables you to focus on building the business logic of your application rather than on complex implementation details. Whether you are an application developer with a business problem to solve or a J2EE expert building business infrastructure, BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform makes it easy to design, test, and deploy enterprise-class applications.

BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform consists of two parts: an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and a standards-based runtime environment. The purpose of the IDE is to remove the complexity in building applications for the entire WebLogic platform. Applications you build in the IDE are constructed from high-level components rather than low-level API calls. Best practices and productivity are built into both the IDE and runtime. BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform also includes the workshop examples to help you to get acquainted with the product.

You can use BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform to:

BEA WebLogic Portal

WebLogic Portal's flexible, powerful framework enables you to create portal interfaces independent of your application logic or Web pages. In addition to this, WebLogic Portal's framework, lifecycle management tools, and business services enable you build and assemble portals quickly. You can also simultaneously enforce business policies, processes, and security requirements.

WebLogic Portal's framework and tools are powerful and easy to use that you can create a sophisticated, fully functional portal in minutes. You can also develop the individual components such as look and feel elements, pages, portlets quickly and independently. They can be combined dynamically, and reused, giving portal developers, portal administrators, and end users the power to create and aggregate customized audience-specific portals.

BEA JRockit JDK

The BEA JRockit® JDK provides tools, utilities, and a complete runtime environment for developing and running applications using the Java programming language. The BEA JRockit JDK includes the BEA JRockit Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and BEA JRockit Mission Control. The BEA JRockit JVM is developed uniquely for server-side applications and optimized for Intel architectures to ensure reliability, scalability, and manageability for Java applications. BEA JRockit Mission Control is a tool set developed to monitor, manage, profile, and eliminate memory leaks in your Java applications.

The BEA JRockit JDK is fully integrated into the BEA Products installation program, in addition to being available as a standalone JDK. BEA JRockit is installed automatically when you use the BEA Products installation program to install your software on Windows and Linux 32-bit platforms. On Windows platforms only, two JDKs are installed on your system: the BEA JRockit JDK, optimized for server-side applications, and the Sun JDK, provided for optional use by both client-side and server-side applications.

For more information about the BEA JRockit JDK, see the JRockit documentation at http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13188_01/jrockit/webdocs/index.html.

Note: The BEA JRockit 1.5.0 JDK is certified to be compatible with Sun Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) version 1.5.0.

BEA JRockit Mission Control

The BEA JRockit Mission Control tools suite consists of the following components:

A separate license is required to enable the JRockit Mission Control tools. For more information about the JRockit Mission Control license types, see "BEA JRockit 1.5.0 JDK License Package Offerings" on the Licensing page at the following URLs:

For more information about BEA JRockit Mission Control, see "BEA JRockit Mission Control" in "Understanding BEA JRockit" in Introduction to JRockit JDK at the following URL:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13188_01/jrockit/geninfo/genintro/understa.html

Mercury Profiling Tools

The Mercury profiling tools, which are provided as part of this JRockit installation, can be used by Java and J2EE developers in a development environment to profile application performance. During the installation process, you are presented with the option to install the Mercury profiling tools. If you do so, you are prompted to accept the Mercury Tools license agreement. You must accept the license agreement to install the tools. For more information about these tools, see http://www.mercury.com/us/products/diagnostics/.

 


Product Distribution Methods

Your BEA software is distributed on both the BEA Web site and DVD.

Web Distribution

You can download your software from the BEA Web site at http://commerce.bea.com.

Two installation programs are available for download:

DVD Distribution

If you purchased your software from your local sales representative, you will find the following items in the product box:

 


Installation Prerequisites

The following sections specify the installation prerequisites:

System Requirements

The system requirements for your installation are given in the following table.

Table 1-1 System Requirements 
Component
Requirement
Platform configuration
A supported configuration of hardware, operating system, JDK, and database is required. See Supported Configurations at http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13196_01/platform/suppconfigs/index.html.
The Supported Configurations documentation specifies other prerequisites and recommendations, such as recommended versions of the JDK.
Processor
1-GHz CPU recommended
Hard disk drive
A complete installation requires approximately 1.80 GB of disk space.
Memory
1 GB of RAM minimum although BEA recommends 2GB of RAM.
Color bit depth display and size
For graphical user interface (GUI) mode installation, 8-bit color depth (256 colors) is required.
For console-mode and silent-mode installation, there is no color bit depth requirement.
JDK
The BEA Products installation program requires a Java run-time environment (JRE) to run. A JRE is bundled in the Windows installation program and in some UNIX installation programs (those with filenames ending in .bin). For other UNIX platforms, the installation program does not install a JDK. Filenames for these installation programs end in .jar. To run the .jar installation programs, you must have the appropriate version of the JDK installed on your system, and include the bin directory of the JDK at the beginning of the PATH variable definition. It is important that you use a JDK because the installation process assigns values to JAVA_HOME and related variables to point to the JDK directory.

Temporary Disk Space Requirements

The BEA installation program uses a temporary directory into which it extracts the files necessary to install the software on the target system. During the installation process, your temporary directory must contain sufficient space to accommodate the compressed Java run-time environment (JRE) bundled with the installation program and an uncompressed copy of the JRE that is expanded into the temporary directory. The extracted files are deleted from the temporary directory at the end of the installation process. As a general rule, installation programs require approximately 2.5 times the amount of temporary space that is ultimately required by the installed files.

By default, the installation program uses the following temporary directories:

Note: If you do not have enough temporary space to run the installation program, you are prompted to specify an alternate directory or exit the installation program.

To make sure that you have adequate temporary space, you may want to allocate an alternate directory for this purpose. To do so, follow the instructions provided in the following table.

Table 1-2 Setting Up Disk Space
Platform
Perform this step . . .
Windows
Do one of the following:
  • Set the TMP system variable to a directory of your choice.
  • If starting the installation program from the command line, include the -Djava.io.tmpdir=tmpdirpath option, replacing tmpdirpath with the full path of the directory that you want to designate as a temporary storage area for the BEA Products installation program. For example:
  • platform920_win32.exe -mode=console -Djava.io.tmpdir=D:\Temp

UNIX
Enter the following option on the command line when you start the installation program:
-Djava.io.tmpdir=tmpdirpath
Here, tmpdirpath is the full path of the directory that you want to designate as a temporary storage area for the BEA Products installation program.

Administrator Privileges

On Windows systems, Administrator privileges are required in the following circumstances:

If a user without Administrator privileges installs the software, the Start menu entries are created in the user's local Start menu folder.

Licensing

Your BEA software cannot be used without a valid license. When you install your software, the installation program installs a development license (license.bea) into the BEA Home directory, to allow you to start using the product immediately.

To use your software in a full-scale production environment, you must purchase a production license. To find out how to do so, contact your sales representative or visit the BEA corporate Web site at http://www.bea.com.

For more information about development and production licenses, see About BEA Product Licenses.

Development and production licenses for pre-9.2 versions of WebLogic Server do not work with WebLogic Server 9.2; any such license must be upgraded to 9.2. Procedures for upgrading a license file and installing permanent licenses are provided in Upgrading Licenses from Previous Software Releases.

 


Selecting Directories for Your Installation

During the installation process, you need to specify locations for the following directories:

Choosing a BEA Home Directory

When you install your BEA software, you are prompted to specify a BEA Home directory. This directory serves as a repository for common files that are used by multiple BEA products installed on the same machine. For this reason, the BEA Home directory can be considered a central support directory for all the BEA products installed on your system.

The files in the BEA Home directory are essential to ensuring that BEA software operates correctly on your system. They perform the following types of functions:

The following illustration shows the structure of a sample BEA Home directory, on a Windows platform, which includes both the Sun and BEA JRockit JDKs.

Figure 1-1 BEA Home Directory

BEA Home Directory

It depicts only the files and directories required in the BEA Home directory. If you choose to install the product in the BEA Home directory, you will see additional directories such as weblogic92. For more information on product directories, see Understanding the Product Directory Structure on page 7-4.

Note: On some UNIX platforms, the installation program does not install the JDK.

During installation of your BEA software, you are prompted to choose an existing BEA Home directory or specify a path to create a new BEA Home directory. If you choose to create a new directory, the installation program automatically creates it for you.

Notes: BEA recommends that you do not exceed a maximum of 12 characters when naming your BEA Home directory. If the name of this directory has more than 12 characters, or if the directory name is too long and if there are spaces in the directory name, the CLASSPATH may not be resolved properly.
Note: You can install only one instance of each version of a BEA product in a single BEA Home directory. For example, you can install only one instance of WebLogic Server 9.2 in a BEA Home directory, but that BEA Home directory may also contain an instance of WebLogic Server 9.0.
Note: If the BEA Home directory is not empty and it does not contain registry.xml, or if any of installation directories are not empty, the following messages will be displayed about it with the option to continue installation, or return to the directory selection task:

Understanding the Functions of the BEA Home Directory

The files and directories in the BEA Home directory are described in the following table.

Table 1-3 BEA Home Directory Description 
Component
Description
jdkxxx directory
Contains the software for the Sun JDK if it is installed with your software. The JDK provides the Java run-time environment (JRE) and tools for compiling and debugging Java applications. In this directory name, xxx indicates the version of the Sun JDK installed on your system, for example jdk150_06.
jrockit90_xxx directory
(Windows and Linux only)
Contains the software for the BEA JRockit JDK installed with your software. The JDK provides the Java run-time environment (JRE) and tools for compiling and debugging Java applications. In this directory name, xxx indicates the version of the JRockit JDK installed on your system, such as jrockit90_150_06.
logs directory
Contains a history file of installation and uninstallation for the BEA Home directory.
utils directory
Contains utilities that are used to support the installation of all BEA products installed in this BEA Home directory. The utils.jar file contains code that supports the UpdateLicense utility.
weblogic92
This directory contains the following directories:
  • beehive
  • common
  • integration
  • javelin
  • platform
  • portal
  • samples
  • server
  • uninstall
  • workshop
workshop92
This directory contains the following:
  • Eclipse v 3.1.2 to ensure the tight coupling between workshop and Eclipse. Eclipse is not an IDE version'.
license.bea file
An XML file that contains the license keys for all the BEA products installed in the BEA Home directory.
Licenses are release specific. For example, you cannot use a license from a previous release with WebLogic Server 9.2. To convert a pre-9.2 license.bea file to a WebLogic Server 9.2 license.bea file, see Upgrading Licenses from Previous Software Releases.
To update your license.bea file for additional functionality, see Updating Your license.bea File.

Note: Do not edit the license.bea file manually. Doing so may cause operating problems for the currently installed BEA products, or result in problems later when BEA products are installed for maintenance upgrades.

registry.xml file
A registry file that contains a persistent record of all BEA products installed on the target system. This registry contains product-related information, such as version number, service pack number, and location of the installation directory.

Note: Do not edit this file manually. Doing so may cause operating problems for the currently installed BEA products, or result in installation problems when future BEA products or maintenance upgrades are installed.

For more information about the BEA registry file, see "Using the BEA Registry API" in ISV Partners' Guide at the following URL:
UpdateLicense (.cmd/.sh)
A command file (Windows) or a shell script (UNIX) that updates the current license.bea file with new license sections. The result is a merged license that contains both the existing and new license sections. For details about using the UpdateLicense utility, see Updating Your license.bea File.
patch_weblogic920
This directory contains the following directories:
  • backup
  • patch_jars
  • profiles
  • registry

Note: The directory user_projects does not contain anything when the product is installed on the disk. It is used as the default location for your files when you create domains at the location.

Creating Multiple BEA Home Directories

Although it is possible to create more than one BEA Home directory, we recommend that you avoid doing so. In almost all situations, a single BEA Home directory is sufficient. There may be circumstances, however, in which you prefer to maintain separate development and production environments, with a separate product stack for each. With two directories, you can update your development environment (in a BEA Home directory) without modifying the production environment until you are ready to do so.

Choosing a Product Installation Directory

The product installation directory contains all the software components that you choose to install on your system, including program files and examples. You are prompted during your initial installation to choose a product installation directory. Table gives information about the product install directories for different products if you accept default on windows:

Table 1-4 Default Product Installation Directories for BEA Products
Product
Product Installation Directory
BEA WebLogic Server
<BEA_HOME>\weblogic92
BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform
<BEA_HOME>\workshop92

The Figure 1-2 illustrates the window for choosing different directories for WebLogic Server and BEA Workshop for WebLogic Workshop.

Figure 1-2 Product Installation Directories window

Product Installation Directories window

Here, C:\bea_dijon is the BEA Home directory and weblogic92 is the product installation directory for the WebLogic Server 9.2 software. However, you can specify any name and location on your system for your product installation directory; there is no requirement that you name the directory weblogic92 or create it under the BEA Home directory.

The installation program installs the software components in a product installation directory represented by the WL_HOME variable. If, during your initial installation, you choose to install WebLogic Server only, and not all of the products available for installation, and you later decide to install additional products, such as Workshop for WebLogic Platform (using the same BEA Home directory), you are not prompted, during the subsequent installations, to specify a product installation directory. The installation program detects the WL_HOME directory and installs the additional products under it.

A description of the BEA Products directory structure is provided in Understanding the Product Directory Structure.

 


Choosing the Type of Installation

Each BEA Products installation program provides two types of installation: Complete and Custom.

Complete Installation

In a complete installation for WebLogic Server and BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform, following components of BEA products are installed:

In a complete installation for WebLogic Server, BEA Workshop for WebLogic Platform, WebLogic Integration, and WebLogic Portal, the following components of BEA products are installed:

On Windows systems, two JDKs are installed: BEA JRockit 1.5.0 JDK and the Sun JDK 1.5.0. For more information, see BEA JRockit JDK.

You cannot install the following sub-components if you choose complete installation

Custom Installation

In a custom installation, you have the following options:

On Windows systems only, two JDKs are installed: the BEA JRockit 1.5.0 JDK and the Sun JDK 1.5.0. For more information, see BEA JRockit JDK.

 


About Installing Node Manager as a Windows Service

When installing your software on a Windows platform, you can optionally install WebLogic Server Node Manager as a Windows service. The WebLogic Server Node Manager is used to:

In a multi-machine environment, you must install Node Manager on each machine that hosts Managed Server and Administration Server instances of WebLogic Server.

Note: You must have Administrator privileges to install Node Manager as a Windows service.

In a custom installation, you can optionally install Node Manager as a Windows service. If you select Yes, Node Manager is installed as a Windows service to Listen Port 5556. To avoid port contention, you can specify an alternate Listen Port if desired. If the Listen Port number you specify is currently being used by a running application, the installation program prompts you to enter a different Node Manager Listen Port number. At the completion of the installation process, Node Manager is started using the port specified.

Note: You are prompted to install Node Manager as a Windows service only during an initial installation. If you install additional product components during a subsequent installation, you are not prompted to install Node Manager as a Windows service.

To install Node Manager as a Windows service in silent mode, you need to specify the appropriate values in the silent.xml file. For more information, see Creating a silent.xml File for Silent-Mode Installation.

You can also install and uninstall Node Manager as a Windows service using the following scripts that are provided when you install WebLogic Server:

Note: To perform Server migration and other tasks, the user ID that execute scripts such as wlscontrol.sh must have enough sufficient security permissions. This includes being able to bring an IP address online or take an IP address offline via a network interface. The commands required to perform server migration are ifconfig and arping. Since these scripts require elevated OS privileges, it is important to note that this can prevent a potential security vulnerability.

Additional Considerations for Node Manager Installation

For more information about Node Manager, including instructions for installing it on a UNIX system, see "Using Node Manager to Control Servers" in Managing Server Startup and Shutdown at http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13222_01/wls/docs92/server_start/nodemgr.html.

 


Generating a Verbose Installation Log

If you launch the installation from the command line or from a script, you can specify the -log option to generate a verbose installation log. The installation log stores messages about events that occur during the installation process, including informational, warning, error, and fatal messages. This type of file can be especially useful for silent installations.

Note: You may see some warning messages in the installation log. However, unless a fatal error occurs, the installation program completes the installation successfully. The installation user interface indicates the success or failure of each installation attempt, and the installation log file includes an entry indicating that the installation was successful.

Syntax

To create a verbose log file during installation, include the -log=full_path_to_log_file option in the command line. For example:

platform920_win32.exe -log=C:\logs\server_install.log

The path must specify a file. You cannot create a folder simply by including a name for it in a pathname; your path should specify only existing folders. If your path includes a nonexistent folder when you execute the command, the installation program does not create the log file.

 


Where to Find Upgrade Information

For information about upgrading your software with maintenance patches and service packs, if available, see Installing Maintenance Updates and Service Packs at

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13179_01/common/docs92/smart_update/index.html

Note: If you are installing WebLogic Server 9.2 into an existing BEA Home directory that contains an installation of WebLogic Server 7.0 or 8.1, all custom security providers that reside in the default location, WL_HOME\server\lib\mbeantypes, where WL_HOME specifies the root directory of the pre-9.2 installation, are upgraded automatically. If all of your custom security providers reside in the default location, then the security provider upgrade step is complete, and you do not have to perform any of the additional steps in "Upgrading a Security Provider" in Upgrading WebLogic Application Environments at
Note: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13179_01/common/docs92/upgrade/upgrade_sp.html.
Note: You can verify that a custom security provider has been upgraded by locating the upgraded security provider, security_provider_name_Upgraded, in the WL_HOME\server\lib\mbeantypes directory, where WL_HOME specifies the root directory of the 9.2 installation and security_provider_name specifies the name of the security provider.

Maintenance Pack Release Using an Upgrade Installer

You can upgrade your WebLogic Platform installation by using the downloadable upgrade installer.

When a maintenance release is available, you can download a package upgrade installer from the BEA Customer Support Web site at http://support.bea.com.

Two package upgrade installers are available: a WebLogic Platform upgrade installer for all components of WebLogic Platform, and a WebLogic Server upgrade installer, which includes WebLogic Server and WebLogic Workshop only. Both programs provide the same functionality, the procedures provided in this section apply to both installers.

These installers upgrade only those components that are already installed on your system. For example, if your installation consists of the WebLogic Server, WebLogic Workshop and WebLogic Portal components of WebLogic Platform 9.2, the upgrade installer upgrades only those components.

The upgrade installer can be run in the following modes on both UNIX and Windows platforms:

Graphical mode: For instructions, see Using the Upgrade Installer in Graphical Mode on page 3-5.

Console mode: For instructions, see Using the Upgrade Installer in Console Mode on page 4-9.

Silent mode: For instructions, see Using the Upgrade Installer in Silent Mode on page 5-8.

To run graphical-mode installation, your console must support a Java-based GUI. If the installation program determines that your system cannot support a Java-based GUI, it automatically starts running in console-mode.

The upgrade installation programs require a Java run-time environment (JRE) to run. A JRE is bundled in the Windows installation program, and in some UNIX installation programs (those with filenames ending in .bin). For other UNIX platforms, the WebLogic Platform installation program does not include the Java 2 SDK. Filenames for these installation programs end in .jar. To run the .jar installation programs, you must have an appropriate version of a Java 2 SDK installed on your system, and include the bin directory of the Java 2 SDK at the beginning of your PATH system variable.

Note: It is important that you use an SDK because the installation process resets the JAVA_HOME, and related variables to point to this directory. All scripts installed with WebLogic Platform use this SDK by default, including scripts to start sample applications, the Configuration Wizard, and other WebLogic development tools.

  Back to Top       Previous  Next