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Oracle® Guardian Release Notes
10.3.2

Part Number E15057-01
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Oracle® Guardian

Release Notes

10.3.2

E15057-01

July 2009

This document describes the new and changed features in Oracle Guardian 10.3.2 and also provides a description of known and resolved issues.

Contents

This document includes the following topics:

What's New in Oracle Guardian 10.3.2

The following sections describe new and changed functionality in this Oracle Guardian release:

Changes for Guardian 10.3.2

The following sections describe what's new in Guardian 10.3.2.

Browser Support for Displaying Evaluation Summaries and Domain Inventories

By default, when you generate a Domain Inventory or Evaluation Summary, Guardian displays the results in the Document Pane of the graphical user interface. Guardian 10.3.2 now supports the use of a property file that causes this information to be displayed automatically in the default Web browser instead.

For details about creating and configuring this property file, see "Redirecting Display of Evaluation Summaries and Domain Inventories" in Oracle Guardian User's Guide.

Creating and Packaging Custom Signatures

Guardian 10.3.2 now supports the ability for you to create and package custom signatures. You can use this capability to leverage Guardian's ability to detect and identify configuration settings among the WebLogic domains in your environment that you might want to modify.

For example, if you want to determine whether a specific patch has been installed in all your WebLogic domains, you can do the following:

  1. Create a custom signature that detects whether the patch has been installed.

  2. Use Guardian to evaluate all your WebLogic domains and identify those in which this patch has not been installed.

For details about how to create and package custom signatures, see "Creating and Packaging Custom Signatures" in Oracle Guardian User's Guide.

Changes to Logging And Debug Preferences

In the previous release of Oracle Guardian, the following sets of options were available in Logging And Debug preferences:

  • Logging and Exceptions

  • Scenario Tracing

  • Pinpoint Tracing

  • Server Agent Debugging

In Guardian 10.3.2, the following changes have been made to simplify the selection of preferences:

  • The Logging and Exceptions section is changed to simply Logging, and the Exception Log Level dropdown list box is removed.

  • The Scenario Tracing and Pinpoint Tracing sections have been removed.

Usage Statistics No Longer Collected

In previous releases when you downloaded signatures from Oracle Support into your Guardian installation, Oracle collected high level statistics about signature usage in your installation. These statistics included how often each signature was evaluated and detected. Although no customer data was ever returned with these statistics, Oracle no longer collects any usage statistics.

Changes to Integrated Support

The following changes have been made to Guardian 10.3.2 regarding its integration with My Oracle Support:

  • In previous releases to obtain new Guardian software and signatures, the Update Wizard prompted you to enter your Customer Support Identifier, along with your My Oracle Support username and password. The Update Wizard no longer prompts you to enter a Customer Support Identifier to obtain these updates; you only need to enter your username and password.

  • The Service Request Wizard no longer connects to My Oracle Support. You still use this wizard to create a service request archive specific to a detected signature; however, the archive file is not automatically sent by Guardian to Oracle Support. If appropriate for resolving a technical issue or question related to the detected signature, you may optionally send this archive file to My Oracle Support, but this is done outside the use Guardian.

Changes for Guardian 10.3.1

The following sections describe what's new in Guardian 10.3.1.

Service Request Archive Replaces Automatic Case Creation

Programmatic case creation is no longer available using My Oracle Support. However, you can still create a Service Request Archive based on a detected signature that can be attached to a Service Request. This ensures that the Oracle support staff will have the same comprehensive information that they had when using the automated case creation.

Revised Update Wizard

The Update Wizard for automatically updating Guardian is now integrated with Oracle's customer service portal, Metalink. Note that the Guardian Update Site list that was returned in previous releases has been replaced by a list of Org Names (referred to as Customer Support Identifiers).

Changes for Guardian 10.3.0

The following sections describe what's new in Guardian 10.3.0:

Enable Save Evaluation

The evaluation of some signatures may hang the evaluation. To prevent this, open the Preferences page, and set the Guardian > Signature Evaluation Threshold parameter (in milliseconds). Then select the Enable Safe Evaluation checkbox. If enabled, the evaluation of a signature is terminated when this threshold is reached, and the Signature ID is written to the Hung Signature List. In addition, if a signature evaluation fails due to a runtime error, that Signature ID is written to the Problem Signature List. Guardian will not attempt to evaluate signatures in the Problem Signature List.

On-demand Deployment of the Guardian Agent

Previously, if you upgraded from a Guardian version earlier than 1.0.7 to a Guardian version of 1.0.7 or above, you had to manually undeploy the old Guardian Agent in the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console, and then manually deploy the new Agent. Now, if you are using WebLogic Server 10.3, the Guardian Agent is already installed and ready for on-demand deployment.

To enable the deployment, open the WebLogic Server 10.3 Administration Console and select Domain > Configuration > General > Enable Oracle Guardian Agent. For instructions, see Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console Online Help.

Accessibility Enhancements

Accessibility enhancements have been added for improved keyboard accessibility.

Known and Resolved Issues in Oracle Guardian 10.3.2

The following sections describe known issues in this release of Oracle Guardian, as well as issues that were resolved in earlier versions.

For instructions on installing Guardian 10.3.2, see the Oracle Guardian Installation Guide.

Negotiate Identity Assertion Provider Not Supported

Oracle Guardian 10.3.2 does not support the Negotiate Identity Assertion provider. If you are authenticated into the WebLogic domain only via the Negotiate Identity Assertion provider, you are unable to activate the domain in Guardian.

Workaround

Remove the Negotiate Identity Assertion provider from the security realm for the domain you want to activate, and reboot WebLogic Server.

Updates Not Available When Incorrect Support Credentials Are Used

If you enter incorrect username and password credentials in the Update Wizard when trying to connect to My Oracle Support, a Problem Occurred dialog box is displayed indicating that a network connection problem has occurred. When you subsequently click Ok in this dialog box, a message is displayed indicating that no updates are available. This problem can occur even when there are updates available for your Guardian installation.

Workaround

If you enter incorrect credentials for My Oracle Support, restart the Update Wizard and make sure your credentials are entered correctly.

Conventions

The following text conventions are used in this document:

Convention Meaning
boldface Boldface type indicates graphical user interface elements associated with an action, or terms defined in text or the glossary.
italic Italic type indicates book titles, emphasis, or placeholder variables for which you supply particular values.
monospace Monospace type indicates commands within a paragraph, URLs, code in examples, text that appears on the screen, or text that you enter.

Documentation Accessibility

Our goal is to make Oracle products, services, and supporting documentation accessible to all users, including users that are disabled. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Accessibility standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For more information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/.

Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentation

Screen readers may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, some screen readers may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.

Accessibility of Links to External Web Sites in Documentation

This documentation may contain links to Web sites of other companies or organizations that Oracle does not own or control. Oracle neither evaluates nor makes any representations regarding the accessibility of these Web sites.

Deaf/Hard of Hearing Access to Oracle Support Services

To reach Oracle Support Services, use a telecommunications relay service (TRS) to call Oracle Support at 1.800.223.1711. An Oracle Support Services engineer will handle technical issues and provide customer support according to the Oracle service request process. Information about TRS is available at http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/trs.html, and a list of phone numbers is available at http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/dro/trsphonebk.html.


Oracle Guardian Release Notes, 10.3.2

E15057-01

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