Release Notes
12c (12.1.2)
E37892-01
June 2013
This chapter describes issues associated with Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder. It includes the following topics:
This section contains information on the following issues:
Oracle does not distribute an Open-OVF rpm for OEL6. That rpm contains the /usr/bin/ova command, which you use in Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder to create assembly archives.
Use the following process to convert the OEL5 _source_ rpm for use on OEL6:
Example directory.
cd /tmp
Fetch the Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 source rpm.
wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/OracleVM/OVM3/latest/x86_64/open-ovf-1.1-1.0.47.el5.src.rpm
Extract the contents of the source rpm to the rpmbuild directory:
rpm --define '_topdir /tmp/rpmbuild' -i open-ovf-1.1-1.0.47.el5.src.rpm
Ignore the numerous warnings about nonexistent users and groups.
Change the following lines for the required version of python from 2.4 to 2.6:
BuildRequires: python-devel >= 2.4, libxml2-python Requires: python >= 2.4, libxml2-python
You can make the change with this sed script:
sed -i.bak -e s/2.4/2.6/ rpmbuild/SPECS/open-ovf.spec
Create a new binary rpm:
rpmbuild --define '_topdir /tmp/rpmbuild' -bb rpmbuild/SPECS/open-ovf.spec
Install the ova command from the new binary rpm:
sudo rpm -i rpmbuild/RPMS/noarch/open-ovf-1.1-1.0.47.el6.noarch.rpm
If certain libraries are missing from the VM, an exception may be recorded in the logs on the VM. The exception is the result of a file copy, and is harmless. The file is still successfully copied. The exception appears similar to the following:
[2012-04-25T03:04:04.949-04:00] [as] [TRACE] [] [oracle.as.assemblybuilder.common] [tid: 11] [SRC_CLASS: oracle.as.assemblybuilder.common.jni.Native] [SRC_METHOD: <init>] Unable to load native library.
The base images used in creating the VMs has an incorrect sshd_config file. The line:
#AllowTcpForwarding yes
is commented out and should read:
AllowTcpForwarding yes
To allow remote introspection, you must update the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file on the VMs and restart SSH (/etc/rc.d/init.d/sshd stop/start).
This section describes general issues and workarounds for Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio operations, such as introspection, capturing file sets, and deployment. This section contains information on the following issues:
Section 2.1, "Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Introspection Issues"
Section 2.2, "Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder File Set Capture Issues"
Section 2.3, "Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Deployment Issues"
This section contains information on the following issues:
Section 2.1.1, "Remote Introspection Must Be Run as Specific Users"
Section 2.1.2, "Time Zones Must Match Between Base Image and Reference Systems"
The remoteUser specified for remote WLS introspection must be either the owner of the WLS process that is running on the reference system, or must be a user that has permission to read files that the owner of the WLS process creates.
It is possible to have a time zone in your base image that is significantly different from the time zone of a reference system being introspected. If the introspected reference system is an Oracle WebLogic Server installation that has demo SSL certificates that were recently created you can experience a deployment failure caused by invalid SSL certificates. This is due to the valid time listed in the certificate being in the future relative to the time in the base image. Make sure the time zone in your base image matches the time zone of your reference systems to avoid this type of failure.
This section contains information on the following issues:
Section 2.2.1, "Troubleshooting Template Registration Errors"
Section 2.2.3, "Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Instance Directory Should Not Reside in FMWHOME"
Section 2.2.4, "Non-Root User Cannot Capture File Sets Owned by Root"
If you receive an error while registering a template (such as ImportError) in the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder log file, be sure to check the Oracle VM logs for the root cause, as it may not be expressed in the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder logs.
When capturing file sets on a local reference system that was installed using a different OS userid than the one used for the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder installation, capturing file sets will fail with file permission errors. There are two workarounds for this issue. Use either:
Run Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder as root. When you do this, all generated artifacts in catalog (such as metadata, file sets, and others) are owned by the root user and all subsequent operations must also be executed as root user.
Run local file set capture through remote ssh. Treat the local reference system as remote and perform remote file set capture, using an ssh user that has read permission of the reference system installation.
During introspection, you may receive a full disk error even though you have the required disk space available. If you want to introspect/capture file sets for a Fusion Middleware component in the same Middleware Home that Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder resides in, a permissions issue will occur (due to root-owned files in the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder home). There are two options to correct the problem:
Capture Fusion Middleware components from some other Middleware Home instead (not the one Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder resides in).
Before capturing file sets, create a file set definition to exclude <mw_home>/ovab from the file set capture.
During introspection, if there are files owned by root in a directory such as ORACLE_HOME, a non-root user is prevented from capturing the file sets in the ORACLE_HOME as part of the introspection.
The solution is to remove these files, or have their ownership changed to the user that is capturing the file sets.
This section contains information on the following issues:
Section 2.3.2, "Importing Using the ImportAs Option Removes All Deployment Plan Overrides"
Section 2.3.4, "NFS Mounting Not Supported in Reference Systems"
Section 2.3.5, "Firewall Implications for Template Registration"
Section 2.3.6, "Recovering from Unexpected Errors During Deployment"
Section 2.3.7, "Deployment Failure Due to 'Too Many Open Files' Error"
Section 2.3.8, "Cannot Register Assembly with Non-ASCII Characters in Name"
Section 2.3.9, "Failure to Register Signed Assembly Archive"
Section 2.3.10, "Deployment to an IPv6 Network Not Supported"
Scale operations are affected by failed deployments.
Scale down operations only remove properly (successfully) deployed instances. In the case of failed deployments, those instances are not removed during scale down. Failed instances are left for you to troubleshoot. If you want to remove instances that failed to deploy, you must undeploy them, fix the plan, and then redeploy.
Scale up operations are prohibited if a failed instance exists in the assembly. As above, you must undeploy, fix the problem, and then redeploy.
When importing an assembly or assembly archive (OVA file) using the 'importAs' option, the deployment plans are imported, but any overrides that were in the original deployment plan are not imported. It will appear as if you have a new deployment plan with no overridden properties.
Deployment attempts will fail if IP addresses specified in the deployment plan are unresolved on the Oracle Virtual Assembly machine (the machine on which Deployer is running). To avoid this issue, ensure that IP addresses are resolvable.
Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder does not support NFS mounting in the reference system, since these NFS mounts will not be created by Assembly Builder in the deployment environment. In some cases, deployment will fail if the reference system has an NFS mount.
A number of third-party tools require mounting file systems as part of their configuration. This can require specific workarounds. For example, when using the Websphere MessageQueue external JMS server, you may encounter the following issues:
The configuration for the JMS Server requires access to a class provided by Websphere. In some environments, those classes (also known as jars) are added to the PRE_CLASSPATH environment variable prior to starting Oracle WebLogic Server. Ensure that the configuration for your environment does not require modification for Oracle WebLogic Server to be able to see these jar files automatically on startup.
The Oracle WebLogic Server configuration for the JMS server requires a JNDI connection URL as follows, 'file://<path to mq config>'. This file resides on the external Websphere server, and must be mounted locally so it can be used.
To allow template registration, the Oracle VM host must be able to download the template through HTTP from the Assembly Builder host. If you are using a firewall (for example, iptables on Linux) then you must properly configure that firewall to allow the communication. By default Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder specifies its HTTP port to be "0" which causes the system to issue one (so there is no default port).
You can specify the port by setting the "ovmPort" property in deployer.properties.
A simpler solution is to turn off the firewall. For iptables, use the following command: /etc/init.d/iptables stop
To configure your firewall, refer to the documentation for your firewall.
Whenever an unexpected error occurs during deployment, you typically want to examine what went wrong and perform necessary cleanup before recovering from the error. For these reasons, Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder provides neither an automatic recovery mechanism, nor a tool to recover from a failure.
To perform recovery of the Deployer:
Examine the resource pools in the corresponding Oracle Virtual Machine managers relevant to the crashed AB_INSTANCE and perform cleanup. This includes cleaning up (stopping and destroying) all instances initiated by Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder.
Delete the .hastore file.
This returns the Deployer to a clean state.
Some components may require a large number of open files to deploy successfully. Even if a base image with the required limits is provided, the limit will be reset to 4096 by the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder service that runs on the VM.
The workaround is to edit $ORACLE_HOME/resources/bottler/ab/etc/ab_service.sh to set the desired limit instead of 4096, and then to create (or recreate) the assembly archive.
OVM 3.2.1 does not support the registration of appliances with non-ASCII characters in their names. These appliances cannot be deployed. Until this OVM support is added, avoid using non-ASCII characters in appliance and assembly names.
If you attempt to register (with Oracle VM Manager) a signed assembly archive that was created using the /usr/bin/ova command installed with open-ovf.rpm (either the original open-ovf-1.1.1.0.47.el6.noarch.rpm or using an el5 version of open-ovf that was recompiled for el6), the registration fail withs a complaint from Oracle VM Manager that the first line of the .cert file has an invalid format.
Malformed certificate first line: RSA-SHA1(mySite.mf)= @ <long string of hex digits>
Please contact Oracle Support for more information on this issue.
Deployment to an IPv6 network is not supported for Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder release 12c (12.1.2).
For 12.1.2, only deployment to an IPv4 network (including an IPv4 IP address, gateway, etc.) is supported.
This section describes other issues observed while performing operations in Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder. This section contains information on the following issues:
Section 2.4.1, "Add DNS Button Does Not Work When Using OVAB Studio in Japanese Language"
Section 2.4.5, "Export Operation Requires Temporary Local Storage"
Section 2.4.7, "Obsolete Assembly Archives After Download and Import"
Section 2.4.8, "Zero-count Appliances Cannot Be Scaled in Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio"
Section 2.4.9, "Password Field Is Not Editable When Configuring a New Domain"
Section 2.4.10, "X-term Style Copy and Paste Does Not Work Reliably in Java Applications on Linux"
Section 2.4.11, "Sysprop Enables HTTP Proxying in OVAB Studio"
When following the procedure to create resource pools using the graphical interface of Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio set to the Japanese locale, the Add DNS button does not function. To work around this problem, set the locale to English:
Exit Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder
Execute the commands:
export LC_ALL= c ./abstudio.sh
Create resource pool connection in the English locale.
When large top-level items are deleted through Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio, the interface may appear to have locked-up, when in fact it is running normally. This is normal behavior, allow the application to finish its task.
Ensure your virtual machines have at least 500MB of available swap space (on each machine).
Messages displayed during top-level delete of items are displayed in English only.
In an export operation, the AB_INSTANCE/tmp directory is used for storage of intermediary artifacts. This means that an export may fail if there is not enough space in the disk where AB_INSTANCE is located, even though the destination directory may be located in another disk.
It is possible to create networks in Oracle VM 3.0 that have the period ('.') character in the name. But Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder does not support this character in the name so you will not be able to name your Vnet in Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder after the actual network name in your Oracle VM 3.0 environment.
The createAssembly command in the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder abctl command-line interface fails to disallow a Vnet name containing the '.' character. The Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio graphical user interface correctly disallows it.
In a Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio or combined (Studio and Deployer) installation, downloading an assembly archive from the Deployer or from the EM Software Library automatically imports the archive into the local catalog. If you optionally specify a new name for the assembly when downloading, then the archive file will be saved on disk using the new name, and imported into the catalog using the new name. However, the contents inside the archive will still refer to the original assembly name, and hence this downloaded archive should be considered obsolete.
Therefore, after a successful download and import, the downloaded archive should not be used. It can be deleted manually from AB_INSTANCE/archives, or it can be overwritten by using the createAssemblyArchive command with the -force option, or the create template wizard in the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio graphical user interface (which implicitly uses the -force option).
If you deploy an assembly that contains a 'zero-count' appliance - that is, an appliance with its scaling minimum and initial target both set to 0 - you will not be able to scale that appliance up using the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio graphical user interface. Use the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder command-line interface scale command instead. If the describeScalingGroups command does not show the group you want to scale, use the appliance id, which can be found in the 'Appliances' column of the describeAssemblyInstances output.
Platform: Linux
On Linux systems, when creating a new domain in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuration Wizard, the Password and Confirm Password fields are sometimes not editable, and you cannot enter a password to create a domain.
Workaround
There are two ways to work around this issue:
To work around the issue each time it happens, click the Close Window X button in the upper right corner of the Configuration Wizard. In the confirmation dialog that appears, click No to return to the Configuration Wizard. You can then enter and confirm the password for the domain.
To fix this issue permanently:
Kill all scim processes. For example:
kill `pgrep scim`
Modify (or create) the file ~/.scim/config to include the following line (case-sensitive):
/FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic = true
If you are running VNC, restart the VNC server.
Run the Configuration Wizard again.
The "xterm-style" copy and paste (highlight and then middle-button paste) does not work reliably in Java applications on Linux.
To perform a copy and paste, instead highlight the text, copy (^C key accelerator) and then paste with ^V.
In Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio, HTTP proxying is disabled. You can use a system property to enable HTTP proxy detection. You can set this system property for each execution of a Studio launch, or permanently by modifying the abstudio.sh file.
To set the property for a single execution of Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio:
Shut down Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Studio.
Remove the configuration directory
$AB_INSTANCE/state/gui/$USER/system.12.1.2.0.0 (or equivalent)
Restart the GUI with the property set to some value, for example, 1.
./abstudio.sh -J-Dovab.studio.enableHttpProxy=1
You must define the property on every ensuing execution of the GUI , or the property setting in abstudio.sh will force proxying back to false.
To set the property to consistently enable HTTP proxying:
Edit the abstudio.sh file in the instance bin directory.
Add the property setting to SYSPROPS as follows:
SYSPROPS="${SYSPROPS} -J-Dovab.studio.enableHttpProxy=1"
After setting enableHttpProxy=1, you can set the proxy host, port and exceptions using the standard Java properties http.proxyHost, http.proxyPort, and http.nonProxyHosts. If you are using a nonstandard desktop environment on Linux, you may need to set the http_proxy property with the value host:port.
This section describes specific issues for components that Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder can introspect. The list of issues for each component presents the most severe or frequently encountered issues first, followed by lower priority issues.
This section describes the following topics:
This section contains information on the following issues:
Section 3.1.2, "Limit Virtual Machine Names to 100 Characters or Less"
Section 3.1.3, "Limit Virtual Machine Passwords to 50 Characters or Less"
Section 3.1.5, "Must Define VM Start Policy to "Start on best server""
Intermittent errors have been reported when using Oracle VM. If you receive an error that includes oracle.ovs.biz, check the Oracle VM logs to ensure you understand the root cause of the problem. In some cases, simply reattempting the task will solve the problem, but consulting the logs is the best approach.
Oracle Virtual Machine limits virtual machine names to 100 characters or less. If your names are too long, you will receive the error: oracle.ovs.biz.exception.invalidNameException: OVM-4008
Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder Deployer determines virtual machine names based on the following format:
deploymentId_subassemblyName_applianceName_instanceName0
In order to have virtual machine name length in the defined 100 character limit, the assembly name (and all subassembly names) and appliance names combined must be short enough that, when combined, are less than 100 characters.
Oracle Virtual Machine limits virtual machine passwords to 50 characters or less; your virtual machine password must be less than 50 characters long. If your password is too long, you will receive the error: Oracle.ovs.biz.exception.OVSException: OVM-5101 The template{0} cannot be found
Oracle VM supports handling an appliance with up to 26 virtual disks. If you attempt to perform operations to create a larger number of virtual disks, you will experience a failure and an error message indicating that a 'disk image declared in the OVF does not exist in the OVA.'
OracleVM Manager introduced a VM start policy feature in 3.2.1. When the pool is configured to "Start on best server", the API call placing the VM to a server is ignored and OracleVM Manager does the placement on its own. To allow the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder anti-affinity feature to work, you must use the OVM Manager console to define the VM start policy for a pool to be "Start on current server" so that OVM will honor the Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder anti-affinity placement.
Due to a stability issue in OVM 3.2.1 which can intermittantly affect registration, Oracle recommends upgrading to the latest released version of OVM on the 3.2.x line.
This section contains information on the following issues:
Section 3.2.2, "Applications with JDBC Remap May Need to be Manually Restarted"
Section 3.2.3, "Applications Accessing Web Services Not Updated at Deployment"
Section 3.2.4, "Limitation with Oracle WLS Domains Upgraded from 10.3.1"
Section 3.2.5, "Admin URL Required to be Specified When Managed Server is No Longer Running"
Section 3.2.6, "WLS Plug-in Does Not Support Changing Ownership of File Sets"
Section 3.2.8, "User-specific Changes to Setdomainenv.sh are Not Preserved"
You can create a WebLogic Server service (such as a JMS server definition or a data source definition) with a name that contains a forward slash ( '/' ). Services with forward slashes in their names will cause WebLogic Server deployments to fail. To work around this, ensure that your WebLogic Server services do not have the '/' character in their names.
An error has been reported in which an application using JDBC data source mapping configured at the application scope fails to start. The failure occurs only for deployments on Oracle WebLogic Server AdminServer, and only immediately after the AdminServer itself is deployed.
To correct this problem, manually start the AdminServer.
An application that accesses a Web service that is also hosted on the Oracle WebLogic Server reference system will not be updated to point to the new web service location upon deployment. You must update the application to access the web service WSDL on the new Oracle VM host, and then redeploy the application through Oracle WebLogic Server administration tools, such as Admin Console or wlst, to the Oracle VM Oracle WebLogic Server environment.
Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder uses a pack/unpack utility when moving Oracle WebLogic Server domains. An issue with the utility causes the unpack operation to fail when using the utility to move a domain that was originally a 10.3.1 domain, but which was upgraded to 10.3.2 during installation of 10.3.2.
This issue applies to an uncommon scenario in which Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder has deployed and started the required instances in the assembly, including the Oracle WebLogic Server Managed Servers, and later the Managed Server (but not the guest OS) has either crashed or been explicitly shutdown through an external tool.
If you want to perform manual starts from the context of the guest OS, you must manually modify the StartManagedServer.sh script to provide the correct Admin Server URL (Admin Server hostname). This is required because the default admin URL has the wrong value (the machine name of the Admin Server is not known at the time of template creation).
You can still start or stop the server through the node manager in Admin Console.
The Oracle WebLogic Server plug-in does not support changing the ownership of file sets. The default 'oracle' user must be used or unexpected results, including possible deployment failure, could result.
You observe an error where servers in an Oracle WebLogic Server cluster cannot start through Node Manager. This error can occur if you have relocated your Node Manager home, which is not supported. Specifically, the node manager configuration at introspection time only occurs when the nodemanager.properties file resides in the <weblogic_home>/common/nodemanager directory.
If you set any user-specific parameters (such as JAVA_OPTS, PRE_CLASSPATH, or POST_CLASSPATH) in setDomainEnv.sh these settings are lost during the reconfiguration of the domain to Oracle VM.
This section contains information on the following issues:
You cannot introspect a single-instance database Oracle Home if that Oracle Home has been upgraded from Release 10g.
When deploying a RAC Database instance, there will be a deployment error if the Grid Infrastructure from the reference system was installed without providing a group for OSOPER. You can avoid this error if you set the OSOPER group while installing the reference system's Grid Infrastructure.
This section contains information on the following issue:
After deploying an assembly, in Oracle HTTP Server, Oracle Forms and/or Oracle Reports deployed virtual machines, change the ownership of the following files to the "root" user:
$ORACLE_HOME/bin/nmo
$ORACLE_HOME/bin/nmb
$ORACLE_HOME/bin/nmhs
Alternatively, you can run $ORACLE_HOME/bin/root.sh as the root user which sets the right ownership on these files.
Not having the ownership set to "root" for these files impacts the Oracle EM Agent's ability to collect performance metrics.
This section contains information on the following issues:
Section 3.5.1, "SOA 11g Platform Plug-in Does Not Show Service Engine Properties"
Section 3.5.2, "SOA 11g Platform Plug-in Fails to Reconfigure a Domain with BMP Composites"
In release 12.1.2, the SOA 11.1.1.6 plug-in (the plug-in that ships with Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder rather than with the SOA Platform) does not show service engine properties in the deployment plan, so you are not able to change these properties before reconfiguration.
Workaround: After the assembly is rehydrated, go to the reconfigured instance, and modify the engine level properties as required.
In release 12.1.2, if using the SOA 11.1.1.6 plug-in (the plug-in that ships with Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder rather than with the SOA Platform), then reconfiguration of a domain with BPM composites fails even though the servers are up and running. The composites fail to get deployed.
Workaround: After reconfiguration has failed, deploy the required composites on the reconfigured instance as the servers are running.
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Release Notes for Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder, 12c (12.1.2)
E37892-01
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