We can use system-config-printer to migrate our queues at the linux level and FNDLOAD to migrate the queues in the E-Business Suite.  However, there is one manual step you must go through if you added any PPD files.

The first step in our process is to download the printers.

For linux (as root), enter the command:

system-config-printer-tui –Xexport > printers.xml

For the E-Business Suite (as oracle with the environment set for your apps tier), enter the command:

FNDLOAD apps/apps_password 0 Y DOWNLOAD $FND_TOP/patch/115/import/afcppinf.lct source_printer_def.ldt FND_PRINTER

However, many of the drivers available there are for LSB 3.2 and many Enterprise Linux distros are not LSB 3.2 compliant (LSB certification provides a standard, but it moves faster than Enterprise Linux distros).

Many printers can be used as long as the correct PPD file is installed.  At openprinting.org, you can download the correct custom PPD file, and you will find the instructions for installing new drivers in cups.  Do not follow these instructions.  You need to add the PPD file through system-config-printer.  The only way I have found to do this is in the GUI version.

Run system-config-printer, click on the Action Menu and choose Import PPD.

system-config-printer

Make sure you pay attention to the order that you add PPD files.  These PPD files are added sequentially rather than with the model named.  This means that if you want to migrate the queues to another server, you need to add the PPDs in the same order or you will have to edit the printers after adding them.

After the PPD file has been added, the printer model will show up under the appropriate manufacturer containing a driver of type PPD.

wget is a command line utility that is part of the GNU project.  It is a non-interactive command line tool that will download files http, https and ftp.  Oracle provides instructions for using wget in Metalink Note 841055.1 and (for now at least–it will go away when Classic Metalink is retired) as part of the login splash when you ftp to updates.oracle.com.

To use wget to download a patch, you will need to get the url behind the download button.

Right Click on the button,  select Properties and copy the address.

You can then run the command:

wget –http-user=user –http-password=password –output-document=patch.zip “pasted address”

using your My Oracle Support username and password.

For example:

wget –http-user=dba@michael-brown.org –http-passwd=yeah_right –output-document=p6890831_111070_Linux-x86.zip “http://updates.oracle.com/ARULink/Download/process_form/p6890831_111070_Linux-x86.zip?file_id=25070608&aru=10498637&userid=ml-mlbrown&email=work@mlbrown.com&patch_password=&patch_file=p6890831_111070_Linux-x86.zip”

If wget is not installed, have your system administrator install it for you.  It is available on most platforms.

This is a little bit cleaner than the workaround I posted yesterday since you do not need to replace the /usr/bin/firefox with a shell script.

However, it uses the nspluginwrapper which Oracle does not support.  The previous workaround was done using products covered by a linux support contract from Oracle (the bash script is a convenience to set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH).

Starting with Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 x86_64 with firefox installed.

1. download Adobe Flash Player 9 (32-bit) from http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/406/kb406791.html
2. download the nspluginwrapper plugin and viewer from http://gwenole.beauchesne.info//en/projects/nspluginwrapper
3. tar zxvf install_flash_player_9.tar.gz
4. cd install_flash_player_9_linux/
5. cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins  –The install script will not work, you have to copy manually
6. rpm -i nspluginwrapper-i386-1.2.2-1.x86_64.rpm
7. rpm -i nspluginwrapper-1.2.2-1.x86_64.rpm
8. nspluginwrapper -l
9. Check the output from the last command, it should include libflashplayer.so

Note: FTP patch download service will be retired as of September 18th, 2009 and “My Oracle Support” will be the only interface for downloading the patches and updates.

The problem is that I am using Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 x86_64 and there is no 64 bit flash player for firefox 3 (64 bit,  which is all that is available via up2date from ULN).

Having said this, I have successfully installed a workaround.

1. rpm -ev firefox (gets rid of 64 bit firefox)
2. download firefox-3.0.7-3.0.1.el4.i386.rpm and frysk-0.0.1.2007.08.03-7.0.1.el4.i386.rpm from http://public-yum.oracle.com/repo/EnterpriseLinux/EL4/8/base/i386/
3. download Adobe Flash Player 9 (32-bit) from http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/406/kb406791.html
4. rpm -i frysk-0.0.1.2007.08.03-7.0.1.el4.i386.rpm
5. rpm -i firefox-3.0.7-3.0.1.el4.i386.rpm
6. tar zxvf install_flash_player_9.tar.gz
7. cd install_flash_player_9_linux/
8. ./flashplayer-installer
9. When prompted for the path: /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.7
10. mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox-3.0.7
11. vi /usr/bin/firefox

#!/bin/bash

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/frysk:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

/usr/bin/firefox-3.0.7

You should now be able to access My Oracle Support.

After running: lsof | awk ‘{print $9}’ | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail -5 (as with all code blocks, your milage may vary, this was in the bash shell on Redhat Linux), the problem turned out to be with $ORACLE_HOME/nls/data/9idata/lx40030.nlb. A little poking aroud on Metalink led us to bug 5257698. This is a Generic bug for 10.2. The patch replaces lx40030.nlb and lx40003.nlb in $ORACLE_HOME/nls/data/old. Rerunning cr9idata.pl appears to have fixed the open files issue.

The worrisome part of this issue is that they had been live on 10.2 with E-Business Suite 11.5.10.2 for months and no patches or other changes had been made which would have triggered this that we could find. In spite of this, we had to reboot Thursday and were right on the edge of having to shutdown production again on Friday. Luckily, we were able to apply the patch this weekend.

If you are using 10.2 especially with the E-Business Suite, please make sure that you have some form of simple open file monitor running (lsof | wc -l if nothing else).

We discovered that the number of files was flucuating somewhat, but it was basically increasing (this was after a reboot–the problem all started when we got a page from the alert.log that some datafiles apppeared to be missing).

Here is a simple script that can be used to do the monitoring (just put it in cron):

#!/bin/bash
LSOF=/usr/sbin/lsof
MAIL=/bin/mail
WC=/usr/bin/wc
ALERT="root pager1@whatever.com"
THRESHOLD=25000
SUBJ="SID NAME"
COUNT=$($LSOF | $WC -l)
echo "There are $COUNT open files"
if [ "$COUNT" -gt "$THRESHOLD" ]; then
   $MAIL -s "$SUBJ $COUNT open files" $ALERT <<EOF

On $(date), the number of
open files on $(hostname)
was $COUNT.  This is
greater than the alerting threshold
of $THRESHOLD
.
EOF
fi

For those of you who missed it, Collaborate 08 in Denver was a great conference this year. Too many papers to get to all the sessions that you wanted to attend (in my mind, that is the major mark of a strong program).

I want to publicly congratulate Sandra Vucinic on being named the OAUG Member of the Year for 2008. Sandra’s dedication to the user group as a whole and to a wide variety of special interest groups and geographic groups is amazing. Sandra and and have both been on the board of the OAUG Database SIG for several years and have been on a variety of panels together at Collaborate and Openworld. Well done, Sandra!

The OAUG premiered the Knowledge Factory (http://www.kf.oaug.org) at the annual Meeting of the Members. If you are an OAUG member, you need to check this out. If you are a user of any of the Oracle Applications and you are not a member, please consider joining. Membership in the OAUG is by company and there is nothing your company can do for the price that will give better access to information and other resources.

On another note, Ahmed Alomari, Mark Farnham, Jerry Ireland and I have formed a group called APPSPERF dedicated to Oracle Applications performance. We held our first workshop at Collaborate this year and it was a huge success. Check out www.appsperf.org for updates on future events.