Oracle OPatch version and $ORACLE_HOME

After installing WebCenter Content version 11 PS7 with JDK 1.7.0_75 on a Linux server the Administration applets did not work. I found a patch on the Oracle support site that should fix this problem. If you are licensed to see the information on the Oracle support site please see the following patch “Patch 20378939: WEBCENTER CONTENT BUNDLE PATCH 11.1.1.8.10”.

The readme of the patch mentions “Download and install the latest version of OPatch (11.1.0.9.0 or higher)”.  The question you can ask yourself, can I use a version 12 OPatch to patch my WebCenter 11 product? This question remains because I decided  to be on the safe side and downloaded OPatch version 11.1.0.12.5. On a system with several Oracle products installed there are multiple $ORACLE_HOME directories that can be used with OPatch. The $ORACLE_HOME directory of WebCenter content is /home/oracle/mwhome/Oracle_ECM1 on my Linux system.

To install the patch, unzip the downloaded OPatch to /home/oracle/mwhome/Oracle_ECM1/OPatch.

The patch can be installed with the following commands:

• export ORACLE_HOME=/home/oracle/mwhome/Oracle_ECM1
• export PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/OPatch:$PATH
• opatch lshomes (This command lists the $ORACLE_HOMEs on the system)
• opatch lsinventory (This command does a check if there is a oraInventory directory)
  mkdir /oracle/home/PATCH_TOP
• “unzip the patch to the PATCH_TOP directory created”
• cd PATCH_TOP/20378939
• opatch apply

After applying the patch the Admin applets work perfect again.

Oracle VirtualBox and port forwarding

After setting up a VirtualBox it can be handy to start using the port forwarding functionality that VirtualBox offers, however sometimes things might work against you.

The Virtual Machine that I created is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, “RHEL 6 Update 6”, but the issues discussed here will apply to most Linux distributions. Other software installed: Oracle database 12c, Weblogic 10.3.6 and WebCenter Content version 11 PS7. My problem was that the port forwarding functionality of VirtualBox did not work after the initial setup.

I like to access the WebLogic Admin on my VirtualBox from my Host on port 7001 via an URL like http://localhost:7001/console and WebCenter Content on port 16200 etc.  The port forwarding functionality of the VirtualBox can be used and is very handy for this.

It seems easy, just start forwarding the port using the instructions in the GUI or after reading the documentation on the VirtualBox port forwarding facility http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html#natforward.

After troubling yourself about it for hours and reading the VitualBox documentation about networking ten times you realize that the Firewall might cause the problem. You can start the firewall configuration from the GUI on the Virtual Machine using the menu options: System --> Administration --> Firewall.

Something else that might be needed is mark the Ethernet interface on the Virtual Machine as trusted:

In the past I used one or two Virtual Machines that were prepared by Oracle, and later on investigating these machine I discovered that the firewall was turned of completely, which is also a way of getting port forwarding to work.

Is this message in this blog worthwhile mentioning it? We could call it one of the blogs of silly things, one of the things that can be easily overlooked. Reading all the stories about port forwarding and the VirtualBox I found it worthwhile to open a blog for it.

Do you have more of these silly things worthwhile mentioning on the Virtual Box software?