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Introduction

Oracle has many decades of experience in delivering “difficult to install” applications, and in the case of OBI 11g it doesn’t disappoint. While the RCU Configuration and Installation procedures are straightforward, the “devil is in the prerequisites”. If your machine has a static IP, then the installation should be problem free, but if your machine uses DHCP – as is quite likely if you’re evaluating the product – then you may well find yourself tossing a few expletives in Oracle’s direction.

Using Windows XP

Q: Will OBIEE 11g work on Windows XP?

You’ll see warnings about a workstation class machine. For example in the “Enterprise Manager”, under “Business Intelligence”, “coreapplication” you’ll see:

WARNING: The Oracle BI Presentation Services server is running on a workstation class machine (Windows 2000 Workstation, Windows XP Professional, etc.). Number of concurrent users may be severely limited by the operating system.

but it will work.

How much Memory?

Q: I’ve got a 2 GB laptop. Can I install OBI 11g?

Well, you can, but the experience will not be a happy one. Whereas OBI 10g was satisfied with (1.5-2) GB of memory, OBI 11g is a much more demanding mistress when it comes to hardware resources and will not perform with anything that could be called enthusiasm short of (3-4) GB – and even then you’ll do well to synchronize boot times with coffee breaks.

By way of comparison, with a 3 GB machine you can install and configure OBI 11g in an hour and 10 minutes, whereas with an otherwise identical 1.75 GB machine it takes almost four and a half hours.

Using Internet Explorer 6

Q: Can I run OBI 11g with IE 6?

No. If you try to bring up Answers & Dashboards using IE 6, you’ll get a message saying it’s not supported and access will be denied.

Where are the DHCP Instructions?

Q: The “Quick Installation Guide” says to follow the instructions for DHCP hosts in the “Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Planning Guide”, but that contains nothing on DHCP?

As you may well have noticed, the OBI 11g documentation has more than its fair share of broken links and incorrect references. In the OBI 11g documentation references to DHCP occur in both the “Quick Installation Guide” and the “Installation Guide”. In each guide section “4.1 Before You Install Oracle Business Intelligence” states:

If you plan to install Oracle Business Intelligence on a computer that uses Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), you must perform additional configuration tasks before you install Oracle Business Intelligence. See "Installing on DHCP Hosts" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Planning Guide.

Unfortunately the “Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Planning Guide” does not contain any references to DHCP. Instead try:

Oracle Fusion Middleware Quick Installation Guide for Oracle Portal, Forms, Reports and Discoverer 11g Release 1 (11.1.1)

section “3.6 Installing on DHCP Host” at:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12839_01/install.1111/e12003.pdf

Oracle Database Installation Guide 10g Release 2 (10.2) for Microsoft Windows (32-Bit)

section “2.4.1 Installing Oracle Database on DHCP Computers” at:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/install.102/b14316/ reqs.htm#BABGCEAI

Cluster Controller and Presentation Server Configuration Failure

Q: The installation goes okay until near the end when cc and ps fail to configure correctly?

You will probably be able to bring up the Admin Console and the Enterprise Manager, but not Answers & Dashboards or the Admin tool (note, just because all the components are marked as “up” in the Enterprise Manager doesn’t mean that OBI 11g will function correctly).

You’re probably using DHCP and have not got the correct setting in the hosts file (see the following entry for a workaround).

Installation fails even with Loopback Adapter in place

Q: I’ve installed a loopback adaptor and modified the hosts file according to the installation instructions but I can’t login to Answers?

If your computer belongs to a workgroup, rather than a domain (see “Control Panel => System => Computer Name”), and you follow Oracle’s instructions then the installation will fail. If the entry in:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

looks like this:

192.168.168.168 HP. HP

then change it to

192.168.168.168 HP

by omitting the second domain name reference, and then reinstall.

Installer stops at the Admin Screen

Q: I am trying to install OBI 11g and I can’t get beyond the Admin screen?

If the installer stops at the “Administrator User Details Screen” try installing a loopback adapter or adjusting the settings in your hosts file (see the previous entry for a workaround).

Internal Server Error

Q: When I run “Start BI Services” from the “Oracle Business Intelligence” menu, I get “Error 500--Internal Server Error” when the web browser opens?

Let’s call it a feature. If you get the message “Error 500--Internal Server Error – From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1: – 10.5.1 500 Internal Server Error – The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request”, then just refresh the browser (F5), and the logon screen should appear.

Can’t Logon to Answers

Q: Answers keeps saying Unable to Sign In, but I’ve checked the logon and password?

If you’ve tried a few times without success and keep seeing the dreaded:

Answers Logon Failure

error screen then it probably means that the installation failed. Try to bring up the Admin tool (see the next item).

Can't Logon to Admin Tool

Q: When I try to bring up the Admin tool I get “Logon failed due to …”?

If you get the following message:

Admin Tool Logon Failure

then it probably means that the installation failed. The error will occur irrespective of the login details that are entered.

Can’t Logon to Admin Console

Q: When I try to logon to the console I get a “required Mbean” disabled error message?

Try a page refresh, but a message of:

Admin Console Logon Error

suggests that the installation has failed. Check your host file IP setting (see above) and reinstall.

Lengthy Boot Time

Q: When I start the BI Services it seems to take forever before OBI 11g comes up. Have I done something wrong with the setup?

I’m tempted to say that the only thing you’ve done wrong is to transition from Siebel to Oracle. By way of comparison, on a Windows 32-bit XP Pro SP3 system, with 3 GB of memory, and a quad-core processor OBI 10g crosses the finishing line in about 30 seconds, while OBI 11g dawdles in – tortoise-like – in just under seven minutes – a 14 fold degradation in startup performance. Well, I guess that’s what Oracle calls progress!

What is this Error?

Q: I’ve got this error. Does it mean that OBI 11g won’t work?

OBI 11g produces a vast number of warnings and errors during startup, most of which will have no discernible impact on product functionality. If you intend to evaluate the product and it isn’t working, then you can ignore the following messages:

Unable to apply changes to local config files as the domain config proxy mbean is not available.

The Oracle BI Presentation Services server is running on a workstation class machine (Windows 2000 Workstation, Windows XP Professional, etc.). Number of concurrent users may be severely limited by the operating system.

Socket communication error at call=recv: (Number=10054) An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.

Clustering and cache are enabled for this OBIS node, but cluster aware cache is disabled. This can lead to inconsistencies.

An attempt to establish a connection with Oracle BI Scheduler HP:9705 (monitor port 9708) failed.

Cannot connect to FMW Security Services, please make sure this is running in EM.

Error while executing job in PollThread

Exception occured during setting configuration values.

Demo trusted CA certificate is being used in production mode

An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.

The LogBroadcaster on this server failed to broadcast log messages to the admin server. The Admin server may not be running. Message broadcasts to the admin server will be disabled.

-Djrockit.optfile is deprecated and discouraged

ServletContainerAdapter manager not initialized correctly

Failed to rename to backupfile

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