Tuesday, November 29, 2016

EBS 12.2 -- problem installing EBS on XFS -- no server JVM at libjvm.so

This will be a quick tip, as it is about a problem that one of my collegues faced with, few days ago.
During my research, I have seen that the information related with the error is not publically available or documented, so that I thought it maybe a good thing to write about it :)

The problem was encountered while doing an EBS 12.2.6 installation on Oracle Linux 7.3 (64bit).The error was seen during very basic Rapidwiz executions such as while executing RapidWizVersion or while executing wrapper scripts that calls java such as buildStage.sh.

Well, this error was actually a java/jvm error and it was displayed in the following format;

Error: no `server' JVM at `<your_stage_location/startCD/Disk1/rapidwiz/jre/Linux_x64/1.6.0/lib/i386/server/libjvm.so'

Note: There may be other errors as well.

When ignored or skipped somehow, the installation may get stuck in the next stages.

Well... This error is caused by the filesystem, that EBS stage and installation directories reside, being XFS.
I wasn't there when the problem was encountered but according to my research, I can say that it is caused by the enhancements that are done in modern XFS filesystems.
The most significant feature that will cause this issue is the 64 bit inodes. Especially when the filesystem size is more than 1 TB, these 64 bit inodes became a problem for 32 bit java.. (You see the above path , I mean the Rapidwiz java path path.. It says i386 there..)

Anyways, a workaround for this problem is to use another fileystem, like ext3 or ext4 on Linux. (tested & verified)

Note that, ext4 also supports 64 bit inodes, but it is off by default. following is from the manual;

i_version ->  Enable 64-bit inode version support. This option is off by default.
Relocating the stage and startCD location to a smaller filesystem(<1tb) can be a workaround too .

Also, the mount point (with xfs filesytem) can be unmounted and remounted using "-o inode32" argument. After this move, the stage directory should be recreated in the mount point (recopied to the mount point)  to guarantee all its files are associated with 32 bit inodes...

As you see, this is an interesting topic and it worths to mention..

One final note on this: Use of XFS with Oracle Database is not supported. :)

Please comment and give alternative- suggestions if you can.

4 comments :

  1. You must be so lucky that you have this colleague

    ReplyDelete
  2. Why don't you identify yourself? I think that you are that colleague:)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good content! I learned many things from this article. Keep on posting!

    big data architecture patterns

    ReplyDelete

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