EBS 12.2 -- ADOP , Automated Patching

In this post, I will cover an automatic online patching scenario.

In this example, we will apply a patch without specifying the arguments and/or our inputs one by one.. That is; we will run one command and our patch will be applied.

Note that: This is not a supported or recommend approach.. I have done this just to satisfy my curiosity and now I can say that it can be done..

Okay.. In order to get this thing work; we will use bash techniques, a pipe and an adop input file.
Lets start with the input file..

Generally, the Input file is read by adop and adop behaves according to the things written in the input file.
To supply an input file to adop , we create an input file using our favorite editor and use the input_file cmd argument while running the adop utility.

So we basically, supply our desired worker count , the patch we want to apply, the phases we want adop to complete and the patchtop that our patch directory resides..

Here is an example of the input file :

Following is an input_file for applying patch 20863040 which resides in /home/applmhr/20863040 directory.

workers=12
patches=20863040
phase=prepare,apply,finalize,cutover,cleanup
patchtop=/home/applmgr

Okay. Using input_file we supply some mandatory arguments, as well as patch phases to have a continous adop execution , but what about the passwords? Adop requires us to provide 3 password during its run.. So lets see what we can do for this;

In the earlier releases of EBS, the defaultsfile can be used to supply the passwords to adpatch, so we could use defaultsfile to apply patches without a need to supply the passwords during the runtime.

On the other hand in 12.2 , even if the adop utility uses the same adpatch in the backend; it seems we dont have such an option, as stated in "Oracle E-Business Suite Maintenance Guide" -> Only one parameter, patchtop, can currently be defined in the defaultsfile. "

So we need to make something else;
What about echoing and piping the passwords to the adop utility? That's make sense, but it is a little tricky..

I am talking about someting like the following;

{ echo appspassword; echo systempassword; echo adminpassword; } | adop

we use {} characters to group the three echo commands into a single output stream.

So we execute adop only once but make it read the inputs of our 3 echo commands.

The outputs will be read by adop one by one, so it must be in order of Apps password, System password and weblogic admin password just like we supply in a normal adop execution.

So we direct the stdout of these 3 echo commands to the stdin of the adop.

By using bracelets and semiclon we pipe the 3 outputs  to the adop and wait it to read it , it reads them one by one, it thinks that it reads it from the stdin from the keyboard, but we actually use a pipe for its stdin..

But in order to apply a patch , we need to supply some more things. At this point; input_file comes into play.. As I have mentioned above, we supply our input file to the adop using input_file argument and that 's it..

Our command will be like the following;

{ echo appspassword; echo systempassword; echo adminpassword; } | adop input_file=/home/applmgr/input_erman

Our one-liner is ready!

When we execute it, we will have our patch specified in our input_file will be applied.. All the adop phases will be completed ( if there will be no patch related problems)

Current Patching Session ID: 70

Node Name       Node Type       Phase           Status          Started                        Finished                       Elapsed

--------------- --------------- --------------- --------------- ------------------------------ ------------------------------ ------------

ermansserver master          PREPARE         COMPLETED       14-APR-15 04:11:19 +03:00      14-APR-15 05:32:38 +03:00      1:21:19

v1

                                APPLY           COMPLETED       14-APR-15 05:33:03 +03:00      14-APR-15 05:35:32 +03:00      0:02:29

                                FINALIZE        COMPLETED       14-APR-15 05:35:42 +03:00      14-APR-15 05:36:07 +03:00      0:00:25

                                CUTOVER         COMPLETED       14-APR-15 05:36:17 +03:00      14-APR-15 05:50:51 +03:00      0:14:34

                                CLEANUP         COMPLETED       14-APR-15 05:50:53 +03:00      14-APR-15 05:51:34 +03:00      0:00:41

File System Synchronization Used in this Patching Cycle: Full

File System Information:

========================

File System: SINGLE NODE INSTANCE

Node Name   Node Type   Current Base                   Other Base                     Non Editioned Base             Inst Top

----------- ----------- ------------------------------ ------------------------------ ------------------------------ ------------------------------

ermansserver master      /u01/install/APPS/fs1          /u01/install/APPS/fs2          /u01/install/APPS/fs_ne        /u01/install/APPS/fs1/inst/app

ppsrv1                                                                                                               s/ORATEST_ermansserver

Custom File System Synchronization script: /u01/install/APPS/fs_ne/EBSapps/appl/ad/custom/adop_sync.drv

Patch Stage Top: /u01/install/APPS/fs_ne/EBSapps/patch

Online Patching Log base: /u01/install/APPS/fs_ne/EBSapps/log/adop/70

=========================================================================

=             Patches Applied in the Current Patching Cycle

=========================================================================

Node Name    Node Type Patch         Status         Run ID File System Patch Base    File System Applied Base  Adpatch Parameters   Session Type

------------ --------- ------------- ----------- --------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -------------------- ---------------

ermansserver master    20863040      Y               78344                           /u01/install/APPS/fs1                          ONLINE

As you see above, there were no problems encountered.. All the phases were completed and the patch was applied.  

Okay, we achieved our goal , but before finishing I want to add some more info as follows;

Note that : during the execution, our shell may display something like the following;

stty inappropriate ioctl for device

This is actually an ingorable error, as it is caused by the adop trying to use stty command to set some terminal option and because the stdin is a pipe, stty reports inappropriate ioctl for device..

In detail: adop uses stty -echo to hide our inputs.. As you may recall, when using adop to apply patches, it requires us to supply the passwords, and when we supply them, we dont see the password displayed in the terminal.. This is how adop hides the password inputs and this is why we may see this ignorable error.

This also can be seen if we look at the adop's perl scripts.. The adop file is just wrapper, it calls the adzdoptl.pl , which has a lot of libraries attached to it.

Libraries are coming from the directories present in the $PERL5LIB environment variable.

An example of PERL5LIB can be;

 echo $PERL5LIB 

/u01/install/APPS/fs2/FMW_Home/webtier/perl/lib/5.10.0:/u01/install/APPS/fs2/FMW_Home/webtier/perl/lib/site_perl/5.10.0:/u01/install/APPS/fs2/EBSapps/appl/au/12.0.0/perl:/u01/install/APPS/fs2/FMW_Home/webtier/ohs/mod_perl/lib/site_perl/5.10.0/x86_64-linux-thread-multi

/u01/install/APPS/fs2/EBSapps/appl/au/12.0.0/perl looks promising;

When we cd to it ; cd /u01/install/APPS/fs2/EBSapps/appl/au/12.0.0/perl

ls

ADOP  ADX  FND  MSI  TXK

So , as we see there is an ADOP directory.

cd ADOP
ls

AdopMain.pm    BackupUtil.pm    ClonePhase.pm              CommonUtil.pm    DatabaseManager.pm   GlobalVars.pm     OtherPhases.pm  PreparePhase.pm    SessionManager.pm  Singleton.pm

ApplyPhase.pm  CleanupPhase.pm  CommonBusinessRoutines.pm  CutoverPhase.pm  DefaultsFileUtil.pm  MultiTierUtil.pm  Phase.pm        ServiceManager.pm  SessionUtil.pm

Okay, we have our perl modules here.. Adop perl scripts uses them..When we analyze them , we become more familiar with the patching process..
On the other hand; I will stop here :) This blog post is going beyond its objective :)