11g Grid Control Installation – tips and solutions

Here are some notes I put together after performing a couple of installations of 11g Grid Control on a Solaris SPARC 64 bit platform. I also encountered some issues with the 11g agent and 9i and 10g databases. There is not too much user experiences available online, so I thought that I would share a few of my observations and feedback of the issues encountered and how I managed to overcome those issues.

Kindly provide feedback of your experience with the 11g Grid Control product for the good of all the user community.

For example: java -d64 -jar wls1032_generic.jar

$ /u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/bin $ which java

/u01/app/oracle/product/java16/jdk1.6.0_18/bin/java

Check the java version:

$ cd /u01/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/bin

$ java -version
java version “1.6.0_18”
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_18-b07)

Since we did not have enough space on /tmp – we had to use the tmpdir option

java -d64 -Djava.io.tmpdir=/u01/oracle/stage -jar wls1032_generic.jar

If connection to the internet from the host is not possible, then read this Metalink note which describes how to do an offline download of the WLS patches

How to Apply WebLogic Server (WLS) Patches to an Offline System [ID 876004.1]

If the SYSMAN schema exists, it can be dropped using the following command

emca -deconfig dbcontrol db -repos drop -SYS_PWD [SYS password] -SYSMAN_PWD [SYSMAN password]

10.2.0.4.0
11.1.0.7.0
11.2.0.1.0

Undo tablespace must be at least 200M in size.

log_buffer needs to be minimum 10485760
session_cached_cursors should be 200 or higher
processes should be 500 or higher
open_cursors should be 300 or higher

OMS Home
/u01/app/oracle/product/Middleware/oms11g

Agent Home on OMS server
/u01/app/oracle/product/Middleware/agent11g

Web Tier home
/u01/app/oracle/product/Middleware/Oracle_WT

Grid Control Instance Home
/u01/app/oracle/product/gc_inst

$OMS_INSTANCE_HOME/em//sysman/log

For example: /u01/app/oracle/product/gc_inst/em/EMGC_OMS1/sysman/log

Can also use this command to find out log file locations:

/bin/emctl list properties

/WebTierIH1/diagnostics/logs/OPMN/opmn/
/WebTierIH1/diagnostics/logs/OHS/ohs1/

/user_projects/domains//servers//logs

For example:
/u01/app/oracle/product/gc_inst/user_projects/domains/GCDomain/servers/EMGC_OMS1/logs

/user_projects/domains//servers//logs
For example:

/u01/app/gc/gc_inst/user_projects/domains/GCDomain/servers/EMGC_ADMINSERVER/logs

$MW_HOME/wlserver_10.3/common/emnodemanager/nodemanager.log

opmnctl is no longer used in 11g Grid Control

To stop and start we now use the following commands:

$OMS_HOME/bin>./emctl start oms

Which will start the OMS and also the WebLogic processes required for Grid Control

opmnctl commands in 11g can be used only to check the status or start the HTTP_Server component

$ export ORACLE_INSTANCE=/u01/app/oracle/product/gc_inst/WebTierIH1
$ cd /u01/app/oracle/product/Middleware/oms11g/opmn/bin
$ ./opmnctl status

Processes in Instance: instance1
———————————+——————–+———+———
ias-component | process-type | pid | status
———————————+——————–+———+———
ohs1 | OHS | 9939 | Alive
Stopping Grid Control
/bin/emctl stop oms -all

Issues Encountered and Fixed

10.2.0.4 listener is showing status Down in EM Grid Control even though it is actually running and status confirmed via lsnrctl status command.

The error message seen in Grid Control console is:

“The listener is down: Failed to tnsping mhost.com.au”

This is documented on Metalink as :

Bug 10070623: STATUS DOWN FOR LISTENER 10.2 MANAGED BY AGENT 11G

The fix for this was to edit the emctl executable which is located in the AGENT_HOME/bin directory.

Stop the agent via the emctl stop agent command

Take a backup of the emctl file and remove the following lines

if [ “$LD_LIBRARY_PATH_64” = “” ] ; then
LD_LIBRARY_PATH_64=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:$ORACLE_HOME/perl/lib:$OUILOC/lib/solaris
else LD_LIBRARY_PATH_64=$ORACLE_HOME/lib:$ORACLE_HOME/perl/lib:$OUILOC/lib/solaris:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH_64
fi

Start the agent.

Check the status of the Oracle 10.2.0.4 listener. It should now show as up!

ORA-7445 errors messages in 9.2.0.6 database alert log and core dumps after starting the 11g Agent on a machine which has an Oracle 9.2.0.6 database Oracle Home

The alert log will show an error message like this :

Error : ORA-7445 [00000001001F5B04] [SIGBUS] [Invalid address alignment]

On the Grid Console when trying to configure the 9.2.0.6 database, we will see an error message like this :
“Exception in computing dynamic properties”

Apparently this was an issue with the 10.2.0.5 agent and a patch was issued for it.

Bug.8501576 9I DATABASES COREDUMPS IF 10.2.05. AGENT MONITORING

This is what is mentioned on Metalink….

If you cannot upgrade your target database to 9.2.0.8, there is also a fix on the Agent side:
• Apply Agent PSU2 Patch 9162498 (Unix) / Patch 9223116 (Windows) on top of the 10.2.0.5 Agent. Please check Note 986539.1 for more details about PSU2.
• To activate the fix, add the parameter AvoidOCIPing=1 in $AGENT_HOME/sysman/config/emd.properties and restart the Agent. This parameter is not there by default: it is a toggle to activate the bug fix for this particular issue. The default value is 0, which means that the fix is not activated

The workaround for this is to go to the AGENT_HOME/sysman/config directory and edit the emd.properties file.

Change these lines :

#
# Flag to Determine if OCIPing can be used. Older versions of databases such
# as 9206 do not support this.
#
#@description=Flag to Determine if OCIPing can be used.
#@default=0
#AvoidOCIPing=0

To

AvoidOCIPing=1