Significance of nohup command for Weblogic/OBIEE in Unix/Linux ?

So you must be knowing that you can start an OBIEE server on linux with the following two commands, 

• ./start.sh

• nohup ./start.sh > start_1.log

So why use the nohup command when you can directly run the shell script without it. The basic difference between the two is that when you run a shell script with nohup, even after logging out from the terminal it runs in the background. This is not the case with direct execution, where when you close the terminal the process is also aborted. 

For an example, if we startNodeManager.sh file with direct  execute command, you will be able to see the log of how it is starting up. The nodemanager will eventually startup. The problem with this is that when you close the terminal, the nodemanager will go down. Inorder to avoid this what you can do is to run the shell script with nohup command. 

With nohup command the linux process is not aborted when the terminal is closed. So when you run nodemanager with a nohup appended command. It tells the server to run the process in background.  

There is two ways to write the nohup command for executing scripts.

• nohup ./start.sh

The above command will create a file named nohup.out in the same folder where the logs of the execution will be written to. 

• nohup ./start.sh > start_29112016.log

The above command writes to a file named start_29112016.log . 

I am new to linux, so any suggestions are welcome. Please feel free to write your comments below. 

OBIEE 12c Client Administration tool OCI DB connectivity issue

Issue: We were trying to make a connection to Oracle database to import metadata to the OBIEE repository.

Cause: The tnsnames.ora file not present in MW_HOME/network/admin

Resolution:  Even if you have tnsnames.ora in your app folder in your database client folder, you need to have a copy of the same tnsnames.ora file at network/admin folder inside MW_HOME folder created by OBIEE.

So copy the tnsnames.ora file to this location or create a new one and try restarting the Administration tool before trying again. Let us know if you are still facing issues in the comments. 

OBIEE/Weblogic 12c Node Manager Startup Error - DemoIdentity.jks file missing [Solved]

Here is an issue we faced while trying to startup the Node manager in Oracle Business Intelligence 12c when we trying to start the nodemanager service. The issue is caused by a java keystore file missing from a location inside middleware home folder. 

Issue: DemoIdentity.jks keystore file missing from the security folder inside nodemanager folder, i.e at the path

 FMW_HOME/oracle_common/common/nodemanager/security

weblogic.nodemanager.common.ConfigException: Identity key store file not found: Middleware/Oracle_Home/oracle_common/common/nodemanager/security/DemoIdentity.jks Cause: The DemoIdentity.jks file missing from the security folder for nodemanager.

Resolution:

The DemoIdentity.jks file would be available at the folder,

FMW_HOME/user_projects/domain/bifoundation/security

Copy the file from this folder to inside the secuirity folder for NodeManager. Once you have copied the file, try restarting the nodemanager. It worked well for us.

Find version of Weblogic Server

There are multiple ways to check the version of a Weblogic Server.

Here is how to check the version of Weblogic Server even if the server is down or up.

Weblogic Server Down

Go to the MiddleWare Home folder in your system/server. Then inside the MW_HOME folder go to the folder that starts with wlserver and inside the folder go to .product file

Go to Weblogic Folder inside MiddleWare home and open the .product file.

Note: Make sure you enable 'show hidden files' option in windows. 

Check for the entry WLS_PRODUCT_VERSION.

Inside the .product Properties file check for WLS_PRODUCT_VERSION and it's corresponding entry, In our case it is 10.3.5.0 

Weblogic Server Up

When the weblogic sever is up and running, we can check the version by going to the console appilication at http://SERVERHOSTNAME;7001/console and at the right hand bottom corner you will be able to see the version of weblogic as in the screenshot below,