Configuration assistant "BPEL Configuration Assistant" failed

Recently we were in the process of upgrading BPEL from 10.1.3.3 to 10.1.3.5. During the process we fcaed the following error when the configuration assistants were running:

apps/st1bfi/product/AS10gR3_BPEL/j2ee/BPEL_OC4J_FIB/applications/orabpel.ear

[java] 10/06/28 08:38:22 Notification ==>Initialize /apps/st1fib/product/AS10gR3_BPEL/j2ee/BPEL_OC4J_FIB/applications/orabpel.ear begins...

[java] 10/06/28 08:38:22 Notification ==>Operation failed with error:
[java] Unable to find/read file META-INF/application.xml in /apps/st1fib/product/AS10gR3_BPEL/j2ee/BPEL_OC4J_FIB/applications/orabpel (META-INF/application.xml)


[java] Redeploy error: Redeploy failed: Operation failed with error:
[java] Unable to find/read file META-INF/application.xml in /apps/st1fib/product/AS10gR3_BPEL/j2ee/BPEL_OC4J_FIB/applications/orabpel (META-INF/application.xml)


BUILD FAILED
/apps/st1fib/product/AS10gR3_BPEL/bpel/system/services/install/ant-tasks/redeploy.xml:51: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/apps/st1fib/product/AS10gR3_BPEL/bpel/system/services/install/ant-tasks/redeploy.xml:64: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/apps/st1fib/product/AS10gR3_BPEL/bpel/system/services/install/ant-tasks/redeploy.xml:92: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/apps/st1fib/product/AS10gR3_BPEL/bpel/system/services/install/ant-tasks/redeploy-common.xml:80: The following error occurred while executing this line:
/apps/st1fib/product/AS10gR3_BPEL/bpel/system/services/install/ant-tasks/redeploy-common.xml:152: Java returned: 1

Total time: 6 seconds
Configuration assistant "BPEL Configuration Assistant" failed


While I have strong reasons to believe that this was caused due to the oracle home being on the NFS mounted file system, we had an urgent requirement to deliver the instance to the business. We had to deliver the instance under two hours and we had to crack this issue.


There are three main parts to this apps filesystem upgrade part of BPEL upgrade:

1. Applying the patchset 10.1.3.5
2. Configuration assistants run subsequently
3. Run root.sh and exit the installer.


The aforesaid issue you get when the configuration assistant is running and there were no issues reported by the installer in the earlier stage. To fix this issue, we wanted to figure out what were the sequence of events performed by the configuration assistant (roughly, highlighting main events which i thought were important):


- Patch brings in new jar files
- Patch also updates the file $ORACLE_HOME/bpel/system/services/lib/orabpel.ear
- The configuration assistant checks server.xml to see if this application (orabpel.ear is present).
- If it is present, then it deletes the corresponding line in server.xml ($ORACLE_HOME/j2ee/BPEL_OC4J_FIB/config/server.xml) and the proceeds with the actual deployment.
- The configuration assistant then copies the above orabpel.ear file to $ORACLE_HOME/j2ee/BPEL_OC4J_FIB/applications
- The configuration assistant then extracts orabpel.ear file
- If application-deployment subfolder for this application is created if it is not present.
- The server.xml ($ORACLE_HOME/j2ee/BPEL_OC4J_FIB/config/server.xml) file is again updated with this entry.


Here is how we fixed the issue:

- When the configuration assistant failed, we clicked on the retry button.
- This time the assistant failed with the error that ORABPEL application not found.
- The reason is, from the first iteration, the entry for orabpel was deleted in server.xml.
- Make the entry for orabpel in the server.xml like ""
- Copy the orabpel.ear from $ORACLE_HOME/bpel/system/services/lib/orabpel.ear to /apps/st1fib/product/AS10gR3_BPEL/j2ee/BPEL_OC4J_FIB/applications
- Click the retry button, it was successful.


- Aravind Kamath Posral