As we know, with the new PeopleSoft 9.2 applications came a new method of delivering updates via PeopleSoft Update Manager. We now need to download fully functional VirtualBox images to get our patches. We can also use these images for Demo environments and specific versions are useable for New Release Demos during application upgrades. SES is even included in these images. I’ve been using VirtualBox for years, since the original innotek days. It works great for desktop use which is it’s intended use. Sure you can set it up on a server and make it work in a more enterprise environment but I wanted to deploy the images to something I already had hosting some vm’s, Linux KVM. If you want to run your images on VMWare, I recommend reading this post on running the images on VMWare. So lets begin setting up a new PUM image for Linux KVM.
This is just a simple writeup on running these on an already functioning system. Setting up Linux KVM, it’s networking, or anything else is out of scope for this post.
- Download the pieces of the image in question to a location: ex. /ds1/isos/HCMPUM7
- Unzip all the files. Since this may take a while, I use nohup just in case and push the job to the background if I want to do something else:
[sourcecode]
$ cd /ds1/isos/HCMPUM7
$ nohup unzip ‘*.zip’ & tail -f nohup.out
nohup: ignoring input and appending output to nohup.out
Archive: HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_2of9.zip
inflating: HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_1of8
Archive: HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_6of9.zip
inflating: HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_5of8
[/sourcecode] - The unzipped files are parts that need combined:
[sourcecode]
$ cat HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_1of8 HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_2of8 HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_3of8 HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_4of8 HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_5of8 HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_6of8 HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_7of8 HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_8of8 > HCM-920-UPD-007.ova
[/sourcecode] - Alternatively to step 2 and 3, you can unzip only HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_1of9.zip and run the ova_gen.sh script.
[sourcecode]
$ unzip HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_1of9.zip
Archive: HCM-920-UPD-007_OVA_1of9.zip</pre>
inflating: 18508704Readme.html
inflating: 18508704UpdatesIncluded.xls
inflating: ova_gen.sh
inflating: ova_gen.bat
inflating: MD5-SHA1_Checksum.txt
$ chmod 755 ova_gen.sh
$ ./ova_gen.sh
[/sourcecode] - Either way you finally end up with HCM-920-UPD-007.ova or HCM-920-UPD-007.OVA
- If you want to verify the integrity of your OVA file you can check the mdsum
[sourcecode]
$ md5sum HCM-920-UPD-007.OVA
7edcada549897ced2fdbfb08a3ecf63e HCM-920-UPD-007.OVA
[/sourcecode] - Compare that value to what Oracle says it should be:
[sourcecode]
$ cat MD5-SHA1_Checksum.txt
[/sourcecode] - Now extract the ova (which is just a tar file) to your vm path
[sourcecode]
$ mkdir /ds1/vmImages/HCM.92.007.PUM; cd /ds1/vmImages/HCM.92.007.PUM
$ tar -xvf /ds1/isos/HCMPUM7/HCM-920-UPD-007.ova
HCMDB-SES-853-13.ovf
HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk1.vmdk
HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk2.vmdk
HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk3.vmdk
HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk4.vmdk
HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk5.vmdk
HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk6.vmdk
[/sourcecode] - Convert the compressed vmdk files to your preferred format, I’m going to use compressed qcow2 for this image:
[sourcecode]
$ nohup find . -name "*.vmdk" -exec qemu-img convert -c -p -O qcow2 {} {}qcow2 \;
(100.00/100%)
(100.00/100%)
(100.00/100%)
(100.00/100%)
[/sourcecode] - The conversion created the new files as root, I have the psoft user setup to run qemu commands as itself:
[sourcecode]
$ sudo chown psoft:kvm *
[/sourcecode] - To avoid any confusion, rename the files after conversion:
[sourcecode]
$ rename -v ‘s/\.vmdkqcow2$/.qcow2/’ *.vmdkqcow2
HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk1.vmdkqcow2 renamed as HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk1.qcow2
HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk2.vmdkqcow2 renamed as HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk2.qcow2
HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk3.vmdkqcow2 renamed as HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk3.qcow2
HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk4.vmdkqcow2 renamed as HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk4.qcow2
HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk5.vmdkqcow2 renamed as HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk5.qcow2
HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk6.vmdkqcow2 renamed as HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk6.qcow2
[/sourcecode] - Cleanup and review
[sourcecode]
$ rm *.vmdk
$ rm /ds1/isos/HCMPUM7/*of8 #leave the zip and combined ova in case I need them again
$ ll
total 30664850
drwxrwxr-x 2 psoft psoft 9 Aug 11 14:35 ./
drwxr-xr-x 12 randy kvm 12 Aug 11 11:33 ../
-rw-r–r– 1 psoft kvm 2314132992 Aug 11 12:25 HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk1.qcow2
-rw-r–r– 1 psoft kvm 3622515200 Aug 11 12:58 HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk2.qcow2
-rw-r–r– 1 psoft kvm 6583902208 Aug 11 13:16 HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk3.qcow2
-rw-r–r– 1 psoft kvm 7853768704 Aug 11 12:37 HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk4.qcow2
-rw-r–r– 1 psoft kvm 410112 Aug 11 12:19 HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk5.qcow2
-rw-r–r– 1 psoft kvm 11004225536 Aug 11 12:53 HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk6.qcow2
[/sourcecode] - I glanced at the .ovf file to see that the VBox setup would use 2 vCPUs and 6 GB of RAM.For some things a GUI is handy, so I use virt-manager to create the VM from scratch. I use this previously discussed technique to forward displays from Linux servers to my workstation:
- Setup HCMDB-SES-853-13-disk1.qcow2 as the first disk imported and set the OS type: to Linux and Version: to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 or later:
- Next set your Memory: at 6144 MB or higher and CPUs: at 2 or higher. If you are running on a big machine you can add more memory to the Oracle Database engine if you want:
- On the final screen ensure you check the Customize configuration before install box. You will need to change the controller/disk type of the boot drive to IDE and add the remaining disks:
- After hitting Finish you should get the configuration window. Select Disk 1 and expand the Advanced options. Set the Disk bus: to IDE. The VM will not boot otherwise.
- Now add the remaining disk images using the Add Hardware option. The data drives can be added at virtio disks:
- Your final configuration looks like this:
- You can now click the Begin Installation button and boot the VM. On first boot you will be prompted for some configuration items such as hostname, database name, passwords, etc. A few minutes later you should have a fully functional system.
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