Fix NativeOS DPK Issues on Windows

The NativeOS DPK’s for PeopleSoft Images are a welcome change. With the NativeOS DPK, you can deploy the PeopleSoft Images on Windows. This is great news for PeopleSoft customers who run Windows; the PeopleSoft Image can be on the same platform as the rest of your systems. The DPK process is great. There are so many advantages with DPK over the previous methods, but there are a few rough edges in the DPK process. Here are some changes I made to our HR 9.2 Image 16 virtual machine. We ran the NativeOS DPK on this Windows 2012 R2 server, with no changes to the configuration.

Services

The DPK installation will create a Windows service for the PIA, but no service is created for the Tuxedo domains. And, the services are set to “Manual”. So, when you reboot the VM, the web, app and batch server’s won’t start. This is an easy fix, but an annoying change to make when the DPK’s are supposed to automate everything. In psadmin,

1. Select “Services Setup” option (6).
2. Select “Configure Windows Service” (1).
3. Enter “Y” to change the values.
4. Enter “Y” to change the values (yes, you have to do this twice…)
5. I changed the service delay to 10.
6. Add APPDOM for the Application Server Domain.
7. Add PRCSDOM for the Process Scheduler Domain.
8. Leave the Search Server Domain blank
9. Enter “N” – we are done with our chagnes.
10. On the Services Administraton menu, select “Install Windows Service” (2).

Now we have a service for the Tuxedo domains, but the service is configured to start manually. Let’s go change that.

1. From the Start menu, select Run and enter services.msc.
2. Find the new service “PeopleSoft …” and double-click it.
3. Change the Startup Type to “Automatic” and close the window.

We also want to change the PIA service to start automatically.

1. Find the service “PIA Domain peoplesoft Service” and double-click it.
2. Change the Startup Type to “Automatic” and close the window. The same is true for the Oracle services.

Let’s set those to start automatically.

1. Find the service “OracleServiceCDBxxx” and double-click it.
2. Change the Startup Type to “Automatic” and close the window.
3. Find the service “OracleOraDB12cHomeTNSListener” and double-click it.
4. Change the Startup Type to “Automatic” and close the window. The next time you reboot the server, your PeopleSoft and Oracle services will start automatically. But, you’ll probably run into this next error on the reboot.

Oracle Listener

After rebooting the NativeOS DPK installed server, the Oracle listener cannot find the database, which also prevents the app and batch server from starting. If you try to connect to the database you’ll get a

ORA-12514: TNS:listner does not currently know of service requested in connect descriptor error. This is a pretty easy fix (although I spent a few hours testing many different “fixes”). Change the port number for the Listener.

UPDATE: There is a different/better way to make this change if you haven’t run the DPK for your PeopleSoft Image yet

1. In the tnsnames.ora file, change the port to 1521. The DPK default path is [base folder]dbtnsnames.ora
2. In the listner.ora file, change the port to 1521. The DPK default path is [base folder]dboracle-server12.1.0.2networkadminlistener.ora. Restart the Oracle services and test your listener configuration. From the command prompt, try to connect to the database with SQL*Plus:

sqlplus sysadm/sysadm@hr92u016

Once you can connect to the database, you can boot the app and batch servers. Or, reboot the entire server and make sure all the services start automatically.

Final Thoughts

While there are some issues with the DPK process right now, it’s easy to get frustrated. The effort to build the DPK’s was incredible and a huge task. So, it’s not surprising that there are some rough edges with the DPK’s and the new PeopleSoft Image process. But, I’m trying to keep an eye on where these changes are taking us. The DPK’s are a very large undertaking from the PeopleTools group and will substantially improve the way we manage PeopleSoft installations.