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Oracle9iAS Portal Release Notes
Release 2 (9.0.2)

Part Number A96191-02
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3
Configuration Issues and Workarounds

This section describes configuration issues and their workarounds for Oracle9iAS Portal.

3.1 Reducing Access/Login Time to Oracle9iAS Portal

3.1.1 Background

Oracle9iAS Portal uses session cookies to maintain session details for each Portal user. This session cookie is encrypted and contains important information like the database username, light weight username and NLS characteristics of the session. For mod_plsql to execute a Portal request, it needs to establish the database username from the session cookie. To avoid an expensive decrypt operation with each user request, mod_plsql decrypts the session cookie once and maintains the relevant details in a "session cache" on the local file system.

In a default iAS installation, the session cache directory is:

$IAS_HOME/Apache/modplsql/cache

The session cache is configured via the file:

Note: The Enterprise Manager Configuration Tool can also be used to edit the default configuration.

Given that each session cache item is small, accessed per-request and volatile, it is possible to increase performance by moving the session cache to a more performant file system. For example, the memory-based file system that is commonly available on UNIX platforms.

3.1.2 Moving Session Cache Directory to More Performant File System

  1. Determine how much space is needed by the session cache:

3.2 Web Cache Requires Multiple Middle-Tiers to Have Same DAD

If Oracle9iAS Portal is accessed via multiple middle-tiers with one Web Cache installation, the DAD name used to access Oracle9iAS Portal should be the same in all of the middle-tiers. This is required for Web Cache invalidation to work correctly.

3.3 Web Cache Requires Session Caching in mod_plsql Cache to be Enabled

Web Cache can cache Oracle Portal pages and portlets only if Session Caching is switched "On" in the mod_plsql cache.

If Session Caching is switched "Off", Web Cache does not cache Oracle Portal pages and portlets. See also section 3.1.1.

3.4 Web Cache Problems If Templates Used By More Than 25 Pages

If a template is used by more than 25 pages, one of the following two errors can occur:

This is caused by a known exception in the invalidation message processing. The workaround is to turn "OFF" Web Cache in Oracle9iAS Portal as described in section 14.9 of these Release Notes.

For more information about troubleshooting Oracle9iAS Web Cache related issues in Oracle9iAS Portal, refer to chapter eight of the Oracle9iAS Portal Configuration Guide. This guide is available on OTN, see http://portalstudio.oracle.com.

3.5 Modifying mod_plsql Settings

If you make manual edits to the mod_plsql configuration files, the changes are not reflected in the DCM repository. This is also the case if you have created, modified, or deleted DADs or modified mod_plsql cache setting through the Enterprise Manager user interface.

To avoid this problem, you must run the following command after making any edits either manually or through the Oracle Enterprise Manager user interface:

dcmctl updateconfig ohs

3.6 Configuring Browser Settings

3.6.1 Cache Settings

To ensure that your browser is always displaying valid Portal content, please make sure that your browser cache settings are as follows:

Internet Explorer:

Tools->Internet Options -> General Tab -> Settings

Check for newer versions of stored pages:

[X] Every visit to the page

[ ] Every time you start Internet Explorer

[ ] Automatically

[ ] Never

Netscape:

Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Cache

Document in cache is compared to document on network:

[ ] Once per session

[X] Every Time

[ ] Never

3.6.2 Image Settings

Please make sure that pictures/images are automatically loaded as follows:

Internet Explorer:

Tools->Internet Options -> Advanced Tab

[X] Show Pictures

Netscape:

Edit->Preferences->Advanced

[X] Automatically Load Images

Sometimes this setting is disabled to increase performance on low bandwidth connections. However, one common problem that occurs when pictures/images are not automatically loaded is that once logged out, you cannot login again without closing and re-invoking the browser. Hence, we recommend that this setting is always enabled.

3.7 Updating Portal Monitoring Details with Portal/SSO Password Changes

If the password changes for an Oracle9iAS Portal or Single Sign-On (SSO) schema that is being monitored, details of the new password must be updated manually for Portal Monitoring Services to continue. Follow the steps below:

  1. In Enterprise Manager, open the Target Administration page:

    @ http://<machine_name>.<domain>:1810/emd/browser/admin
    
  2. From the Agent Monitored Targets list, choose the Name of the Portal schema, or SSO schema which has a new password.

  3. Click Next to edit details for your selection.

  4. Do one of the following:

    • For Portal schemas, update the portal_DAD_password property.

    • For SSO schemas, update the ssoServerPassword property.

  5. Click Finish.

Note: Use this page to update the password property only. Do not update any other property here.

3.8 No Spaces in Oracle Enterprise Manager Property Values

In Oracle Enterprise Manager, you cannot add property values with spaces. The only exception to this rule is the NLS Language property.

3.9 SOAP Related Error Messages After Installation

In some cases, you may see a SOAP related error message, ORA-29552 Verification Warning, in the USER_ERRORS view following the Oracle9iAS Portal install. This error message does not correspond to any loss of service.

3.10 NLS Cannot be Authenticated by Oracle9iAS Single Sign-On if Username Contains Non-ASCII Characters

For non-ASCII usernames to work, the default encoding of the OC4J JavaVM running the Oracle9iAS Syndication Server should be compatible with the character set of the Oracle9iAS Single Sign-On Login Server. The Java VM default encoding is determined by the locale on which OC4J is started. The character set of the Oracle9iAS Single Sign-On Login Server is the character set of the database on which the Oracle9iAS Single Sign-On Login Server is deployed.

For example, when OC4J is deployed on a Japanese locale environment with Shift-JIS as the character set of the locale, the default encoding of the Java VM is SJIS (Java encoding name for the Shift-JIS character set). In this case, the database character set of the Oracle9iAS Single Sign-On Login Server should also be JA16SJIS (Oracle's character set for SJIS) in order to use Japanese multibyte usernames.

3.11 Disabling the IP Check of Cookie Validation

Depending on the network configuration into which Oracle9iAS is installed, it may be necessary to disable IP checking in cookie validation.

This action is necessary if HTTP access to the Portal server is through a set of proxies that do not each assert the same IP address when calling Portal. In such cases the login request that invokes the creation of the session cookie may be routed via one proxy, but subsequent requests are routed through different proxies. This raises a security violation during the IP checking step and access to the page denied.

To change the state of IP checking in cookie validation, you need to update data in both the Portal schema and the SSO schema as detailed in Table 3-1 below.

Table 3-1 Enabling and Disabling IP Checking
Portal Schema SSO Schema

Enable IP checking

update wwsec_enabler_config_
info$

set url_cookie_ip_check = 'Y';

                           
commit;
update wwsec_enabler_config_
info$
                                                                
set url_cookie_ip_check ='Y';

                                                             
update wwsso_ls_
configuration_info$
                                                                
set cookie_ip_check = 'Y';

                                                             
commit;

Disable IP checking

update wwsec_enabler_config_
info$
                              
set url_cookie_ip_check = 'N';

                           
commit;
update wwsec_enabler_config_
info$
                                                                
set url_cookie_ip_check ='N';

                                                             
update wwsso_ls_
configuration_info$
                                                                
set cookie_ip_check = 'N';

                                                             
commit;

3.12 Portal Configuration Issues on Portal and Wireless Upgrade

On an Oracle Portal and Wireless upgrade over a J2EE and Web Cache installation, the Portal runtime generates the following error when you click the Login link in the Portal Home page:

"Error: You cannot login because there is no configuration information stored in 
the enabler configuration table. (WWC-41439)" 

The workaround is as follows:

  1. Edit $ORACLE_HOME/assistants/opca/launch.sh, replacing the SSL port number assigned to the variable http_port with the HTTP server port (same as Webcache port) of the middle-tier installation.

    For example, in the line set http_port = <value>, replace the existing value with the HTTP server port of the middle-tier installation.

  2. Save and close the file.

  3. Run the edited version of launch.sh.

3.13 Configuration Fails Through Oracle Enterprise Manager

If you choose not to configure Oracle9iAS Portal during installation and try to configure later through Oracle Enterprise Manager, the portal configuration might fail with the following error:

"The component failed during the configuration operation. Correct any errors 
reported on this page and in the error logs and retry the operation."

The workaround is to manually configure Oracle9iAS Portal after installation by following these steps:

  1. Run the ptlem.sh script from the ORACLE_HOME/assistants/opca directory.

  2. Run the OC4J deployment tool to deploy Portal. Please refer to the Administrator's guide for details on running the OC4J deployment tool manually.

3.14 Registering Oracle Portal Provider for Wireless Web Tool and Wireless Customization Fails

If both the infrastructure and middle-tier are installed on the same machine and the EMD running in the machine refers to the infrastructure Oracle home, the "Register Oracle Portal Provider for Wireless Web tool" and "Register Oracle Portal Provider for Wireless Customization" from the Wireless site displays "java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError" errors.

As a workaround, be sure that the Oracle9iAS Portal .jar files, pdkjava.jar and ptlshare.jar, in the orion-web.xml of the infrastructure install point to the middle-tier installation.

For example, if the infrastructure is installed in location /private/ias20_infra/ and the middle-tier is installed in location /private/ias20_midtier/ then the following entries in the EMD's orion-web.xml:

<classpath path="/private/ias20_infra/portal/jlib/pdkjava.jar"/> 
<classpath path="/private/ias20_infra/portal/jlib/ptlshare.jar"/> 

should be replaced with:

<classpath path="/private/ias20_midtier/portal/jlib/pdkjava.jar"/> 
<classpath path="/private/ias20_midtier/portal/jlib/ptlshare.jar"/>

Please re-start the opmn process for the changes to take effect.

3.15 Must be Member of DAS Admin Group and iAS Admin Group to Install Portal

To perform a complete Oracle9iAS Portal installation, you need to be a member of both the DAS Admin group and the iAS Admin group or you can install as OID super-user ('cn=orcladmin').

The DN of these groups in OID is cn=IASAdmins,cn=groups,cn=OracleContext and cn=oracleDASAdminGroup,cn=groups,cn=OracleContext.


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