Installing Cobol Runtime on Linux

This is just one of those things that isn’t well documented and it is a little frustrating.  Most of the documentation seems to be based on the windows installs.

The first thing I would recommend is to send Oracle a license request, the email is:  licensecodes_ww@oracle.com and identify the client with their client support id.  They typically will respond with the licensing that the client is entitled to, and in this situation, I asked for the runtime install details.  Their response contains a link to download the runtime files.  If you are enterprising you can find them on your own: ftp://ftp.oracle.com

In this situation I am installing Micro Focus Server Express 5.1 on a virtual Redhat 5.5 Linux x86-64 server.  The install files for this are on the edelivery website.  I had the server administrator do the server express install, unfortunately the install was done in the wrong directory but as usual work with what you got.  The install was done to /root directory.

Make sure the variables COBDIR, COBPATH, and add $COBDIR/lib to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and add $COBDIR/bin to the PATH variable.   The COBPATH will be the directory where you install the runtime, in my case I set it to: /data/app/mfcbl

Untar the ps-sx-auto.tar  (tar -xvf ps-sx-auto.tar) into the /data/app/mfcbl directory, chmod +x p*, and run ./psauto64

It should tell you that the Unlimited RunTime License is installed and working. Now we need to get the process scheduler to run cobols, but first, we need to re-link the cobol.  Change the directory to your PS_HOME directory, and run the psconfig.sh and then change to the setup directory, and run psrun.mak  – It should tell you the files were successfully linked.  You should already have copied a freshly compiled cblbin directory from your compiling server to your run-time server (note: you can’t compile on a different OS platform and use the run-time on another – the platform must be the same).

Run psadmin, and go into your process scheduler configuration and re-configure the process scheduler, and restart it.  This will set the cobol directories into the environment files of the scheduler.

Go into the web front end, and go to:  PeopleTools > Process Scheduler > System Process Request and run the Simple COBOL test program. (PTPDBTST) and it should run to success.