I was working with a client recently and they wanted some help setting up change assistant in order to apply some bundles to their environment. Seems like a pretty straight forward request. While doing a WebEx session we installed the change assistant and setup the agents and download the patches/bundles and then went into the change assistant to apply them. This is where things went weird.

After going through all the prompts to apply the change packages, the second last prompt is to enter the userid/password and accessid/password. Once the password was entered and the next button clicked, I received a Java Platform Platform SE Binary has stopped working. When you clicked on more details it shows that javaw.exe has crashed with a bunch of weird codes.

The versions I was seeing in the error code, made me think that there was some issue with the Java, so I made sure I was using the current version of java. Still no dice. So I tried a newer toolset, and went through the process to upgrade to the latest toolset. Still no dice.

This is when it dawned on me. I had the system administrator entering the accessid password during the remote session, and when I actually saw the password, it was 9 digits in length. I changed the password to an 8 digit password and we were in business.

This is an actual note from PeopleSoft: IMPORTANT NOTE: One thing to remember is that PeopleSoft does not support an Access ID or Access ID password of over 8 Characters. It MUST also start with an alpha character and can not contain any white space, or any of the following characters: ; : & , < > \ / ” ‘ [ ] { } ( )! % * ? – = +

The @ $ # characters will sometimes work, depending on DB platform, but cannot be at the beginning of the password. The Access ID cannot be a restricted word used in the Database either.

So there you go! There is an enhancement request to make the sysadm password handle larger sized passwords but I believe this case 1076084.1 has been open for a considerable time. I can remember being a DBA at one site almost 10 years ago, and they insisted that all administrative password had to be 16 digits. After a long and intense battle all passwords were changed to 16 digits except the accessid password.