As part of a system administrators play book, you should be familiar with the version application engine. This AE can fix all sorts of odd issues, however, it should not be necessary to run it often. There are many locations within PeopleSoft that have a version control, you may have noticed it on PSOPRDEFN, PSPNLDEFN, PSCLASSDEFN, etc… this version is compared against the version stored for the object type on the PSVERSION table, and this determines if the object needs to be used from cache or if it needs to be recached.

Often times, when objects are migrated from one environment to another, patches/fixes/bundles/maintenance packs are applied, upgrades are done, you will find these version numbers will get out of sync. In order to get them in sync, you should run the AE from a command line:

psae -CT -CD -CO -CP -R -AI VERSION

= ORACLE / MICROSFT — is your database — is a user in your PeopleSoft Security with administrative priviledges — PSUser’s password — is a run control id anything will do.

You will want to clear all cache and bounce the application, process and web services, and you will want to make sure that all developers are out of the system (they can even clear their cache on their local machines).

An application engine program can be traced by simply changing the trace parameters in the process scheduler configuration file, however, that requires the process scheduler to be brought down and it will trace every application engine ran through the process scheduler.  However, you can append those trace parameters to the process definition and it will trace the individual process.  Navigate to the process definition (Home>PeopleTools>Process Scheduler>Processes –> Override Options)  in the parameter list select append and enter in -TRACE xxx -TOOLSTRACEPC xxx -TOOLSTRACESQL xxx, where xxx is the bit reference based on the needs of the trace. So for example if you wanted options 1, 2, and 128 for trace, you add 1+2+128 = 131, and you enter 131 as the trace parameter: -TRACE 131.

-TRACE parameters:

-TOOLSTRACEPC parameters

-TOOLSTRACESQL parameters

Note that output from the -TRACE flag goes to the application engine trace (.AET) file. Output from the -TOOLSTRACEPC and -TOOLSTRACESQL output goes to the PeopleTools trace file (.TRC).

When starting the Application Designer, Data Mover, or Configuration Manager, it will automatically error with the message(s):

• This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect.
• The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect.

PeopleTools 8.50 is developed using Microsoft Visual C++ 2005.  Microsoft changed the way it bundles the CRT (C Run Time) files, and if these fails are not present you will see the above error messages.  There is a section in the Installation Guide – Task “Verifying Necessary Files for Installation on Windows”.

For PeopleTools 8.50, the easiest fix is to navigate to your PS_HOME\setup\vcredist directory and run vcredist_x86.exe.

For PeopleTools 8.51, navigate to your PS_HOME\setup\psvccrt directory and run psvccrt_retail.msi.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome: Security

At one of my client sites they are constantly doing security changes, and for some reason recently several users complained that they could not access Oracle PeopleSoft via the Chrome browser.  It was returning

Error 312 (net::ERR_UNSAFE_PORT): Unknown error.

After doing some trusty Google Searches, I found this simple solution:

Right click on your Icon (shortcut) to run Chrome and go to properties, and on the Target line add the parameter:

--explicitly-allowed-ports=xxxx,yyyy,zzzz

where xxxx, yyyy and zzzz are ports that you want to allow.  This will solve the problem.

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.