FYI: Error while running Upgrade Assistant OBIEE 11g - UPGAST-00055

When migrating our legacy OBIEE 10g webcat and RPD to Oracle's new 11g platform, we often don't have the privilege of using a GUI based operating system for assembly & system test as most production systems are Solaris or Red Hat.

We can all agree that a unix distribution is more powerful & flexible, yet leaves much to be desired when attempting to resolve configuration issue in a 'friendly UI environment'. This is certainly no exception when attempting to use Oracle's Upgrade Assistant Command Line Interface .

Many users have encountered error " UPGAST-00055: error reading the Universal Installer Inventory. The inventory pointer oraInst.loc is either not readable or doest not exist". A quick search of Oracle's Fusion Middleware Error Message Reference Guide makes me believe that Oracle's writers are playing a cruel joke in their attempt to 'help':

Action: "see the secondary error message?" You've got to be kidding me!!

Oracle's 'help' aside, the upgrade assistant is looking for an oraInst.loc file which contains 2 things:

1. The location of your installation directory
2. The install group of your user

But the upgrade assistant cant find your oraInst.loc file, why?
UA, by default, searches for the oraInst.loc file in your /var/opt/oracle folder. But many times, the file won't be located there - for a number of reasons , including:

• custom installation directories
• co-installation of multiple oracle products
• de-installation and subsequent re-installation attempts

But you're not out of luck. Most likely, your oraInst.loc file will be in your $MW_HOME/oracle_common folder:

You can then use the UA CLI paramater -invPtrLoc to specify your custom oraInst.loc path.:

./ua MT -BIEEE -webcatdir /export/obiee/11g/Oracle_BI1/bin/webcatalog -invPtrLoc /export/obiee/11g/oracle_common/oraInst.loc -webCatDeliversDir /delivers -wlsPort 7001 -wlsUser weblogic
will generate the following:

followed by a series of postupgrade tasks that you can view at 'tail -f $ORACLE_HOME/upgrade/logs/postupgrade.txt'
and ultimately a 'completed successfully' message:

But what if you can't find your oraInst.loc file? Don't worry! Oracle has a template you can use located at:

• /$ORACLE_HOME//bifoundation/provision/scripts/bidomain/inst

1. Rename it to oraInst.loc
2. Copy it to your $ORACLE_HOME folder
3. Populate the inventory_loc line with the path to your oraInventory folder
4. Populate the inst_group with the group name of the account you're using to install & upgrade OBIEE
5. Run the upgrade assistant as specified above

Problem solved!

keywords : obiee 11g upgrade, upgrade assistant,  obiee administration, obiee 11g administration, weblogic obiee