X Server and EBS

According to Note: 231137.1 Troubleshooting the Self Service Framework with Oracle Applications, you need access to an X server for dynamic image generation. These images are used for buttons and menu bars that you see on self service pages. Before I get to far, I should probably add that if your on windows you don't need an X server.

Metalink note: 181244.1 lists the different options you have available and describes how to configure each. In summary the 3 options you have are:

1. Use the X display of your server.
2. If your server doesn't have a display you can use 3rd party software Xvfb or VNC.
3. A Desktop X display server - ie, use 3rd party software such as Exceed on a PC

If your environment is autoconfig enabled you can look at you context file to see where you display is currently pointed.

ora@myserver=> grep display *.xml ORA_myserver.xml: myserver:0.0

You can also see it in your $IAS_ORACLE_HOME/Apache/Jserv/etc/jserv.properties file

wrapper.env=DISPLAY=myserver:0.0


To test whether or not the application is able to access the X Server you can use the AOL test UI:

http://hostname:port/OA_HTML/jsp/fnd/aoljtest.jsp

The first thing you will be prompted for is your connection details:



After you click on the TEST button scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on "Enter AOL/J Setup Test". On the left hand side of the following screen you see a summary of the environment you connected to and a list of tests. Scroll down on the left hand side until you see "X Server Accessibility". Once you click on that link the right hand frame will show you whether or not the X Server is accessible.




Note 231137.1 also describes some of the common errors you may see if the X server is not accessible. However, sometimes you will get rather cryptic errors if the application can't talk to an X server.

For the record, we use the X display of our server (option 1 above). In order to use this option the unix administrators have to type xhost + on the console to grant access to the X server. A caveat is that the unix administrators have to lock their terminal. If they logout, then access is revoked. This past weekend we had some maintenance in which the servers needed to be rebooted. After which the unix admins logged out of the terminal. Sunday morning users reported the following error when in iProcurement:



As you can see, not alot of information to go on. Since this is self-service web application the first thing to check is the apache and jserv log files. In the jserv.log file was the following error:

[24/06/2007 14:38:08:378 EDT] OAButtonBean, localName='button': oracle.cabo.style: Could not initialize the graphical environment
. Please make sure that the DISPLAY environment variable is set correctly. Proceeding with image generation disabled...

Using the X server test via AOL Test UI we could verify that the application couldn't talk to the X server. After a call to the unix team they granted us access, "locked" the screen and once apache was bounced the error was resolved. So in a nutshell, keep that link above handy. We have hit numerous weird errors in the past and sometimes it involves a lot of investigation to find out in the end it was just the X Server.

I believe in R12 the need for an X server is gone but we are a long ways from R12..... For now we may investigate using option 2 or 3 above so that we can manage this piece ourselves.