Silent Installation of WebLogic Server

The below post describes about the Silent Installation of Oracle WebLogic Server 11g.

Silent mode installation allows you to define an installation configuration file called silent.xml, based upon which the required components are installed. This does not provide any configuration options during the installation process. Silent installation allows using the configuration to duplicate the installation on many machines. Silent-mode installation works on both Windows and UNIX systems.

The silent-mode installation process has two primary steps:

1. Create a silent.xml file that defines the installation configuration that you would normally enter during an interactive installation process, such as graphical-mode or console-mode installation.

For example, in silent.xml, you can supply the values for the Middleware home directory, the product directory, and the components to be installed.

A sample silent.xml looks like below.

**************************************
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<bea-installer>
<input-fields>
<data-value value="D:WLS11g"/>
<data-value name="WLS_INSTALL_DIR" value="D:WLS11gwlserver_10.3"/>
<data-value name="COMPONENT_PATHS"
value="WebLogic Server/Core Application Server|WebLogic Server/Administration Console|WebLogic Server/Configuration Wizard and Upgrade Framework|WebLogic Server/Web 2.0 HTTP Pub-Sub Server|WebLogic Server/WebLogic JDBC Drivers|WebLogic Server/Third Party JDBC Drivers|WebLogic Server/WebLogic Server Clients|WebLogic Server/WebLogic Web Server Plugins|WebLogic Server/UDDI and Xquery Support|WebLogic Server/Server Examples"/>
<!--<data-value name="INSTALL_NODE_MANAGER_SERVICE" value="yes"  />
<data-value name="NODEMGR_PORT" value="5559" />
<data-value name="INSTALL_SHORTCUT_IN_ALL_USERS_FOLDER" value="yes"/>
<data-valuemso-spacerun:yes">       "value="D:jrockit_160_05|D:jdk160_11"/>
-->
</input-fields>
</bea-installer>
**************************************

NOTE: Make sure there are no empty spaces with in the COMPONENT_PATHS values.

2. Open a command prompt and start the installation by executing the below command.

wls1031_win32.exe -mode=silent -silent_xml=<path_to_silent.xml>

NOTE: Optionally you can specify an installation log file so that you can keep a track of any issues that occur during installation of the WebLogic server as below.

wls1031_win32.exe -mode=silent -silent_xml=<path_to_silent.xml> -log=g:silent-install.log

It opens up a new windows showing the installation progress.

3. Check the install progress window and a successful install would display message like below.

In the verbose install log, a successful install would read like below.

[WizardController] com.bea.plateng.wizard.silent.tasks.LogTask – The installation was successfull!

Note: A typical install in the windows would look like.
Note: If you are using a generic jar installer then you need to set the PATH before you run the installer.

java -jar file_name.jar -mode=silent -silent_xml=path_to_silent.xml

file_name.jar is the name of the installation file
path_to_silent.xml is the full path to the silent.xml file.

There are other ways of silent installation of the weblogic server according to your situation, refer the below links to have more insight into them.

Common errors during installation:

1:

An external Eclipse Home must be specified when using the generic installer.

Troubleshooting:

You can specify the Eclipse External Home by using the below argument in the silent.xml

USE_EXTERNAL_ECLIPSE=”true”

EXTERNAL_ECLIPSE_DIR=<Eclipse-Location-Directory>

2:

The directory “/tmp” does not have enough space for extraction.

Troubleshooting:

Silent-mode installation requires the same amount of temporary disk space and uses the same temporary storage directories as a standard installation. If you re running out of temporary space, you can change the default temporary directory by using the below parameter.

Specify the below java handler.

-Djava.io.tmpdir=<temp-dir-location>:
References:
Cheers,
Wonders Team. 🙂