How do you verify your install had no errors?

[chrisplough]

One of the most frustrating parts about installing complex applications like OTM / GC3 is having the server not startup after a successful installation (or so you thought!). Here are a couple of tips to help you verify your installation prior to moving on.

First, when the installer is complete, it will notify you if any major errors have occurred. If you receive the message:

===============================================================================
Installation Complete
---------------------

Congratulations. G-Log GC3 v5.0 has been successfully installed to:
...

Note: There is also a GUI version of this message that says the same thing.

Then nothing major went awry - congratulations! If you receive any other message, then you'll need to dig further into the installation log file (covered in the next section) to determine what went wrong.

Second, just-in-case, it is always a good idea to verify that everything is kosher by checking the log file created by the installer. This is an XML file that is written to your <gc3_install_dir> and is named G-Log_GC3_v<version_number>_InstallLog.xml. The beginning of this file looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<InstallationLog>
    <ProductName>G-Log_GC3_v5.0</ProductName>
    <Creator>Installed by InstallAnywhere 7.1 Enterprise Build 2763, by Macrovision</Creator>
    <InstallationDirectory>/opt/gc3v50</InstallationDirectory>
    <InstallationSummary status="Installation: Successful."/>
    <InstallDuration begin="Tue May 30 19:44:21 EDT 2006" end="Tue May 30 20:02:22 EDT 2006"/>
    <ActionsSummary>
        <Successes>28779</Successes>
        <Warnings>0</Warnings>
        <NonFatalErrors>0</NonFatalErrors>
        <FatalErrors>0</FatalErrors>
        <ActionNotes>None</ActionNotes>
    </ActionsSummary>
    <InstallLogDetails>
        <action name="Install Action" status="successful"/>
        <action name="Install Action" status="successful"/>
...

Take a look at the ActionsSummary section. Successes are good, Warnings can generally be ignored -- NonFatalErrors and FatalErrors are problems. If you see any NonFatalErrors or FatalErrors, then you'll need to search through the log file in order to get more information. Search for the string status="error (note that I don't include closing quotation marks, so that it matches both error and errors). Any likes that match this search are errors that occurred during installation and need to be addressed.

Even if this error doesn't help you directly - having this information can greatly reduce the issue resolution time by Oracle support. It provides them with a good starting point, so that they can rapidly solve your problem.

Hope this helps!