ERP Associates, Inc. - Installing PeopleSoft on UNIX? Cygwin/X Can Help

Installing PeopleSoft on UNIX? Cygwin/X Can Help

Wednesday, 10 May 2006

I'm certainly no command-line zealot, and I like using a Windows interface when I'm not trying to script something. But when I install PeopleSoft on a UNIX platform, I generally end up installing it in "Console" mode because I don't generally have an X-Terminal server available.

That approach has served me well over the years, but recently I had the "opportunity" to install Oracle Application Server. It's install process is quite a bit different from the WebLogic or WebSphere installs I've done in the past, and I've come to the conclusion that the best way to install it is through the Windows interface.

Using the Windows interface on UNIX means I needed an X-Windows server on my PC. My client didn't have a license for Exceed that I could use, and after my request to get access to the Citrix server where it was installed was denied, I began to question the feasibility of the project. That's when I remembered Cygwin.

According to the website,

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts:

A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality.

A collection of tools, which provide Linux look and feel.

My favorite part about Cygwin is that it has a port of the X-Windows system, and it's FREE.

So here's what I did to make it work:

First I downloaded and installed Cygwin.

Next, I launched CYGWIN and fired up the Xwindows subsystem with the startx command.



brent@ERPA-99Y75C3 ~

$ startx

 

Welcome to the XWin X Server

Vendor: The Cygwin/X Project

Release: 6.8.2.0-4

This launched a new xterm window. I used the "xhost +" command to allow other clients to connect to my Cygwin X Server.



brent@ERPA-99Y75C3 ~

$ xhost +

access control disabled, clients can connect from any host

Now I used telnet (SSH works too) to get to the UNIX server.

Before installing anything, I had to set the DISPLAY environment variable which tells the UNIX server where to send the X-Windows windows.

export DISPLAY=ERPA-99Y75C3:0.0

The server name is the first part, the :0.0 is just something I've always done to make it work. Some of you UNIX gurus might enlighten me as to what the :0.0 signifies.

Then execute the runInstaller command, or any other process that you want to see the windows from (like setup.solaris, etc). The program will run on the UNIX server, but you'll be able to see the windows it generates from your workstation. Pretty neat, and the price is right.

Good luck!

Comments (3)

Comment from Bob Taylor : Bob Taylor

Have you heard about an SQR Drag & Drop integration product?

May 12, 2006

... : Brent Martin

One of my clients used a tool called Convoy which had drag and drop functionality to help with data mapping. When you were done it would generate the SQR code to transform and load the data.

It probably saved time since we were implementing PeopleSoft for the first time and had to convert data from a number of systems. The client didn't use it much after go-live, though.

May 13, 2006

Comment from Chris Heller : Chris Heller : http://blog.greysparling.com/

You can also use the SSH server from Cygwin to provide remote scripting access to a Windows box. That's really handy for automating various PeopleSoft administration tasks.

May 15, 2006

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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 10 May 2006 )

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