Installing PeopleTools Client on Ubuntu Linux Host

Ubuntu has been my choice of OS for some time now. It works great for the most part until I start trying to interact with the Microsoft-centric business world. App Designer is one of those pressure points. Normally, my clients give me a Windows-based remote desktop, but for playing around with things outside a client, I needed a way to run App Designer locally on my laptop.

I finally figured out how to install App Designer for Oracle’s PeopleSoft VM images directly in Ubuntu. Here’s what I did…

Accessing the Installer

The PeopleTools client installer is located at \\\client\Disk1. You can use the command “ifconfig” on the image’s command line to determine its IP address. In my case, it was: 192.168.56.101

So, for me the URL for nautilus is: smb://192.168.56.101/client/Disk1

At first, I thought I needed to get to the install from the command-line. In Ubuntu 13.10, it’s at: /run/user/1000/gvfs/smb-share\:server\=192.168.56.101\,share\=client/Disk1. As it turns out, I had to copy the installation files to my laptop to get it to install.

Note: You can also download the client installer CD from Oracle’s eDelivery website.

Preparing Wine

I actually didn’t have wine installed yet. So, I installed it with:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get install wine

Note that adding the respository was important because I needed the newer version of wine. Without the Wine Repo, it installed version 1.4. The Repo contains the 1.6 version. 1.6 has some fixes that make App Designer work.

I created a new Wine Prefix for my installation:

export WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.local/share/wineprefixes/peopletools"
export WINEARCH="win32"
mkdir -p $HOME/.local/share/wineprefixes
winecfg

In the dialog that opens, I set the “Windows Version” (on the “Applications” tab) to Windows 7. I hit Apply and OK to close.

Next, I ran:

winetricks vcrun2005 dotnet20

Installing

I found that I had to copy the installation files to my local computer. I also had to make sure that the directory name stayed “Disk1”.

cp -r /run/user/1000/gvfs/smb-share\:server\=192.168.56.101\,share\=client/Disk1 $HOME/Downloads/
cd $HOME/Downloads/Disk1
wine cmd /c setup.bat

I accepted all of the defaults on the installer. The license code comes from the Oracle license codes page.

Once installed, it should create a shortcut in your menu. In case you need it, the command for Application Designer would be (adjust the Wine Prefix to your settings):

env WINEPREFIX="/home/skp/.local/share/wineprefixes/peopletools" \
   wine C:\\\\windows\\\\command\\\\start.exe /Unix /home/skp/.local/share/wineprefixes/peopletools/dosdevices/c:/users/Public/Start\\ Menu/Programs/PeopleTools\\ Client\\ 8.53/Application\\ Designer.lnk

Oracle Connectivity

For the Oracle database client, I downloaded the instant client zip files from Oracle’s TechNet. I downloaded two zip files:

• instantclient-basiclite-nt-11.2.0.3.0.zip
• instantclient-sqlplus-nt-11.2.0.3.0.zip

Next, I created the paths for the files.

mkdir -p $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/oracle/bin
mkdir -p $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/oracle/network/admin

Next, I extracted both zip files into $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/oracle/bin. If it helps, here are the commands that I used:

unzip instantclient-basiclite-nt-11.2.0.4.0.zip -d $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/oracle/bin/
mv $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/oracle/bin/instantclient_11_2/* $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/oracle/bin/
unzip instantclient-sqlplus-nt-11.2.0.4.0.zip -d $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/oracle/bin/
rmdir $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/oracle/bin/instantclient_11_2/* $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/oracle/bin/instantclient_11_2

Then, I had to add some registry entries. I opened the registry editor with:

wine regedit

I was following instructions that said to created this registery path. It actually already existed probably because Tuxedo was installed with the PeopleTools installer.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Oracle

I updated the path environment variable, by changing this key. I just added c:\oracle\bin to the path list.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Environment\PATH

I set the TNS_ADMIN variable to the location of my tnsnames.ora file — c:\oracle\network\admin

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\Environment\TNS_ADMIN

Finally, I created the tnsnames.ora file. I opened up a notepad window to create the file like this:

wine notepad 'c:\oracle\network\admin\tnsnames.ora'

I copied the values from the VM machine from /u01/app/oracle/product/11.2.0.x/db_1/network/admin/tnsnames.ora. For some reason, the service name had to be different. To find the service name, I went to the server and ran:

su - oracle
sqlplus / as sysdba
select value from v$parameter where name='service_names';

That gave me: HCMDB.us.oracle.com

So, here is the end result for me that I placed in the notepad window as my tnsnames.ora:

HCMDB =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = hcmdb.digitaleagle.net)(PORT = 1522))
    (CONNECT_DATA =
      (SERVER = DEDICATED)
      (SERVICE_NAME = HCMDB.us.oracle.com)
    )
  )

Troubleshooting

If App Designer doesn’t work, make sure that sqlplus does work:

wine cmd /c sqlplus /nolog
connect SYSADM/SYSADM@HCMDB

Resources

• Ask Ubuntu: How do I navigate to a samba location I’ve mounted in Nautilus on the command line?
• Wine HQ Forum: Using wine for Peoplesoft Development
• DBA-010: Install PL/SQL Developer under Wine on Linux
• PeopleSoft Junction: PeopleSoft Application Designer – Missing or invalid version of SQL library PSORA(200,0)