Goldengate Install Error

Sometimes you waste much more time than you can believe because the instrumentation of the system isn’t great. If you don’t know what a system is doing, you can’t easily fix it. Time should be take to instrument your code, and ensure that any outputs from that instrumentation are readily understandable by others.

Here’s a mild frustration from this week that I encountered. I was installing Goldengate…

./runInstaller -silent -waitforcompletion -responseFile /u01/migrate/gg/software/fbo_ggs_Linux_x64_shiphome/Disk1/install_source.rsp
Starting Oracle Universal Installer...

Checking Temp space: must be greater than 120 MB. Actual 21571 MB Passed
Checking swap space: must be greater than 150 MB. Actual 24575 MB Passed
Preparing to launch Oracle Universal Installer from /tmp/OraInstall2020-07-30_08-03-36PM. Please wait ...
[WARNING] [INS-08109] Unexpected error occurred while validating inputs at state 'installOptions'.
CAUSE: No additional information available.
ACTION: Contact Oracle Support Services or refer to the software manual.
SUMMARY:
- java.lang.NullPointerException

Oh my word! ACTION: Contact Oracle Support Services! java.lang.NullPointerException! Something is terribly wrong!

I’d better re-read this error message carefully… Unexpected error occurred while validating inputs at state ‘installOptions’. What? Validating inputs? Lets have a look at the inputs from the response file:

install_source.rsp

################################################################################
## ##
## Oracle GoldenGate installation option and details ##
## ##
################################################################################

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Specify the installation option.
# Specify ORA19c for installing Oracle GoldenGate for Oracle Database 19c or
# ORA18c for installing Oracle GoldenGate for Oracle Database 18c or
# ORA12c for installing Oracle GoldenGate for Oracle Database 12c or
# ORA11g for installing Oracle GoldenGate for Oracle Database 11g
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
INSTALL_OPTION=ORA11G

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Specify a location to install Oracle GoldenGate
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOFTWARE_LOCATION=/u01/gg

START_MANAGER=
MANAGER_PORT=
DATABASE_LOCATION=
INVENTORY_LOCATION=
UNIX_GROUP_NAME=

I only have 2 inputs; the INSTALL_OPTION and the SOFTWARE_LOCATION… and the INSTALL_OPTION is wrong! This field is case sensitive. ORA11G does not match ORA11g, so I get a dramatic null pointer exception and a failure. It would have been a much quicker remediation if the Oracle error had been curated a little better and the programmer a little more sympathetic to users of their code.

How about:
Installation parameter INSTALL_OPTION invalid,
rather than
Unexpected error occurred while validating inputs at state ‘installOptions’