Self update in the online mode is fairly easy to use. I mean it is hard to beat a user interface that simply has three primary actions –
- Check Update – check for latest updates available for download. This also happens automatically every day, so there is no explicit need to use this button.
- Download – download your favorite update (plug-in, agent, connector, etc) to a local directory in EM
- Apply – apply the downloaded update to EM
Here is a good overview video for Self Update in Online Mode.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of customers (Federal, Banking, Financial, etc) who are not allowed to use the Online mode due to various security reasons. We did anticipate this and thus designed a complete offline experience for such customers. In a nutshell, the process can be described as follows:
- Assuming, your MOS connection settings are set to OFFLINE, a user when clicks on the ‘Check Updates’ button, is shown the download url that can be used to download the metadata required to populate the Self Update UI
- Once this archive is downloaded, you can run ’emcli import_update_catalog’ from an agent host or from the OMS to import the metadata
- Now you browse through the table of entities, choose your favorite one, and click on the download button. This is just like you would do in the online mode, with the exception that instead of download being kicked off, you would again see a popup with the download url for the payload along with instructions on how to apply them.
- Once you download the new archive, run emcli import_update to import the payload into self update from one of the agents or from the OMS host
- Finally, we go back to the UI, and apply the entities
While the above looks quite involved, in reality it should take you less than 5 mins (minus the download time) to complete the entire process. This is not bad.
A challenge with the above approach thought is that steps 3-5 have to be repeated for every entity and this can be time consuming. Especially for step 3, you have to click on each interesting entity to determine its download url. While we are working on formally addressing this, here is a quick hack to make your life easier.
In EM12c R4, we introduced an internal view that contains all the relevant information for self update entities and their download url. This view is called gc$selfupdate_entity. That fact that this view is internal means (the usual disclaimers) – firstly, the view has been created for internal consumption by EM, and not by customers, and secondly, we reserve the right to modify this view at any time.
Here are a few useful queries:
1. Every release, whether it is platform or a plug-in release, brings a slew of new entities. Majority of these entities are plug-ins. The following query lists the download urls of all new plug-ins that are in the ‘Available’ state:
SELECT su2.attr4_label,
su2.version,
su2.entity_id,
su2.url
FROM gc$selfupdate_entity su2,
(SELECT su.attr4_label,
MAX(su.version) max_version
FROM gc$selfupdate_entity su
WHERE et_name=’core_emplugin’
AND su.status=’Available’
GROUP BY attr4_label
) max_su
WHERE su2.attr4_label = max_su.attr4_label
AND su2.version = max_su.max_version
ORDER BY 1;
2. Similarly, this query lists the download urls for all new agents in the ‘Available’ state:
SELECT su2.attr3_label,
su2.version,
su2.entity_id,
su2.url
FROM gc$selfupdate_entity su2,
(SELECT su.attr3_label,
MAX(su.version) max_version
FROM gc$selfupdate_entity su
WHERE et_name=’core_agent_core_image’
AND su.status=’Available’
GROUP BY su.attr3_label
) max_su
WHERE su2.attr3_label = max_su.attr3_label
AND su2.version = max_su.max_version
ORDER BY 1;
—
Adeesh Fulay (@AdeeshF)
Musings 