This section of the Readme describes general installation issues.
Having a mixed install of Series 7 Version 3 (7.3) MR2 BI products and/or Cognos Planning or Cognos Finance 7.3 SP3 on the same computer as earlier releases of these 7.3 products may cause these earlier releases to fail. The problems occur due to backwards compatibility issues found in the following components: UDA, XALAN and Cognos Web Services (CWS) with Cognos Visualizer.
Note that you will not have these problems if the products on the same computer are all at 7.3 MR2 and SP3 level, or if you install 7.3 MR2/SP3 products on one computer and have other products running 7.3 pre-MR2 or pre-SP3 on a different computer. For example, having Upfront and PowerPlay 7.3 MR2 on MyServerA, drilling through or launching an IWR 7.3 MR1 report on MyServerB will not cause a problem.
If you cannot follow the corrective actions described below, then you must revert all products on the computer to their previous state by restoring them from the backup you made before installing the MR2 maintenance release or SP3 service pack.
The UDA problem may be experienced by the products in Table A, when only a subset of the installed products is upgraded to MR2 or SP3.
The symptoms experienced are varied - there is no common message that identifies the problem. Before working with Customer Support to isolate your specific problem you must eliminate this known UDA issue as being the root cause. Examples of symptoms that have been encountered with 7.3 pre-MR2 products include, but are not limited to:
The build numbers of the UDA component causing the problem are in the range 7.8.23148 to 7.8.24101. To check build numbers, review the contents of your cmplst.txt file located in the <install_location>\cognos\cer4 directory. UDA component build numbers can be found in the [Services] section of cmplst.txt. Note that this is only an issue if there are any products or components in the file that have a 7.3 pre-MR2 or pre-SP3 version.
To resolve this issue you must:
The XALAN problem will be experienced by the products in Table B1, when any of the products in Table B2 are upgraded to MR2 on the specified platforms.
The symptoms experienced depend on the upgrade scenario.
If PowerPlay Enterprise Server 7.3 is kept at the Initial or MR1 level, and any of the previously listed products in Table B2 is upgraded to MR2, then accessing a cube from Cognos PowerPlay Web Explorer using the Enhanced UI may either result in a blank screen or the following message:
Internal error - request failed.
Please contact your administrator
If Cognos Visualizer Server 7.3 is kept at the Initial or MR1 level, and any of the previously listed products in Table B2 is upgraded to MR2, then a Visualizer message is displayed:
Web Browser:
There was an error in the XSL Parse engine.
The return code was: -1
The data returned was:
The error occurred during loading the stylesheet (/viz/templates/en/ZFPIndexPage.xsl), please ensure the stylesheet is valid
Please contact your administrator
Table of Content:
There was an error in the XSL Parse engine.
The return code was: -1
The data returned was:
The error occurred during loading the stylesheet (TOC.xsl), please ensure the stylesheet is valid
Please contact your administrator
The build numbers of the XALAN component causing the problem are in the range 1.2.659 to 1.2.868. To check build numbers, review the contents of your cmplst.txt file located in the <install_location>\cognos\cer4 directory. XALAN component build numbers can be found in the [Third Party] section of cmplst.txt. Note that this is only an issue if the file also contains a pre-MR2 7.3 version of PowerPlay Enterprise Server or Cognos Visualizer Authoring or Server.
To resolve this issue you must request from Customer support a new post-MR2 hot site build for all the products in Table B2 that you want to upgrade to MR2.
The CWS problem will be experienced by the products in Table C1, when any of the products in Table C2 are upgraded to MR2 on the specified platforms.
Cognos Web Services, only when used with Cognos Visualizer Server |
The symptoms are experienced when Cognos Visualizer Server 7.3 is kept at the Initial or MR1 level, and any of the previously listed products in Table C2 is upgraded to MR2. The error messages displayed are dependent on the platform as follows:
On HP-UX the following message is displayed when you configure:
configcp ->/usr/lib/dld.sl: Unresolved symbol: XML_ParserCreateNS (code) from ./libvizxml.sl core file from 'vizwebcws' - received SIGABRT configcp ->/usr/lib/dld.sl: Unresolved symbol: XML_ParserCreateNS (code) from ./libvizxml.sl core file from 'vizwebcws' - received SIGABRT
On Solaris the following message is displayed when you run some CWS requests:
Application Error
The following error has occurred:
The request failed because the server timed out. No Query Processor was available to handle the request.
The build numbers of the Visualizer Server Dispatcher or Query and Report Processor components causing the problem is in the range 600 to 1005. To check build numbers, review the contents of your cmplst.txt file located in the <install_location>\cognos\cer4 directory. Visualizer Server component build numbers can be found in the [Main Applications] section of cmplst.txt.
To resolve this issue you must request from Customer support:
You will not experience this problem if you have a mixed install of RTM/MR1 and MR3 or MR2 and MR3.
Installing a 7.3 MR2 hot site of certain BI products on the same computer where PowerPlay Enterprise Server or Visualizer 7.3 MR2 is also installed may cause PowerPlay or Visualizer to fail. The problems occur due to backwards compatibility issues found in the XALAN component.
Note that you will not have these problems if the products on the same computer are all at any 7.3 MR2 hot site level, or if you install 7.3 MR2 products on one computer and have other products running at the 7.3 MR2 hot site level on a different computer. For example, having Visualizer Server 7.3 MR2 on MyServerA drilling through to PowerPlay Enterprise Server 7.3 MR2 hot site on MyServerB will not cause a problem.
If you cannot follow the corrective actions described below, then you must revert all products on the computer to their previous state by restoring from the backup you made before installing the MR2 hot site.
The XALAN problem will be experienced by the products in Table A1, when any of the products in Table A2 are upgraded to an MR2 hot site on the specified platforms.
The symptoms experienced depend on the upgrade scenario.
If PowerPlay Enterprise Server 7.3 is kept at the MR2 level, and any of the previously listed products in Table A2 is upgraded to an MR2 hot site, then accessing a cube from Cognos PowerPlay Web Explorer using the Enhanced UI may either result in a blank screen or the following message:
Cognos PowerPlay Web Explorer
The PowerPlay server is busy and cannot complete the request. Please try again.
Please try again or contact your administrator
If Cognos Visualizer Server 7.3 is kept at the MR2 level, and any of the previously listed products in Table A2 is upgraded to an MR2 hot site, then the Visualizer application server may fail to start. The message displayed to the user on the web browser may be:
Application Error
The following error has occurred:
The Cognos Visualizer Web server is not available.
The build numbers of the products in Table A1 impacted by the problem are in the range 7.3.1200 to 7.3.1299. To check build numbers, review the contents of your cmplst.txt file located in the <install_location>\cognos\cer4 directory. Product build numbers can be found in the [Main Applications] section of cmplst.txt. Note that this is only an issue if the file also contains a 7.3 MR2 hot site version of any of the products listed in Table A2 with build numbers in the range 7.3.1300 to 7.3.1399.
To resolve this issue you must request new post-MR2 hot site builds from Customer support for all of the products listed in Table A1, if they are also installed on this same computer.
You will not experience this problem if you install MR3 or a post MR3 hot site.
If you perform a partial upgrade to Cognos Series 7 Version 3, and if Cognos Application Firewall is enabled, you may not be able to return to your component after drilling through to a component from Cognos Series 7 Version 2 or one of its maintenance releases.
This problem has been reported when drilling through to Cognos Query 7.1, or a 7.1 maintenance release, from Cognos Visualizer 7.3 running on Windows or Solaris. However, the problem can also arise with PowerPlay Enterprise Server and Impromptu Web Reports.
In Cognos Visualizer, one of the following error messages appears when you try to return to your Series 7 Version 3 drill-through source:
To avoid this problem, we recommend that you upgrade all of your source and target drill-through components to Series 7 Version 3.
If you install a Cognos product, then install other Cognos products, custom installations after the first installation may indicate that the product tools or books are already installed. For example, if you install Impromptu Web Reports, then install Cognos Query, the installation program may indicate that the Cognos Query tools are already installed.
This occurs because some tools are used by several Cognos products. After they are installed by the first product installation, they don't need to be installed again, so the installation program indicates that they are already installed.
After a period of operation using NSAPI gateways, Cognos products stop running properly and return the following error:
Unable to communicate with Upfront at the moment. Please contact the system administrator for assistance.
This condition occurs only on Sun ONE Web servers when you have the File Caching and TransmitFile options enabled.
There is a known issue with the Sun ONE Web server whereby the File Caching option appears to be turned off when in fact it is enabled with the TransmitFile option set to On. When the TransmitFile option is turned on, the Web server caches open file descriptors while it's running. As a result, Cognos products cease to operate after all the descriptors have been used.
Sun recommends that you turn off the TransmitFile option when installing on Solaris. To do this,
TransmitFile=false
When trying to add a virtual directory in Java System Web Server 6.x (formerly Sun ONE, formerly iPlanet), you may receive this error:
Incorrect Usage: Bad Directory Mapping
The directory mapping cannot contain whitespace.
This error occurs because of the space between "Program Files", the default installation location for Series 7. Virtual directories in Java System Web Server 6.x cannot contain spaces. To avoid this problem, do not install Series 7 to the Program Files location.
To configure Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) for use with Cognos products using the Series 7 namespace you must ensure that:
For more information about how to produce the euro currency symbol, see http://www.microsoft.com/windows/euro.mspx
One of the fonts Cognos provides is called Andale WT. This font is available for use with PowerPlay User, Impromptu User, and Impromptu Administrator. More importantly this font can be used as the default font used for PDF generation in PowerPlay Enterprise Server and Impromptu Web Reports. Note that Swiss 721 SWM, not Andale WT, is the default font for use with Western European languages (Latin-1). The Andale Font is an accurate Unicode 2.1 font, and includes a backslash character ("\") at hexadecimal position 5C. While this is compliant with standards, the popular practice in Japan is to use the hexadecimal position 5C for the Yen symbol ("¥"). Customers using Japanese data may find that Andale is displaying backslashes where Yen symbols are intended.
There is an alternative font, Andale WT J, available from Cognos customer support. Andale WT J is identical to Andale WT except that is has a Yen symbol at position 5C instead of a backslash. Customers using Japanese data may prefer to use the Andale WT J font. Use of the Andale WT J font is restricted by the same licensing provisions as Andale WT, which form part of Cognos standard End User Licensing Agreement.
If you use Apache Web Server or Java System Web Server, ensure that you define the aliases in the following order:
Note: Java System Web Server was formerly named Sun ONE Web Server or iPlanet Web Server.
If you configured the ppdsnsapi module on Java System Web Server 6.0 SP1 International Edition for Windows, you may experience problems accessing the ppdsnsapi cgi.
To avoid this situation, specify the ppdsnsapi module extension in a gateway URL that references ppdsnsapi.
Note: This problem does not occur with the English version of Java System Web Server 6.0.
If you already installed and configured one or more Cognos products on your IBM AIX computer, and you want to install additional Cognos products, you may need to run the slibclean command to clear the cache. This command removes any currently unused modules in the kernel and the library memory. You need root privileges to run this command.
To run the slibclean command, perform the following steps:
If you set up your AIX system so that all servers are running IBM HTTP Server version 2.0.47 with Apache mod extensions, heavy loads will cause the Web server to crash.
IBM recommends that you install the cumulative fix PQ85834 for HTTP Server version 2.0.47. You can download this patch from the following location:
http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=177&context=SSEQTJ&q1=pq85834&uid=swg24006719
For Cognos Series 7 Version 3 Maintenance Release 1 only, you may experience problems if you configure your Apache or Internet Information Services (IIS) gateway for ReportNet to use the same Web server as the gateway used by another Cognos product.
The issue only arises if all of the following conditions are true:
Specifically, the Web server for your Cognos Series 7, Enterprise Planning, or Cognos Metrics Manager product may not start, or you may not be able to load the Web server module of a server.
In the case of an Apache Web server configured for Impromptu Web Reports, for example, you may see the following error message:
Syntax error on line 557 of /<machinename>/webserver/IHS_###/conf/httpd.conf: Cannot load /usr/cognos/cgi-bin/imrapmod.so into server: Exec format error
Similarly, in your Web browser, you may see the following message:
500 Internal Server Error in the browser:
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, name@company.address and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error. More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
The problem occurs because of incompatibilities between shared libraries used by the two gateway modules. Both gateway modules are loaded by one process: Apache or IIS Web server. A single server cannot successfully load the libraries for both ReportNet and the other Web-based Cognos products.
To resolve the problem, use the process that applies to your Web server:
Note: This solution means that all Cognos 7.x products must be configured to use either CGI programs or gateway libraries. The solution does not allow for some Series 7 components to be configured to use CGI programs and others to use gateway libraries. What was once a performance optimization suggestion has now become a mandatory implementation requirement.
LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so
<Location /series7_alias>ProxyPass http://hostname:port/series7_alias ProxyPassReverse http://hostname:port/series7_alias </Location><Location /ReportNet_alias>ProxyPass http://hostname:port/ReportNet_aliasProxyPassReverse http://hostname:port/ReportNet_alias</Location>Note: Be sure to only use the hostname and port of the original Web server configured as a proxy. This ensure that all requests to the content of the second Web Server http://original_hostname:port/alias/... get properly redirected by the original server to the second Web server, and that the result is returned through the original Web server.
iisreset /restart.
iisreset /restart.