Solving sapcpe issue when upgrading from SAP kernel 700 to kernel 720

Dear Community,

I would like to share my experience on a very specific issue encountered in my company and that we solved this week, because we don’t find neither SAP Note nor SDN forum thread that deal directly with it.

At the beginning, we have a lot of SAP systems (WAS 640 and 70x) with old SAP kernels that were not often upgraded, so we have many red EWA that we begin to deal with for nearly one year. We plan to upgrade WAS 640’s system based and to just exchange SAP kernel 700 with the 720 version for other systems.

For this second task, we followed the SAP note 1636252 (https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1636252) but we encountered an issue on some systems when restarting them at the sapcpe step :

Log startsap_DVEBMGS00.log :

[…]

Startup Profile: “/usr/sap/SID/SYS/profile/START_DVEBMGS00_host“

Update local Kernel Files

————————-

(20589) Local: /usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/run/sapcpe name=SID

(20579) system(/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/run/sapcpe name=SID) returns 1

(20579) Return-Code 1 in Local-Kernel-Update. See sapcpe.log.

[…]

(20722) Starting: local /usr/sap/SID/DVEBMGS00/exe/igswd_mt -mode=profile pf=/usr/sap/SID/SYS/profile/SID_DVEBMGS00_host

(20579) Waiting for Child Processes to terminate.

(20579) **** 2013/09/17 18:39:26 Caught Signal to Stop all Programs. ****

(20579) Parent Shutdown at 2013/09/17 18:39:28

[…]

And the corresponding sapcpe.log :

[…]

Command line:

  0: /usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/run/sapcpe

  1: pf=/usr/sap/SID/SYS/profile/SID_DVEBMGS00_host

Trace level (profile): 1

** INFO:    Try to find file table sapcpeft (default:sapcpeft)

** INFO:    Try to find file table in the central directory /usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/uc/sunx86_64/sapcpeft

** INFO:    not found any file table.

*************************************************

source: /usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/uc/sunx86_64

target: /usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/run

*************************************************

** INFO:    no extern File-List defined. Look for the default File-List(s).

Checking File-List(s).

** INFO:    File-List “/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/uc/sunx86_64/instance.lst” does not exist.

** INFO:    File-List “/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/uc/sunx86_64/instancedb.lst” does not exist.

** INFO:    File-List “/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/uc/sunx86_64/tools.lst” does not exist.

** INFO:    File-List “/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/uc/sunx86_64/inhouse.lst” does not exist.

** INFO:    File-List “/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/uc/sunx86_64/dbclient.lst” does not exist.

** INFO:    File-List “/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/uc/sunx86_64/igsexe.lst” does not exist.

** INFO:    File-List “/usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/uc/sunx86_64/sapcrypto.lst” does not exist.

*** WARNING: File-List “/var/tmp/AAABja42k” does not exist.

            Processing on the configured files of the file table only.

, 2, No such file or directory, [sapxxcpe.c:1760]

** INFO:    working only on the file table files because no list file(s) found

No files of the file table available

The first things we saw was that the source and the target were not the good ones for our systems, so we thought that it was a problem of “brand new kernel” and that we have to do a manual sapcpe with our right source and target in option, and it allow us to start the SAP system. But the return code 1 at the sapcpe step and the “not found any file table” were still there. Since we always met this issue when we had very short time to work on the affected SAP system, we can’t do better, and when we opened customer message to SAP Support, some of the logs where deleted by the working start and it remained unsolved.

Finally we met the issue working on a developer SAP system, and we were less in a hurry, so we try to find more clues (the log copy of this blog thread). And the solution was founded when we saw that the sapcpe was called with the instance profile while the SAP system was stared with the start profile :

startsap_DVEBMGS00.log :

[…]

Startup Profile: “/usr/sap/SID/SYS/profile/START_DVEBMGS00_host“

[…]

sapcpe.log :

[…]

Command line:

  0: /usr/sap/SID/SYS/exe/run/sapcpe

  1: pf=/usr/sap/SID/SYS/profile/SID_DVEBMGS00_host

[…]

The start profile is no longer needed by SAP start service since approximately the new WAS releases up NW2004, but it was still used if it existed before a System Upgrade. The start service embedded in the SAP kernel 720 doesn’t use it anymore when it calls sapcpe, and it uses the instance profile only.

If there are the good duplicate entries – especially directory SAP environment shortcuts – into both profiles, you won’t see anything. Actually the sapcpe launched with a pf=profile option expected two directory SAP environment shortcuts : DIR_CT_RUN and DIR_EXECUTABLE, which are respectively the source and the target of sapcpe (see NW730 help documentation : http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw73/helpdata/en/48/f5f303af4c3a63e10000000a421138/content.htm?frameset=/en/48/f5f303af4c3a63e10000000a421138/frameset.htm).

For us, these two directory SAP environment shortcuts were only defined in the start profile on SAP systems where we met the case. Duplicating this two in the instance profile solves the issue. And it will help a lot when would make an future kernel update, because we won’t have to launch the sapcpe manually.

If you want to go further with the end of start profile usage, you will find some informations in these links :

http://scn.sap.com/community/netweaver-administrator/blog/2012/05/22/whats-new-in-sap-netweaver-73–a-basis-perspective

Note 823941 – SAP start service on Unix platforms (https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/823941)

Note 1326576 – SAP NetWeaver Systems Containing SAP ERP Software Components (https://service.sap.com/sap/support/notes/1326576)