Advice sought with ReHosting a Windchill 9.1 M030 installation with Aphelion LDAP

[GaryMansell]

I have a Windchill 9.1 M030 installation with Aphelion LDAP that I want to ReHost to create a Test System with a different name.

The first time I performed this work was with a Windchill Consultant and there was some confusion regarding the Aphelion part of the process and I would like to try and clarify my understanding before I perform the task again.

Note: Windchill 9.1 M030 PSI does not support the installation of Aphelion and this makes the process a little bit more complex.

Part of the previous process (only the relevant bits and without the fine detail) was as follows:

• Use the 9.1 F00 PSI to perform a minimal install of Apache, Tomcat, Aphelion and Java to a directory C:\PTC on the target system. Use the same installation parameters as the original Production system (especially the LDAP Base DN) apart from the new hostname.
• Use the 9.1 M030 PSI to update the minimal installation to 9.1 M030 release.
• Rename this loadpoint on the Target machine to C:\PTC.Fresh
  
• Copy the C:\PTC loadpoint from the Source System to the target and replace the Java and Aphelion directories with those from the C:\PTC.Fresh loadpoint
• Change & propagate the site.xconf hostname entries and the Apache hostname to that of the Target system

Then the confusing bit sets in relating to Aphelion…

The following did not work:

• Copy the root.ldif backup file from the Source system and edit in vim to replace the newlines (as the file wraps on 80 chars), then replace all instances of the source hostname with that of the target, save it and import it into the target Aphelion - which then failed.

So, instead we:

• Replaced the Target System’s fresh Aphelion Loadpoint with that from the Source system
• Exported the LDAP database to a root.ldif which we then edit in vim to replace the newlines (as the file wraps on 80 chars), then replace all instances of the source hostname with that of the target, save it and import it into the target Aphelion – which worked this time.
• Then we ran the ant script ReHosting tool to rehost the LDAP for the Target System's hostname.
  

Now, the above seemed to work but I am not sure that it was all necessary, nor very nice. Would it not be possible to ignore the Aphelion steps above and just import the Source system’s root.ldif backup file into the Target System’s Fresh Aphelion installation and then run the ant script ReHosting tool to change the target hostname etc. in the Target System's Aphelion without all of the editing in vim and replacing the hostname?

Thanks in advance for any advice

[achukwuka]

Gary,

I believe that the rehosting procesure in 9.1 M030 does not allow for cross domain rehosting, that is you CAN NOT rehost to a target system unless the target and the source are on the same domain. Which presents a problem as most companies do not have their prod and test/dev servers on the same domain. This limitation has of course been removed starting from 9.1 M040, you can now rehost across multiple and differing domains. Now in your case, you can still use the manual approach to rehosting to do it, although that will add some time to when you finish the rehost of the target system, but still doable. If you choose to use the preferred approach,which is what I think you are using, then some manual updates and trickery will be required as the tool.sh script does not change everything for you if your windchill apps is at 9.1 M030, or earlier and therein lies the problem. I tried to use this approach to rehost an M020 server to target and ran into all sorts of issues, and ptc gave me the manual step to make it work, however the next time I needed to rehost a server I just went back to use the manual method that had worked so well for me in 8.0 and had no problems. So you either have to wait till you are in M040 or later to use the preferred approach or use the manual alternative method.

Hope this helps,

Thanks

Alexius C. Chukwuka
IT Analyst, PDP Systems
John Deere Power Systems
Product Engineering Center
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[GaryMansell]

I have had several responses from people via email about ReHosting and they all seem to differ as to the way that they do it. It seems that many different people have their own methods for doing this and don't stray from their tried and tested techniques once they have found a method that suits them (understandably).

From what I can gather from the people who have replied it seems that opening the Aphelion LDAP root.ldif file from the Source machine in Windows Textpad or Vim etc, and replacing all the newlines (\n) with nothing (to fix the line wrap issue), and then replacing all instances of the Source hostname (note: not including domain name) with the new Target hostname, saving it and then importing it into a fresh 9.1 M030 Aphelion LDAP should work fine. But it seems that this LDAP renaming is not all that the ant ReHost script does - it also changes the Source hostname to the Target hostname in other files in the Windchill loadpoint including: C:\ptc\Windchill\codebase\WEB-INF\ie.properties and C:\ptc\Windchill\codebase\WEB-INF\web.xml... there may be others, I am not sure.

So, it seems to me that if you only want to change the hostname (and not the domain name pre 9.1 M040) during a ReHost, it should be possible to follow the ReHost guide and use the ant script OR you can use the manual method where you use Textpad to edit the Source system's root.ldif file and change the name and then import it into the Target Aphelion LDAP. If you do this manual method then it will also be necessary to run a global search on the Windchill loadpoint and manually change any other text files that show up with the Source hostname in them.

Hope that helps someone

Gary