Can't modify constant item in scalar assignment

Akhilesh called me today and told me about a problem he was facing while running Software configuration manager:

$ORACLE_HOME/ccr/bin/emCCR collect
Oracle Configuration Manager - Release: 10.2.7.1.0 - Production
Copyright (c) 2005, 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Error in processing ECM_ASSOCIATIONS metric collection for ebiz11i_apps_cm
Failed to execute command - "$CCR_HOME/engines/SunOS/perl/bin/perl" "$CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/oracle_apps_cm_assoc.pl"
Can't modify constant item in scalar assignment at $CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebs_assoc_common.pl line 171, near ");"
syntax error at $CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebs_assoc_common.pl line 177, near "col_values["
Compilation failed in require at $CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/oracle_apps_cm_assoc.pl line 38.

Error in processing cust_request_sets metric collection for ebiz11i_apps_db
Failed to execute command - "$CCR_HOME/engines/SunOS/perl/bin/perl" "$CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebsCustMetricCollector.pl" "$CCR_HOME/hosts/tsgsd1008/state/ebiz11i-apps_db.ll"
Undefined subroutine &main::getConfigProperty called at $CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebsCustMetricCollector.pl line 54.

Error in processing hpp_not_applied metric collection for ebiz11i_apps_db
Failed to execute command - "$CCR_HOME/engines/SunOS/perl/bin/perl" "$CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebsHPPNotAppliedCollector.pl" "$CCR_HOME/hosts/tsgsd1008/state/ebiz11i-apps_db.ll"
Undefined subroutine &main::getConfigProperty called at $CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebsHPPNotAppliedCollector.pl line 293.

Error in processing other_customizations metric collection for ebiz11i_apps_db
Failed to execute command - "$CCR_HOME/engines/SunOS/perl/bin/perl" "$CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebsCustMetricCollector.pl" "$CCR_HOME/hosts/tsgsd1008/state/ebiz11i-apps_db.ll"
Undefined subroutine &main::getConfigProperty called at $CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebsCustMetricCollector.pl line 54.


Collection and upload done.


For the first error, I did a googled for "Can't modify constant item in scalar assignment". The first hit was from Rohan's CGI documentation which said:

Can't modify constant item in scalar assignment...
You probably forgot to include a $ symbol before the variable. In Perl, scalar variables need to be referred to as $variable. The statement $variable = foo; is correct, but variable = foo; is not.

So accordingly, in $CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebs_assoc_common.pl, we changed:

Line 171 : col_values changed to $col_values
Line 177 : col_values changed to $col_values

After changing this when we ran the command again, the first error was gone and 3 errors remained:
======================================================
$ORACLE_HOME/ccr/bin/emCCR collect
Oracle Configuration Manager - Release: 10.2.7.1.0 - Production
Copyright (c) 2005, 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Error in processing cust_request_sets metric collection for ebiz11i_apps_db
Failed to execute command - "$CCR_HOME/engines/SunOS/perl/bin/perl" "$CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebsCustMetricCollector.pl" "$CCR_HOME/hosts/tsgsd1008/state/ebiz11i-apps_db.ll"
Undefined subroutine &main::getConfigProperty called at $CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebsCustMetricCollector.pl line 54.

Error in processing hpp_not_applied metric collection for ebiz11i_apps_db
Failed to execute command - "$CCR_HOME/engines/SunOS/perl/bin/perl" "$CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebsHPPNotAppliedCollector.pl" "$CCR_HOME/hosts/tsgsd1008/state/ebiz11i-apps_db.ll"
Undefined subroutine &main::getConfigProperty called at $CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebsHPPNotAppliedCollector.pl line 293.

Error in processing other_customizations metric collection for ebiz11i_apps_db
Failed to execute command - "$CCR_HOME/engines/SunOS/perl/bin/perl" "$CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebsCustMetricCollector.pl" "$CCR_HOME/hosts/tsgsd1008/state/ebiz11i-apps_db.ll"
Undefined subroutine &main::getConfigProperty called at $CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs/ebsCustMetricCollector.pl line 54.


Collection and upload done.
===============================================================

If you notice, all 3 errors are due to the fact that it is unable to find a subroutine called getConfigProperty. We searched for getConfigproperty string in the .pl files but could not find it. Most probably getConfigProperty is defined inside a different .pl file which is not present in the perl library path. Oracle has a few open bugs for this issue.

I got a call from Sadiq today for this problem. He is facing the very same problem in his environment. So I decided to revisit. I had noticed that this works in Configuration Managers installed by RDA and the Jan and April 2008 Critical patch update for database. I checked back with Akhilesh and found that he had raised an SR for this and Oracle had given a patch for this issue. The patch number is 6733104. However this patch is not created for all platforms. You could request this patch for your platform or follow this workaround:

1. Download patch 6854532 for your platform.
2. Unzip this patch. Patch will create a subdirectory called RDA
3. cd rda/ccr
4. cp ccr-Production-10.2.7.0.0*.zip $ORACLE_HOME
5. cd $ORACLE_HOME
6. unzip ccr-Production-10.2.7.0.0*
7. This will create a directory ccr
8. cd ccr/config
9. vi ccr.properties

Uncomment these lines and give the correct values:

http.proxyHost=proxy.justanexample.com
http.proxyPort=80

Use this ccr directory for your configuration manager tasks. You won’t get the perl errors.

I checked why the error doesn’t occur in this version:

cd $CCR_HOME/sysman/admin/scripts/ebs
grep getConfigProperty *

config_version.pl:my ($errMsg2, $collected_version) = getConfigProperty($configFile, "META_VER");

In the CCR_HOME in which this error was appearing, a grep on the very same directory returned no results. So Oracle has fixed their script config_version.pl which was missing this line in the version where it was erroring out:

my ($errMsg2, $collected_version) = getConfigProperty($configFile, "META_VER");