FRM-93618: Fatal error reading data from runtime process

May 24, 2013

Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) can be used as a load balancer between two Oracle Forms and Reports environments. One of our customers had run into a error when using JRE 7 when logging into the Oracle Forms application. They were receiving the following error:

“FRM-93618: fatal error reading data from runtime process

Contact your system administrator.”

FRM-93618

The production environment had the following multi-server architecture (NOTE: The error may occur if not using OAM as no errors were detected in the OAM or OID side):

Front-end Server (Point of entry for end-users):

  1. Oracle HTTP Server (11.1.2.1) (load balancing occurs here using forms.conf and mod_wl_ohs.conf) – Using SSL

Two Middle-Tier Servers

  1. Oracle Forms and Reports 11.1.2.1
  2. Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.6

Back-end Infrastructure Server

  1. Oracle Internet Directory 11.1.1.5.0
  2. Oracle Access Manager 11.1.1.5.0
  3. Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.5

The scenario was that the OHS and Forms/Reports environments were upgraded from 11.1.2.0 to 11.1.2.1 in order to support the use of Java 7 (JRE 7) for end users. End-users would log into the front-end and would log into OAM (using single sign-on). After the user is authenticated in OAM, the user would be directed (by a round-robin approach) to one of the two middle-tier servers where the Oracle Forms application is. However, if the user used JRE 6, they could access Forms without a problem. If the user used JRE 7, the FRM-93618 error appeared instead, preventing the user from continuing. Whenever a direct connection to the middle-tier server was performed (again using OAM to authenticate), no errors would occur regardless of the JRE used.

SOLUTION:

The load balancing in OHS for Oracle Forms is performed using forms.conf (located in %ORACLE_INSTANCE%\config\OHS\ohs1\moduleconf). A parameter called “CookieTracking” needs to be set to “On” within the <Location /forms> tags. In order to apply this, you will need to do the following steps:

  1. Make a backup of forms.conf in the load balancing server
  2. Open up forms.conf in a text editor
  3. Locate <Location /forms>. In between this tag and the </Location> tag, add the following parameter: CookieTracking On
  4. Save and close the file
  5. Restart OHS (the load balancing server)

After applying the above changes, FRM-93618 will no longer appear when using JRE 7. This will work using the Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome browsers.