Running Weblogic 10.3 config utils in console mode, and gui mode in a Docker container

Most of Weblogic’s config utilities can run in a console/text mode if you need to run them from a terminal session in text mode, by passing the option: -mode=console

E.g. the apps here: /[middlewarehome]/wlserver_10.3/common/bin, like config.sh will run in console mode.

config_builder.sh however does not, and only runs in gui mode. This is an issue if you’re running Weblogic in a Docker container. All is not lost however, as you can forward X out of a Docker container, but it takes a few steps to get running.

Follow the steps in this logged issue to install and run socat, and then pass ‘-e DISPLAY=192.168.99.1:0’ where the IP address is the address of the vbox interface.  On my Mac this looked like:

socat TCP-LISTEN:6000,reuseaddr,fork UNIX-CLIENT:\"$DISPLAY\"

then:

docker run -it -e DISPLAY=192.168.99.1:0 imageid bash

My image included xterm and dependencies installed via the Dockerfile with:

RUN yum install -y xterm

When attempting to run config.sh in gui mode however, it gave me this error:

Unable to instantiate GUI, defaulting to console mode.

This is fine for config.sh at it runs in console mode, but since config_builder.sh does not, it must run in gui mode with forwarded XWindows.

This post on ServerFault held the key – you need to also install libXtst:

yum install libXtst

Now all the utils will run in GUI mode forwarding X to your host. On Mac OS X this assumes also that you have XQuartz installed too.