Peopletools 8.51 : psadmin is a symbolic link

Up to Peopletools 8.50, you see that psadmin under $PS_HOME/appserv is an executable file :
[psadm2@psovmcrm ~]$ cd $PS_HOME/appserv
[psadm2@psovmcrm appserv]$ ls -lrt psadmin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 psadm1 oracle 281383 Apr 29  2010 psadmin
[psadm2@psovmcrm appserv]$ ./psadmin -v
Version 8.50.09
[psadm2@psovmcrm appserv]$

From Peopletools 8.51, psadmin under $PS_HOME/appserv became a symbolic link to $PS_HOME/bin/psadmin :
[psadm2@psovmhcm ~]$ cd $PS_HOME/appserv
[psadm2@psovmhcm appserv]$ ls -lrt psadmin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 psadm1 oracle 37 Dec 20 20:03 psadmin -> /opt/oracle/psft/pt/tools/bin/psadmin
[psadm2@psovmhcm appserv]$ ./psadmin -v
Version 8.51.02
[psadm2@psovmhcm appserv]$

It’s a kind of consolidation, all the binaries go into the same directory. Looks good, that’s fine by me.
But it could raise a problem.

When you are upgrading your Peopletools version, it has always been recommanded to install the new version on top of the existing PS_HOME, and that’s still the case within Peopletools 8.51 : see Task 3-1-4: Installing the PeopleTools Software, page 21 of the Enterprise PeopleTools 8.51 Upgrade :
”Run the PeopleSoft Installer and install the software to the same PS_HOME directory where you installed the previous PeopleSoft PeopleTools software.”

Doing so, installing the new Peopletools release on top of the existing PS_HOME works fine, except that the psadmin under $PS_HOME/appserv won’t be replaced by the symbolic link.
I’m not sure how the Peopletools installer is precisely working, but indeed, when you are trying to create a symbolic link whenever a file within the same name exist, an error is raised :
[psadm1@psovmcrm appserv]$ ln -s $PS_HOME/bin/psadmin .
ln: creating symbolic link `./psadmin' to `/opt/oracle/psft/pt/tools/bin/psadmin': File exists
[psadm1@psovmcrm appserv]$

Unfortunately, no error is returned by the installer, and nothing in the log file. So, it will “silently” continues to work on previous installed version. When you are upgrading an existing PS_HOME, always verify the version of the psadmin using the following :
./psadmin –v
It should obviously correspond to the version you installed. And be sure that from Peopletools 8.51, it is a symbolic link, otherwise, create it manually :
[psadm1@psovmcrm ~]$ cd $PS_HOME/appserv
[psadm1@psovmcrm appserv]$ rm -f psadmin
[psadm1@psovmcrm appserv]$ ln -s $PS_HOME/bin/psadmin .
[psadm1@psovmcrm appserv]$ ./psadmin –v

Enjoy it !

Find out more : My Oracle Support note E-UPG PT 8.51 New location of Psadmin.exe [ID 1251444.1] and E-UPG Master Note Upgrade Issues with PT 8.51 [ID 1262396.1]