Need classes directory to run ENCRYPT_PASSWORD on PeopleTools 8.53

I had worked on creating a Delphix virtual copy of our production PeopleTools 8.53 database and wanted to useENCRYPT_PASSWORD in Datamover to change a user’s password. But I got this ugly error:

Error: Process aborted. Possibly due to JVM is not available or missing java class or empty password.

What the heck! I have used Datamover to change passwords this way for 20 years and never seen this error. Evidently in PeopleTools 8.53 they increased the complexity of the encryption by adding a “salt” component. So, now when Datamover runs theENCRYPT_PASSWORD command it calls Java for part of the calculation. For those of you who don’t know, Datamover is a windows executable, psdmt.exe. But, now it is calling java.exe to run ENCRYPT_PASSWORD.

I looked at Oracle’s support site and tried the things the recommended but it didn’t resolve it. Here are a couple of the notes:

E-SEC: ENCRYPT_PASSWORD Error: Process aborted. Possibly due to JVM is not available or missing java class or empty password. (Doc ID 2001214.1)

E-UPG PT8.53, PT8.54: PeopleTools Only Upgrade ENCRYPT_PASSWORD Error: Process aborted. Possibly due to JVM is not available or missing java class or empty password. (Doc ID 1532033.1)

They seemed to focus on a situation during an upgrade when you are trying to encrypt all the passwords and some have spaces in their passwords. But that wasn’t the case for me. I was just trying to change one user’s password and it wasn’t spaces.

Another recommendation was to put PS_HOME/jre/bin in the path. This totally made sense. I have a really stripped down PS_HOME and had the least number of directories that I need to do migrations and tax updates. I only have a 120 gig SSD C: drive on my laptop so I didn’t want a full multi-gigabyte PS_HOME. So, I copied the jre directory down from our windows batch server and tried several ways of putting the bin directory in my path and still got the same error.

Finally, I ran across an idea that the Oracle support documents did not address, probably because no one else is using partial PS_HOME directories like me. I realized that I needed to download the classes directory. I found a cool documentation page about the Java class search path for app servers in PeopleTools 8.53 . It made me guess that psdmt.exe would search the PS_HOME/classes directory for the classes it needed to do the ENCRYPT_PASSWORD command. So, I copied classes down from the windows batch server and put the jre/bin directory back in the path and success!

Password hashed for TEST

Ended: Tue Oct 11 16:36:55 2016

Successful completion

Script Completed.

So, I thought I would pass this along in the unusual case that someone like myself needs to not only but the jre/bin directory in their path but is also missing the classes directory.

Bobby