Upgrading the APEX Listener in an Oracle Dev-Day Virtualbox VM

Don't have an Oracle Linux Developer-Day VM up and running yet? Check this post first...

Download APEX Listener

The Oracle Dev-Day pre-build VM for Virtualbox has the APEX Listener version 2.0.0.331.16.54 installed by default. You can check the currently used version. Just log in to a workspace and then go to Administration / About:

Download latest version here:

    http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/apex-listener/downloads/index.html

Unzip the file in the shared folder on the host.

Stop APEX Listener: return to the terminal screen or open it again and make sure you are logged in as root and type the following command:

Afterward, go back to your own user, via "exit":

Seperate the APEX images directory

First time? Then first get the APEX images directory from the listener configuration directory: Copy the contents of directory /home/oracle/apex/images to a new directory /home/oracle/apeximages. You can use a file manager/browser for this, or do it via the terminal window using this command:

In the listener directory rename the current APEX listener to apex_200.war and from /home/oracle/HOST copy the new apex.war to the listener directory:

Then remove the directory /home/oracle/apex using the following command:

Note: If you want to delete only the contents of a directory, use: rm -rf /home/oracle/apex/*

Next, set the configuration directory of the new listener. Otherwise, it will default to /tmp/apex. First change the current directory to /home/oracle/listener:

Note: Here the absolute path was provided, starting from the root "/". But that is not necessary. You can also use a relative approach, reasoning from your current directory. With ". /" you refer to the current directory and ".. /" refers to the parent directory.

Next, enter the following command:

Now the new APEX listener can be configured using:

Now log in to a workspace and then go to Administration/About to check the new version:

Start APEX listener running in background

The listener is now running in standalone mode in the terminal screen. Once that window closes, the listener will no longer be running. So it must start up in a different way.
Stop it first with Ctrl-C in the terminal window and start it with the existing startup script in /home/oracle:

When you're back at the prompt, you can close the terminal screen. Navigate your browser to the APEX installation again - it should still work!