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The BI Platform Version Checker is a scheduled quartz job that determines if a new version of the platform is available, and if so, writes information to the BI Server log notifying the system administrator.  The Version Checker is configured in the pentaho-solutions/system/pentaho.xml as a System Listener:

<version-checker>org.pentaho.plugin.versionchecker.VersionCheckSystemListener</version-checker>

 Also in the pentaho.xml file are version checker configuration items:

<version-check-config>
  	<!--  defines how often  -->
    <repeat-interval-seconds>86400</repeat-interval-seconds>
    <!--  valid release flags include: Major, Minor, RC, GA, Milestone -->
    <release-flags>Minor, GA</release-flags>
    <!--  set to "true" to disable the version checker -->
    <disable>false</disable>
  </version-check-config>
  • repeat-interval-seconds - defines the frequency in which the version checker quartz job executes to see if a new version is available.  The default value is every 24 hours, or 86400 seconds.
  • release-flags - defines the set of releases that the platform receives notifications about.
  • disable - allows the administrator to easily disable the version checker.

The version check system listener makes calls to the pentaho-commons jar file pentaho-versionchecker.jar.  This jar file makes an http request to a webservice at pentaho.com which returns a list of available updates based on the release-flags and your operating system, determined by the java system property "os.name".  To avoid repeated update notifications, a properties file is created in the user's home directory under .pentaho/.vercheck, which contains a unique identifier and a list of updates that have already been detected and logged.

WebService Call to Pentaho.com

 The webservice call to pentaho is simply an HTTP GET request with the following GET parameters:

  • protocolVer - specifies the Version Checker Protocol Version, currently 1.0
  • depth - a masked bit value consisting of the type of updates to receive. The mask list includes:
    • All OS Releases = 1
    • Verbose Output = 2
    • Major Releases = 4
    • Minor Releases = 8
    • RC Releases = 16
    • GA Releases = 32
    • Milestone Releases = 64
    • Windows Releases = 128
    • Mac Releases = 256
    • Linux Releases = 512
  • vi - a generated md5 checksum which is used to verify the authenticity of the request
  • guid - a randomly generated unique identifier
  • prodid -the product id to version check, POBS is the id for the BI Platform
  • version - The full version string of the current version of the product

Here is an example parameter string that is sent to the server:

?protocolVer=1.0&depth=152&vi=1142fca564f52589b9bc1b7be48c6321&guid=3b24b273-654d-11dc-9441-d1cf5202d758&prodID=POBS&version=1.6.0.RC3.831 

Disabling the Version Checker

There are varying degrees of removing the version checker from the platform:

  • setting disable to true causes the version checker system listener to not schedule the quartz job and not execute any updates
  • deleting the VersionCheckSystemListener from the pentaho.xml file causes the system listener to never execute
  • deleting the pentaho-versionchecker.jar from the WEB-INF/lib directory, removes the code that actually executes the version check. The BI platform will continue to execute normally and no errors or warning will be displayed.
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