SAP Basis - Kernel Upgrade and Patching
SAP Basis - Kernel Upgrade and Patching
! Zafar Karnalkar
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SAPABAP
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Kernel is an executable program that exists between SAP Applications and Operating System.
It consists of executable program under the path — "/sapmnt/<SID>/exe" for UNIX and
\usr\sap\SID\SYS\exe\run Windows. It starts and stops application services such as message
server, dispatcher, etc.
In Kernel upgrade, new .exec files replace old executable files in SAP system. To check the
current version, use transaction code — SM51 > Go to Release Notes.
Step 1 − Open URL — https:\\service.sap.com and login with SID and password.
Step 1 − Create a directory with enough disk space and enter the name of directory.
Step 2 − Copy the upgrade files SAPEXEDB.SAR & SAPEXE.SAR files to the new directory
at OS level.
Step 3 − To check directory, use 'pwd' to ensure you are in the same directory.
Step 5 − To take backup of existing Kernel, you have to create one more directory with the
name "exe_old<ddmmyy>" and take backup of existing Kernel file.
Step 6 − To perform upgrade, stop the SAP application. You don’t need to shut down the
database for Kernel upgrade but you need to stop the SAP application using this command —
stopsap r3.
Step 7 − Copy the files from the new kernel directory exe_new<ddmmyy → to the existing
kernel directory exe.
Step 9 − Now if you check the current Kernel version using disp+work, then check the kernel
version from OS level by the command disp+work − versions and new patch version should
be displayed.
Step 10 − Login to the operating system as root specific to UNIX. Execute the script in Kernel
directory — ./saproot.sh <SID>
You use this to assign correct permissions to all the executable programs in the kernel such as
br* file etc.
Step 12 − If you run Transaction SM52, you can see current kernel version level.