Oracle Forms – The application’s digital signature has an error – Your forms application is Frozen

Alternate Title: Forms hangs with java digital signature certificate error

Well, we have reached the weekend and time for my bug of the week. I’m sure most forms consultants out there have already run into this one by now.  There have been many solutions floating around (copying dll, installing patches, upgrading the JDK) But I thought I’d write a post with a pretty simple solution and with all possible keywords that people will use to search the error since my customers had trouble finding the solution on google.

Question: How would you search for this type of error?

The customer gets a Warning popup window in the browser when they run Oracle Forms using JDK which says the following: Warning – Security (Window Title) –  The Applications’ digital signature cannot be verified (or has an error) . Do you want to run the Application?Name: oracle.forms.engine. Main Publisher: Product Management From: http://<hostname:port>Check Box (Always trust content from this publisher) And there is a Run and Cancel button.

The problem:  The only problem is you can not click on the checkbox and the run and cancel buttons do not work. Your only solution is to close the browser and restart the forms only to get the same error. You can move the window and even see the Java Console window but you cannot click anything. Basically, you are frozen and cannot get into the Application.

A solution attempt: You try to search using the usual suspects:

• Forms gets stuck on digital signature when using sun JVM
• Forms hangs with certificate error using sun JVM
• Form is frozen with security warning when run using sun JVM
• Form freezes with java signature warning using JDK 1.6

But after much wasted time, you send an email to your friendly neighborhood consultant who tells you a fix in a second which you are both thankful for but also drives you nuts that you wasted so much time looking for a solution. Sound familiar?

The solution that works:

In general, the error should not occur if all the Oracle Forms jars installed on the server have been properly signed with the same certificate. This warning is usually the result of the customized jar file that was not properly signed with the sign script Oracle provides with Forms. It is usually the jacob.jar file which is part of the webutil installation that needs to be signed with the same certificate as the frmwebutil.jar. This usually occurs more often in Forms 11g since Oracle provides the frmwebutil.jar pre-signed. BUT if you’ve run into this problem the poor man’s solution for a quick fix (which can also be found in the OTN forum if you look hard enough) is:

Go into the control panel and right-click on the java icon.
Go to the ‘Advanced’  tab then open the ‘JAVA plugin’ branch on the tree

UNCHECK   ‘Enable the next-generation Java Plug-in(requires browser restart)’

Click Apply

Then click OK.

Then make sure ALL browser windows have been closed. You should also check in the control panel that no extra iexplore.exe processes are open and kill the program or “ORACLE FUSION FORMS … ”  if it exists. Then when you run the forms again your browser will reload this page and popup the warning message again, this time you should be able to select the checkbox and accept the security warning. Once accepted the warning should not return.

Conclusion and Resources:

Anyone else run into this one? Any other creative solutions?

1. If you want to run Forms without an applet at all from HTML or mobile apps this page is a good place to start.
2. Want assistance from the industry experts in Oracle Forms? AuraPlayer has free “ask our experts” sessions available, click here to schedule.
3. In addition, if you want to learn how to stay in control of your Oracle Forms environment and applications, read our Essential Guide to troubleshooting errors on Oracle Forms – Download Now