I've inherited a two-tier Apps 11.0.3 / RDBMS 8.0.5 installation running on a pair of NT 4.0 servers. I'm trying to duplicate (insofar as possible) the configuration of these two Production servers (which currently host three instances sharing a common $Oracle_Home) on two smaller boxes in order to create a safe - i.e., non-production - testing environment where the test/dev instances can be placed. I have the test db up and running on the DB server OK, but am having major problems with the web server. I'm pretty new to Oracle and was not involved in the original (production) implementation...

The web server is OAS 3.0.1. I know it is old, but it works fine in our production environment, and anyway we can't upgrade it until we have a working test environment to play with!

First problem: cannot start WRB. Owsctl start wrb lists several of the component services as if they were starting, but then fails with:

OWS-08822: Unable to fork new process for WRB process '<process> -V' (not always the same process...) followed by The pipe has ended.

An owsctl status wrb at this point lists all the processes as having "NEVER been started".

Second problem: cannot access the web server configuration page via the browser (http://machine_name.domain), so can't look at what's up with the services there.

The exact original production installation sequence from over a year ago cannot be duplicated for certain (was done by contractors who didn't document step-by-step). It was an 11.0.2 one-hour install that was later upgraded at some point to 11.0.3. We can't clone the physical servers (e.g. via Ghost) since the hardware is quite different. An 11.0.3 one-hour install leaves an $Oracle_Home that is not identical to our Production environment (apart from things such as log files, of course). So what I've tried is a manual copy of the production $Oracle_Homes, registry keys, WinSys files and environment settings to the test servers, modifying/registering them as necessary to reflect the new server name (which should be the only change - the drive structures are identical).

I'm assuming at this point that I've either missed files and/or registry settings, but haven't been able to find anything. Does anyone have any ideas as to where to focus my search, given the errors I'm getting?

Bigger question - how would YOU duplicate a production server, given the limitations I've listed?

Thanks to any/all in advance for your help!