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New Oracle Support site featuring a new user interface built with Oracle's Application Development Framework (ADF) launched yesterday.  The new site replaces the unadvertised non-Flash site https://supporthtml.oracle.com, and this initial release is more of an UAT version than final production release.  Once all the bugs are worked out in the next 3-4 months, the flash-based support.oracle.com will point to the new ADF-based site.

The new site retains My Oracle Support (MOS) syntax for downloading patches and updates, in form of https://updates.oracle.com/Orion/Services/download/your_patch_name.zip 

While this new support site works great in latest versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox, in older versions of browsers, layers and links are overlapping on the page.  This is especially an issue when servers are locates in remote datacenters and either flash is not available or old browser versions are used.  One solution to overcome this issue is to download the patches using wget.

wget is a command line utility that is part of the GNU project.  It is a non-interactive command line tool that will download files via http, https, and ftp.  Oracle provides instructions on using wget in Oracle Support Note [ID 841055.1] CLASSIC METALINK, ORACLE ON DEMAND CUSTOMER PORTAL AND MY ORACLE SUPPORT TRANSITION FAQs. 

Prior to using wget, check if wget command is available; if required, install wget and ensure the utility has support for SSL.  Set any required proxies.

To use wget to download a patch, you will need to get the URL behind the download button.  Go to https://supporthtml.oracle.com and login with your MOS username and password.  Click 'Patches & Updates' tab, then type in the patch number, and click 'Search'.  Click the Patch Name that corresponds to your Platform/Language, then click 'Download'.  In the new 'File Download' dialog window, right-click the patch name then 'Copy Shortcut'.

Enter the following command where username and password are your MOS login and password, and filename is the patch file name copied in the previous step.

wget --http-user=username --http-password=password --no-check-certificate --output-document=filename

For example, to download patch 12909840 for IBM AIX, where patch name is p12909840_111150_AIX64-5L.zip, enter:

wget --http-user=john.doe@oracle.com --http-password=password --no-check-certificate --output-document=p12909840_111150_AIX64-5L.zip https://updates.oracle.com/Orion/Download/download_patch/p12909840_111150_AIX64-5L.zip

For password protected patches, enter the patch password at the end of the URL by appending '?patch_password=patch_password'.

Hopefully, this will come handy while issues with new ADF-based Oracle Support site's support for older browsers are resolved.