IBM Support Assistant: Product plug-in install, enable, disable and uninstall instructions
 Technote (troubleshooting)
 
Problem(Abstract)
How to install, enable, disable, uninstall or troubleshoot an IBM® Support Assistant product plug-in.
 
Cause
As new plug-ins become available for IBM products, or as you grow your IBM product set, you will want to add additional customization to the IBM Support Assistant for those products. This document shows you how to quickly add a new plug-in or configure the IBM Support Assistant.
 
Resolving the problem
The IBM Support Assistant is based on the Eclipse open-source project. The Eclipse framework is easy to extend by using XML plug-ins. When a product plug-in is successfully installed, it is automatically enabled after you restart IBM Support Assistant.
Prerequisites
This document assumes that you already have IBM Support Assistant V2.0 installed. If you do not have it installed, you should review the information on the IBM Support Assistant page first. You can then obtain the actual IBM Support Assistant code from the download page (free registration id required). Viewlets demonstrating how to download and install the main IBM Support Assistant code as well as product plug-ins can be found on the IBM Education Assistant site.

Definitions
Install_root-- the directory where you installed IBM Support Assistant V2.0. The default values for the install_root directory are:

Windows®: C:\Program Files\IBM\IBM Support Assistant

UNIX™: /opt/IBM/IBMSupportAssistant

Main Contents


There are 4 main sections to this document.

Steps for installing an IBM Support Assistant product plug-in
  1. Stop the IBM Support Assistant application.

    Windows®: Use the File > Exit menu from the IBM Support Assistant

    UNIX™: Use the stopisa.sh shell script.

  2. Download an IBM Support Assistant product plug-in for each IBM product in your configuration into the Support Assistant install_root directory (ex. C:\Program Files\IBM\IBM Support Assistant) .

  3. Open a command window and switch to the install_root directory.

  4. Unzip the product plug-in package which you just downloaded.
    • The files contained in the archive should be extracted into the install_root subdirectory.
    • A new subdirectory under install_root/plugins subdirectory will be created for each product plug-in.

  5. Restart IBM Support Assistant to pick up the changes.

    Windows: Use the IBM Support Assistant menu from the Windows Start menu

    UNIX: Use the startisa.sh shell script.
  6. When IBM Support Assistant is restarted, you should be able to verify that the new product plug-in was installed by switching to the "Support Links" tab in the user interface. There should be a new entry in the tree for the product whose plug-in you just installed (you may have to expand branches to see the new product). Some products also extend the "Search", "Education", or "Service" parts of IBM Support Assistant. If you installed a plug-in for one of those products, you will also see updated information in those portions of the user interface. If you do not see the new product anywhere in the user interface, check the "Troubleshooting" section at the bottom of this document.

Enabling and Disabling a Support Assistant product plug-in
You can save time by disabling a product plug-in when it is not needed instead of uninstalling it. The following steps stop a product plug-in from running and avoid accidentally removing the wrong plug-in.

Steps to enable or disable a Support Assistant product plug-in:
  1. Open a command window and switch to the install_root/plugins directory (ex. C:\Program Files\IBM\IBM Support Assistant\plugins ).

  2. Switch to the subdirectory you are disabling.

    Subdirectory names are typically in the form of com.ibm.esupport.client.zzzzz where zzzzz will be a product code and possibly version information.

    If you have difficulty identifying the appropriate plug-in directory, search the plugin.xml files:

    Windows: findstr -s "product_name" plugin.xml

    UNIX: find . -name plugin.xml -exec grep "product_name" {} \;

    Example for WebSphere Application Server on Windows:
    C:\Program Files\IBM\IBM Support Assistant\plugins>findstr -s "WebSphere Application Server" plugin.xml

    Example for WebSphere Application Server on UNIX:
    # find . -name plugin.xml -exec grep "WebSphere Application Server" {} \;

  3. Inside of the product specific plug-in directory, there will be a file named "plugin.xml". This file contains the necessary information for the plug-in to run and be integrated into the IBM Support Assistant screens. In the plugin.xml file, there is a <ProductDescriptor> tag with a productName attribute. This productName attribute should identify the appropriate IBM product plug-in with which you are working.

  4. Rename the plugin.xml configuration file to something other than plugin.xml. We suggest renaming it with a ".off" extension to allow for easy identification in case you wish to enable it at a later point (for example: plugin.xml.off).

    Windows: ren plugin.xml plugin.xml.off

    UNIX: mv plugin.xml plugin.xml.off

  5. Restart Support Assistant to pick up the changes.

    Windows: Use the IBM Support Assistant menu from the Windows® Start menu

    UNIX: Use the startisa.sh shell script.
  6. To enable a disabled plug-in, simply rename the file to its original name. (Remove the ".off" extension if you used the suggestion in step #4.)

    Windows: ren plugin.xml.off plugin.xml

    UNIX: mv plugin.xml.off plugin.xml


Uninstalling a Support Assistant product plug-in
You should be careful when uninstalling a product plug-in to make sure that you do not uninstall the wrong one and possibly damage your Support Assistant installation. The following steps remove a Support Assistant product plug-in.

Steps to uninstall a Support Assistant product plug-in:
  1. Navigate to the "plugins" directory below the Support Assistant installation directory (ex. C:\Program Files\IBM\IBM Support Assistant\plugins ).

  2. Locate the subdirectory for the plug-in that you wish to uninstall.

    Subdirectory names are typically in the form of com.ibm.esupport.client.zzzzz where zzzzz will be a product code and possibly version information.

    If you have difficulty identifying the appropriate plug-in directory, search the plugin.xml files:

    Windows: findstr -s "product_name" plugin.xml

    UNIX: find . -name plugin.xml -exec grep "product_name" {} \;

    Example for WebSphere Application Server on Windows:
    C:\Program Files\IBM\IBM Support Assistant\plugins>findstr -s "WebSphere Application Server" plugin.xml

    Example for WebSphere Application Server on UNIX™:
    # find . -name plugin.xml -exec grep "WebSphere Application Server" {} \;

  3. Once the correct subdirectory is located, remove that directory. Optionally, you may just move that directory other than the IBM Support Assistant "plugins" directory.

    Windows: If operating in a command window, you can use the following command:

    del /s "subdirectory_name"

    If using Windows® Explorer, you may simply drag the subdirectory folder to the Recycle Bin to delete it.

    UNIX: rm -R "subdirectory_name"

  4. Restart IBM Support Assistant to pick up the changes.

    Windows: Use the IBM Support Assistant menu from the Windows Start menu

    UNIX: Use the startisa.sh shell script.


Troubleshooting
Verifying that a plug-in is installed
If a plug-in is installed correctly, it should at a minimum be adding product specific information to the "Support Links" portion of the IBM Support Assistant user interface. Depending on the plug-in's contents, it may also add information to the "Search", "Education Links", and "Service" portions of the user interface. Most download documents for the plug-ins will list which portions of IBM Support Assistant that the plug-in is extending.

Troubleshooting plug-in installation
  1. Check to see if the product plug-in zip which you downloaded is corrupt. You can use command line options on most decompression utilities to check the integrity of the zip file.

    Example: unzip -t product_plugin.zip

    If the archive is corrupt then you need to obtain a new copy. If FTP was used to transfer the archive to / from a machine, verify that binary mode was used for the transfer instead of ASCII mode.

  2. If the archive is okay, check to see if the files were actually extracted successfully. The new plug-in files should be located in a separate directory below the IBM Support Assistant's plugins subdirectory. If no files were extracted, check file permissions to see if you can write to that directory. Also, check the available disk space to verify that enough space is available..

  3. If everything appears to be in order, try restarting the IBM Support Assistant with the "-clean" command line option. The "-clean" option is used to reinitialize the IBM Support Assistant's plug-in registry data.

  4. If you continue to have problems, check the main IBM Support Assistant page for important updates or fixes for the tool.

Troubleshooting plug-in enablement / disablement / uninstallation
  1. If there is a problem restarting Support Assistant after enabling or disabling a plug-in or uninstalling a plug-in, try restarting the IBM Support Assistant with the "-clean" command line option. The "-clean" option is used to reinitialize the IBM Support Assistant plug-in registry data.

  2. If you continue to have problems, check the main IBM Support Assistant page for important updates or fixes for the tool.
 
Related information
IBM Support Assistant Overview
IBM Software Support site
 
 
Cross Reference information
Segment Product Component Platform Version Edition
Application Servers Runtimes for Java Technology Java SDK
 
Product Alias/Synonym
ISA
 
 
 


Document Information


Product categories: Software > Application Servers > Distributed Application & Web Servers > WebSphere Application Server > Install
Operating system(s): Windows
Software version: 6.0
Software edition:
Reference #: 1196404
IBM Group: Software Group
Modified date: Dec 7, 2005