Installing IBM HTTP Server silently

A silent installation uses the installation wizard to install the product in silent mode, without the graphical user interface. Instead of displaying a wizard interface, the silent installation enables the installation program to read all of your responses from a file that you provide.

Before you begin

[HP-UX] If you are installing IBM HTTP Server V6.0.1 on HP-UX IA-64 you need the BUNDLE11i B.11.23.0409.3 required patch bundle for HP-UX 11i level of HP-UX or greater. This is the September 2004 update of 11i V2 for IA-64.

Installing IBM HTTP Server using silent installation refers to using a file to supply installation options without user interaction. To configure the installation, change the options in the response file before you issue the installation command. Silent installation mode does not accept interactive installation options. To specify non-default options during a silent installation, you must use the response file. To install silently, you must accept the license agreement in the agreement option.

Verify that the required disk space is available.

See Preparing the operating system for product installation for more information. Do not use the default response file that is shipped on the product disc to install the product, because the value of the silentInstallLicenseAcceptance bean is "false". Copy the file to change the value to "true".

Procedure

  1. [AIX] [HP-UX] [Linux] [Solaris] Log on as root.
  2. [Windows] Log on as a member of the administrator group. Considerations for Windows operating systems follow:
    • Some steps for installing silently require the administrator group user to have the following advanced user rights:
      • Act as part of the operating system
      • Log on as a service
    • The installation wizard grants your Windows user ID the advanced user rights, if the user ID belongs to the administrator group. The silent installation does not grant these rights. If you create a new user ID on a Windows platform to perform the silent installation, you must restart the system to activate the proper authorizations for the user ID, before you can perform a successful silent installation.
    • When installing IBM HTTP Server as a Windows service, do not use a user ID that contains spaces. A user ID with spaces cannot be validated. Such a user ID is not allowed to continue the installation. To work around this problem, install with the service configured to run as LocalSystem, and then modify the user ID after install.
  3. Copy the responsefile.txt file to your disk drive and rename it, for example myoptionsfile.txt. You can now customize it. Accept the IBM HTTP Server license by setting -W silentInstallLicenseAcceptance.value="true" in your response file.
  4. Issue the proper command to use your custom response file. For example, issue one of the following commands:
    • [AIX] [HP-UX] [Linux] [Solaris] mnt_cdrom/IHS/install -options myoptionsfile.txt -silent
    • [Windows] "CD-ROM drive:\IHS\install" -options "myoptionsfile.txt" -silent

    [AIX] [HP-UX] [Linux] [Solaris] To silently install IBM HTTP Server, the X Windows software must be installed on the system.

    You can find the sample options response file in the IBM HTTP Server directory on the product CD.

Results

If the installation is successful, the IBM HTTP Server product is installed and the log file is located in the /logs/install/ directory. However, if the product installation fails, see the log.txt file in either the /logs/install/ directory or the $USER/ihslogs/ directory.

[Linux] The IBM HTTP Server installation may hang during the silent install of GSKit. The following message displays in the installConfig.log file:
<message>error: failed to stat /mnt/xxx: Stale NFS file handle</message>
This problem might occur if the system has an unresponsive Network File System (NFS) mount, then the Linux rpm command, which is used to install the GSKit, attempts to query the unresponsive file system mount until it times out. To work around this problem, unmount the stale NFS mount, and then mount it again.

What to do next [Solaris]

If you are installing Version 6.0.2 IBM HTTP Server for Sun Solaris x64 and you intend to configure the Web server plug-in for Secure Sockets Layer, an additional step is necessary to enable the plug-in to load the correct libraries for SSL.
The following command is necessary:
ln -s /opt/ibm/gsk7_64/lib64/libgsk7ssl_64.so ihs_install_root/lib/libgsk7ssl.so
Where ihs_install_root is the directory in which IBM HTTP Server is installed.

If this command is not run, the plug-in will fail to use SSL even when configured and an error message will result in the http_plugin.log file at plugin_install_root/logs/webserver_name/.

You can view the Web server plug-in for Secure Sockets Layer topic in the documentation for the WebSphere Application Server Information center.

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Last updated: Aug 30, 2010 3:02:35 PM CDT
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