IBM® Installation
Manager is a common installer for many IBM software
products that you use to install this version of WebSphere® Application Server.
Before you begin
Installation Manager is a single installation program that
can use remote or local software flat-file repositories to install,
modify, or update new WebSphere Application
Server products. It determines and shows available packages—including
products, fix packs, interim fixes, and so on—checks prerequisites
and interdependencies, and installs the selected packages. You also
use Installation Manager to easily uninstall the packages that it
installed.
- Overview of IBM Installation Manager:
IBM Installation Manager
is a general-purpose software installation and update tool that runs
on a range of computer systems. Installation Manager can be invoked
through a graphical user interface (GUI) or a command-line interface.
You can also create response files in XML and use them to direct the
performance of Installation Manager tasks in silent mode.
For
more information on using Installation Manager, read the IBM Installation
Manager Version 1.6 Information Center.
- Packages and package groups:
Each software product that can be installed with Installation
Manager is referred to as a package. An installed package has a product
level and an installation location. A package group consists of all
of the products that are installed at a single location.
- Installation Manager modes:
IBM Installation Manager
can be installed in one of the following three modes:
- How many Installation Managers do you need:
You only need to run Installation Manager on those systems
on which you install or update product code. You normally need only
one Installation Manager on a system because one Installation Manager
can keep track of any number of product installations.
- Installing Installation Manager:
When the installation kit is available on your system, you
can install Installation Manager. Installation Manager consists of
a set of binaries that are copied from the installation kit and a
set of runtime data that describe the products that have been installed
by this particular Installation Manager. Before installing Installation
Manager, you must decide in which mode the Installation Manager will
run as well as where the binaries and runtime data—called agent data
or appdata—will reside. Then, you issue an Installation Manager installation
command from the appropriate user ID to install Installation Manager.
- Accessing product repositories:
All software materials that will be installed with IBM Installation Manager are stored
in flat-file repositories. Each repository contains program objects
and metadata for one or more packages—that is, software products at
a particular level. Repositories can also contain product maintenance,
such as fix packs and interim fixes. Whenever you install a new product,
you can choose from any of the available product levels in any accessible
repository.
- Installing the product:
After you have installed Installation Manager and have access
to all necessary product repositories, you can use the Installation
Manager GUI, command-line commands, or response files to perform the
actual product installations. When you install a product, you provide
the package name, optionally the product level to be installed, the
product location, and any other optional properties. For example,
some products have optional features that you can select at installation
time or a list of optional supported language packs from which you
can select.
- Working with installed products:
You can use Installation Manager commands to list installed
products and product levels. You can also obtain this information
for installed copies of WebSphere Application
Server Version 8.5 products by issuing the versionInfo command
from the product file system. You can use Installation Manager commands
or response files to install a new product level, roll back to a previous
level, or modify the product by adding or removing optional features
or language packs.
- Using IBM Packaging Utility:
IBM Packaging Utility
is a companion tool for Installation Manager with which you can create
and manage custom Installation Manager repositories for your organization.
You can copy multiple packages, maintenance levels, and fixes into
a single repository. Packaging Utility copies from source repositories
to your target custom repositories. Source repositories can include
any accessible Installation Manager repository, including IBM web-hosted product repositories
and unzipped Passport Advantage® downloads. For more information on Packaging Utility,
go to the IBM Packaging
Utility Information Center.
Packaging Utility Version
1.5.2 introduced the capability to create "platform-scoped" repositories.
The -platform option of the Packaging Utility
copy command
allows you to further customize and reduce the size of your repository
by maintaining content for only those platforms that your organization
uses. For more information, read
Command-line arguments for pucl. If you specify
unsupported operating-system and architecture combinations for WebSphere Application Server
offerings when you use the -platform option of the Packaging Utility
copy command,
however, unusable local repositories might be created. The following
table lists valid combinations for creating a local WebSphere Application Server offering repository
that is sliced by operating system and architecture.
Table 1. Valid
combinations for creating a local WebSphere Application
Server offering repository using the Packaging Utility copy commandPlatform |
Options |
Resulting Repository |
Windows |
os=win32,arch=x86 os=win32
|
Windows 32
bit and 64 bit |
Linux Intel |
os=linux,arch=x86 |
Linux Intel 32 bit and 64 bit |
Linux Power® |
os=linux,arch=ppc |
Linux Power 32 bit and 64 bit |
zLinux |
os=linux,arch=s390 |
zLinux 32 bit and 64 bit |
AIX® |
os=aix |
AIX 32
bit and 64 bit |
Solaris Sparc |
os=solaris,arch=sparc |
Solaris Sparc 32 bit and 64 bit |
Solaris Intel |
os=solaris,arch=x86 |
Solaris Intel 64
bit |
HP-UX Itanium |
os=hpux |
HP-UX Itanium 64
bit |
IBM i |
os=os400 |
IBM i |
z/OS® |
os=zos |
z/OS |
Restriction: When using the Packaging
Utility command-line interface (PUCL.exe) that is
available in the Packaging Utility installation folder, you can only
specify the -platform parameter once.
Restrictions: - If you have an earlier Alpha or a Beta version of WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5
and Installation Manager installed, uninstall them before installing
this version.
If a non-administrator installs WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5
on a Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows Server 2008 operating system into
the Program Files or Program Files
(x86) directory with User Account Control (UAC) enabled, WebSphere Application Server
will not function correctly.UAC is an access-control mechanism
that allows non-administrative users to install a software product
into the Program Files or Program Files
(x86) directory; but it then prohibits any write access
to that directory after the installation has completed. WebSphere Application Server requires write
access in the app_server_root directory
in order to function correctly.
To resolve this issue, perform
one of the following actions:
- Install WAS into a directory other than Program Files or Program
Files (x86).
For example:
C:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer
- Disable UAC.
- When you install a product using Installation Manager with local
repositories, the installation takes a significantly longer amount
of time if you use a compressed repository file directly without extracting
it.
Before you install a product using local repositories, extract
the compressed repository file to a location on your local system
before using Installation Manager to access it.
- Installation Manager console mode, which is included in Installation
Manager Version 1.4.3 and later, does not work with WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5
offerings on systems other than z/OS.
- You can use 64-bit Installation Manager Version
1.6 for the following installations only:
- WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5.0.1 and later
Using 64-bit Installation Manager Version 1.6 for anything else
can result in issues with installation and deployment.
You can use 64-bit Installation Manager Version
1.6.2 or later to install this offering on Windows systems.
Important: Do not transfer the content of
a repository in non-binary mode and do not convert any content on
extraction.
Tip: Although almost all of the instructions
in this section of the information center will work with earlier versions
of IBM Installation Manager,
the information here is optimized for users who have installed or
upgraded to Installation Manager Version 1.6 or later.
Important: Installation Manager can install any fix-pack level
of the product directly without installing the interim fix packs;
in fact, Installation Manager installs the latest level by default.
For example, you can skip fix-pack levels and go from Version 8.5.0.1
directly to Version 8.5.0.5. Keep in mind, however, that later you
can not roll back to any level that was skipped. If you directly
install to Version 8.5.0.5, for example, you cannot roll back to Version
8.5.0.4. If you skip from Version 8.5.0.1 to Version 8.5.0.5, you
can only roll back to Version 8.5.0.1. You should plan your installations
accordingly.
About this task
Prepare your system as described in Installing Installation Manager and preparing to install the product.
Perform
one of these procedures to install or uninstall the product using
Installation Manager.
Procedure
Results
Notes on logging and tracing:
Notes on troubleshooting:
When you attempt to launch Installation Manager
from a DVD that was mounted using the CD-ROM file system (CDFS) on
an HP-UX operating system, it might fail to launch and point to a
log file that contains an exceptions similar to one of the following:java.util.zip.ZipException: Exception in opening zip file:
org.osgi.framework.BundleException: Exception in
org.eclipse.update.internal.configurator.ConfigurationActivator.start()
or bundle org.eclipse.update.configurator.
This issue might
be caused by Installation Manager reaching the upper limit of number
of descriptors that can be opened on a CDFS-mounted device. This
upper limit is determined by the value for the tunable kernel parameter
ncdnode, which specifies the maximum number of CDFS nodes that can
be in memory at any given time. To resolve the problem, change the
ncdnode system kernel setting to 250. If the problem persists, increase
the setting.
By default, some HP-UX systems are configured
to not use DNS to resolve host names. This could result in Installation
Manager not being able to connect to an external repository. You
can ping the repository, but nslookup does not return anything.
Work
with your system administrator to configure your machine to use DNS,
or use the IP address of the repository.
- In some cases, you might need to bypass existing checking mechanisms
in Installation Manager.
- On some network file systems, disk space might not be reported
correctly at times; and you might need to bypass disk-space checking
and proceed with your installation.
To disable disk-space checking,
specify the following system property in the
config.ini file
in
IM_install_root/eclipse/configuration and
restart Installation Manager:
cic.override.disk.space=sizeunit
where
size is
a positive integer and
unit is blank for bytes,
k for kilo, m for megabytes, or g for gigabytes. For example:
cic.override.disk.space=120 (120 bytes)
cic.override.disk.space=130k (130 kilobytes)
cic.override.disk.space=140m (140 megabytes)
cic.override.disk.space=150g (150 gigabytes)
cic.override.disk.space=true
Installation Manager will
report a disk-space size of Long.MAX_VALUE. Instead of displaying
a very large amount of available disk space, N/A is displayed.
- To bypass operating-system prerequisite checking, add disableOSPrereqChecking=true to
the config.ini file in IM_install_root/eclipse/configuration and
restart Installation Manager.
If you need to use any of these bypass methods, contact IBM Support for assistance in developing
a solution that does not involve bypassing the Installation Manager
checking mechanisms.
- For more information on using Installation Manager, read the IBM Installation
Manager Version 1.6 Information Center.
- If a fatal error occurs when you try to install the product, take
the following steps:
- Make a backup copy of your current product installation directory
in case IBM support needs to
review it later.
- Use Installation Manager to uninstall everything that you have
installed under the product installation location (package group).
You might run into errors, but they can be safely ignored.
- Delete everything that remains in the product installation directory.
- Use Installation Manager to reinstall the product to the same
location or to a new one.
Note on version and history information: The versionInfo and historyInfo commands
return version and history information based on all of the installation,
uninstallation, update, and rollback activities performed on the system.