WAS v8.0 > Install the application serving environment > Distributed operating systems > Install the product

Install and uninstall the product on distributed operating systems

IBM Installation Manager is a common installer for many IBM software products that you use to install this version of WAS.

New feature: WAS v8.0 is the first full version to be installed by IBM Installation Manager rather than by the ISMP-based installer, Update Installer, and Installation Factory programs that are used to install and maintain previous versions. Installation Manager is a single installation program that can use remote or local software flat-file repositories to install, modify, or update new WAS 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.

Do not use the same response files that are used with WAS v7.0 or earlier to install or uninstall v8.0 and later; use response files that are based on Installation Manager to install, update, or uninstall v8.0 and later.

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. We 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 v1.4 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:

• In admin mode, the Installation Manager is installed from an administrator or a root ID and can be invoked by any administrator or root user.

• In nonAdmin mode (also called "user mode"), the Installation Manager can be invoked only by the user that installed it.
• In group mode, the Installation Manager can be invoked by any user ID that is connected to the default group of the user that installed it.

  This does not mean that two people can use the single instance of IBM Installation Manager at the same time.

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.

Install Installation Manager: When the installation kit is available on the 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, 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.

Access 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.

Install the product: After we 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, provided 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.

Work with installed products: We can use Installation Manager commands to list installed products and product levels. We can also obtain this information for installed copies of WAS v8 products by issuing the versionInfo command from the product file system. We 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.

Use the IBM Packaging Utility: With the Packaging Utility, you can create and manage packages for installation repositories. We can copy multiple packages into one repository or copy multiple disks for one product into a repository. We can copy packages from Passport Advantage into a repository for example. For more information on the Packaging Utility, go to the IBM Installation Manager v1.4 Information Center. New feature:

Restrictions:

• If we have an Alpha or a Beta version of WAS v8 and Installation Manager installed, uninstall them before installing the generally available versions.
• The Installation Manager GUI is not supported on Solaris 10 x64 systems. Perform one of the following procedures to install or uninstall the product on these systems:
  • Perform the following actions.

    • Use the Installation Manager GUI on a supported system to record a response file that will allow you to install or uninstall WAS v8.0.
    • Edit the recorded response file if necessary.

    • Use the response file to install or uninstall WAS v8.0 on the system.

  • Use the Installation Manager imcl command-line tool to install or uninstall the product.

• For any Linux system that is enabled for Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux), such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 5 or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server v11, identify the Java shared libraries in the Installation Manager v1.4.3 or earlier installation image to the system. Also, identify the Java shared libraries in the Installation Manager Version 1.4.3 or earlier installation after it has been installed. For example:

  chcon -R -t texrel_shlib_t ${IM_Image}/jre_5.0.3.sr8a_20080811b/jre/bin
  chcon -R -t texrel_shlib_t ${IM_Install_root}/eclipse/jre_5.0.3.sr8a_20080811b/jre/bin
  

• If a non-administrator installs WAS v8 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, WAS 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. WAS requires write access in...

  WAS_HOME

  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 WAS v8.0 using Installation Manager with local repositories, the installation takes a significantly longer amount of time if you use the repository.zip file directly without extracting it.

  Before you install WAS v8.0 using Installation Manager with local repositories, extract the repository.zip file to a location on your local system and add that location to your Installation Manager preferences.

• Installation Manager console mode, which is included in Installation Manager v1.4.3 and later, does not work with WAS v8.0 offerings.

Do not transfer the content of a repository in non-binary mode and do not convert any content on extraction.

Perform one of these procedures to install or uninstall the product using Installation Manager.

Procedure

• Install the product using the GUI
• Install WAS using Installation Manager response files
• Uninstall the product from distributed operating systems using the GUI
• Uninstall the product from distributed operating systems using response files

Results

Notes on logging and tracing:

• An easy way to view the logs is to open Installation Manager and go to File > View Log. An individual log file can be opened by selecting it in the table and then clicking the Open log file icon.
• Logs are located in the logs directory of Installation Manager's application data location. For example:
  • Administrative installation:

    C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\IBM\Installation Manager 

  • Non-administrative installation:

    C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\Application Data\IBM\Installation Manager 

  • Administrative installation:

    /var/IBM/InstallationManager
    

  • Non-administrative installation:

    user_home/var/ibm/InstallationManager
    

• The main log files are time-stamped XML files in the logs directory, and they can be viewed using any standard web browser.
• The log.properties file in the logs directory specifies the level of logging or tracing that Installation Manager uses.

  To turn on tracing for the WAS plug-ins, for example, create a log.properties file with the following content:

  com.ibm.ws=DEBUG
  com.ibm.cic.agent.core.Engine=DEBUG
  global=DEBUG
  

  Restart Installation Manager as necessary, and Installation Manager outputs traces for the WAS plug-ins.

Notes on troubleshooting:

• 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 the 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 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.

• Installation Manager might display a warning message during the uninstallation process.

  Uninstall WAS v8.0 using Installation Manager requires that the data repositories remain valid and available.

• For more information on using Installation Manager, read the IBM Installation Manager v1.4 Information Center.

  Read the release notes to learn more about the latest version of Installation Manager. To access the release notes, complete the following task:

  • Click Start > Programs > IBM Installation Manager > Release Notes.
  • Go to the documentation subdirectory in the directory where Installation Manager is installed, and open the readme.html file.

• 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 we 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.

For transitioning users: Beginning with WAS v8.0, you cannot use the installation registry utility (the installRegistryUtils command) to list installed products and packages. Use the Installation Manager imcl command to list installed products and packages for WAS v8.0 and later. See the IBM Installation Manager v1.4 Information Center for information on using this command.trns

Related

Install the product using the GUI
Install WAS using Installation Manager response files
Install and uninstall features
Install and uninstall interim fixes and fix packs
Upgrade from a trial offering using the GUI
Uninstall the product from distributed operating systems using the GUI
Uninstall the product from distributed operating systems using response files

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