ITM Agent Insights: Debugging installs & upgrades

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As an ITM Administrator maintenance tasks like installations and upgrades are part of your daily responsibilities. Very often the installations are routine and complete with minimal intervention on the Administrator's part. Occasionally you may encounter an error at the end of an install or upgrade that needs to be addressed before your task can be completed successfully.

This blog will help you work through the issue by describing where to look for details on the problem and how to review or capture additional information that may resolve the problem or at least reduce the PMR duration if IBM Support gets involved. Typically when an installation or upgrade fails on Windows or UNIX/Linux you can check the target system's <ITMHOME>/logs and / or the <ITMHOME>\InstallITM directories for abort and installation logs. These logs will often provide insights into the problem.

You might start by suspecting the code you are trying to install. Here are some questions you should be able to answer about the products you are trying to apply:

1. Are you able to determine the exact install package you are using? The purpose here is to be certain the code is from a reliable source such as Passport Advantage (PA).
2. Is a reliable utility being used to extract the package and transfer it to the local system?  Occasionally a file downloaded from PA may be corrupted during the download, compression or transfer process.
3. Was the original package reduced down in any way by removing files or any modification of that nature? Some companies may modify downloaded to code to meet package size requirements. This can produce inconsistent deployment results.
4. Was this package used and successfully installed on any other system?

 
A useful tool for UNIX and Linux troubleshooting is the script command.

For details on the AIX script command refer to:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/pseries/v5r3/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.aix.cmds/doc/aixcmds5/script.htm

The script command can be used to capture the data that scrolls across your screen during a maintenance activity. The script command can be invoked prior to the installation or upgrade. It captures all the information that the human eye cannot and places it in an output file.

To use script, type the command followed by the location and a name of the file to store the captured data. The following steps can be used for most maintenance activities.

1. Before beginning the installation or upgrade type the following command to start the capture process and store the output file in the /tmp/ directory in a file called capture_inst.txt.

script /tmp/capture_inst.txt

To stop the script command, press Ctrl + D or type exit and press Enter. The exit command should be used to stop logging and close the file. Everything between the script and the exit command is logged to the file. This includes the confirmation messages from script itself.

2. Run the install.sh again and allow it to complete or fail
3. Check the <ITMHOME>/logs/ directory for a new candle_installation.log
4. Review the new candle_installation.log for any obvious errors starting at the bottom of the log and working your way up.
5. Look for and review any new files with a name like itm_install*.*
6. Review the file from /tmp/ called capture_inst.txt for any problems that may have scrolled across your screen during the deployment.

For more information on reading ITM logs refer to this three part series available from,

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/tivoli_iea/com.ibm.iea.itm/itm/6.2.1/troubleshooting.html?cp=tivoli_iea%2F30-6-7

Part 1 Locating logs and log types
Part 2 Analyzing logs for errors & messages
Part 3 Examples and solutions

Hopefully this information will help make you more self sufficient in dealing with problems related to these typical maintenance procedures. It was presented with the intention of helping ITM Administrators become aware of what is happening in the background during these common  tasks. Troubleshooting is a skill that can be developed with practice. The more you know the better you will become.

Additional ITM Agent Insights series of IBM Tivoli Monitoring Agent blogs are indexed under ITM Agent Insights: Introduction.

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