ITM Agent Insights: Requirements for installing existing ITM agents into a new 6.3 environment

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This blog with help you with installing an existing ITM Agent into a new 6.3 environment.

ITM 6.3 contains new or upgraded versions for many of it's embedded components. These upgrades are to take advantage of the latest improvements as well as many security enhancements. IBM's GSkit is one of those components that has been updated to the latest version. To enable pre-6.3 32bit agents to use the new version of GSKit on 64bit systems there is one additional step required, and that is described below.

Installing a pre-ITM 6.3 32bit agent into an existing ITM 6.3 64bit system will require updating the pre-6.3 TEMA framework before that agent can be started.  

When an ITM 6.3 OS agent is installed either remotely or locally on a 64bit Unix/Linux platform into a new ITM install directory, only the 64 bit agent TEMA framework is installed. This ITM 6.3 installation provides a new version of GSKit (version 8), for both 64bit and 32bit TEMA framework environments. If a pre-ITM 6.3 32bit agent is then installed into this directory it's path to the global GSKit library is not correct, and the agent will not start.

An error message, such as the following, will be displayed at the command line when the agent tries to start:
hostname$ ./itmcmd agent start px
Processing. Please wait...
Starting Monitoring Agent for AIX Premium ...
KCIIN0198E Unable to start agent. Please, check log file.

The agent <hostname>_<pc>_<timestamp>.log file  will contain the following message:
exec(): 0509-036 Cannot load program /opt/IBM/ITM/aix523/px/bin/kpxagent because of the following errors:
        0509-022 Cannot load module /opt/IBM/ITM/tmaitm6/aix523/lib/libkglbase.a.
        0509-150 Dependent module libgsk7iccs.so could not be loaded.
        0509-022 annot load module libgsk7iccs.so.
        0509-026 System error: A file or directory in the path name does not exist.
        0509-022 Cannot load module kpxagent.
        0509-150 Dependent module /opt/IBM/ITM/tmaitm6/aix523/lib/libkglbase.a could not be loaded.
        0509-022 Cannot load module.

This situation can be corrected two ways:

1) For local only deployments, the ITM6.3 agent install media can be used to update the 32bit TEMA framework.

2)  For remote installations the tacmd updateframework command to update all the agent frameworks in this install directory to the ITM6.3 level.

Example:
After a new installation of the ITM 6.3 Unix OS agent on AIX, the following components exists in the install directory:

*********** Fri Feb  1 08:33:27 EST 2013 ******************
User: root Groups: system bin sys security cron audit lp
Host name : itmaix71b    Installer Lvl:06.30.00.00
CandleHome: /opt/IBM/ITM
***********************************************************
...Product inventory

ax      IBM Tivoli Monitoring Shared Libraries
         aix526  Version: 06.30.00.00

gs      IBM GSKit Security Interface
         aix523  Version: 08.00.50.01
         aix526  Version: 08.00.50.01

jr      Tivoli Enterprise-supplied JRE
         aix526  Version: 07.03.00.00

ui      Tivoli Enterprise Services User Interface
         aix526  Version: 06.30.00.00

ux      Monitoring Agent for UNIX OS
         aix526  Version: 06.30.00.00

The AIX Premium V6.2.2.2 agent (px) uses the 32bit  agent framework, so it installs a pre-ITM6.3 version. After installing the AIX Premium agent into this install directory, the installed components are:

*********** Fri Feb  1 08:40:38 EST 2013 ******************
User: root Groups: system bin sys security cron audit lp
Host name : itmaix71b    Installer Lvl:06.30.00.00
CandleHome: /opt/IBM/ITM
***********************************************************
...Product inventory

ax      IBM Tivoli Monitoring Shared Libraries
         aix523  Version: 06.22.04.00
         aix526  Version: 06.30.00.00

gs      IBM GSKit Security Interface
         aix523  Version: 08.00.50.01
         aix526  Version: 08.00.50.01

px      Monitoring Agent for AIX Premium
         aix523  Version: 06.22.02.00

ui      Tivoli Enterprise Services User Interface
         aix523  Version: 06.22.04.00
         aix526  Version: 06.30.00.00

ux      Monitoring Agent for UNIX OS
         aix526  Version: 06.30.00.00

Notice that the ITM 6.3 Unix OS agent has installed the 32bit version of the IBM GSKit component. This version is not compatible with any pre-ITM 6.3 agent framework components such as the aix523 version of ax that is used by the AIX Premium agent. This component needs to be updated to the ITM 6.3 (06.30.00.00) level using one of the methods described above.

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

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