How to debug the reason of a gpfs install failure during the installation of pureScale

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This is a simple case demonstrating how to find out the reason of a gpfs installation failure during setting up a pureScale environment.

It is a Redhat Linux 7.4 server, I was trying to install pureScale v11.1.4.4 on it.   However, I saw this error and db2_install aborted:

<skipped>
Task #27 start
Description: General Parallel File System (GPFS)
Estimated time 100 second(s)
Task #27 end

DB2 Setup is undoing the changes made to your computer during this installation.
 Undo complete.

A major error occurred while installing "DB2 Server Edition " on this
computer. The installation cannot continue. If the problem persists contact
your technical service representative.

Checked db2_install.log.xxxx, obviously gpfs install failed:

<skipped>
Installing: GPFS

ERROR: DBI20105E  An error occurred while installing the following file set:
"gpfs". Because these files were not successfully installed, functionality that
depends on these files might not work as expected.
<skipped>

Checked installGPFS.log.xxx. we can see gpfs failed to be installed due to failure on  "gpfs.ext-4.2.3-0.x86_64.rpm":

"GPFS" is not installed.

4.2.3.10.1
1
Installing "gpfs.base-4.2.3-0.x86_64.rpm"

Success

Installing "gpfs.gpl-4.2.3-0.noarch.rpm"

Success

Installing "gpfs.msg.en_US-4.2.3-0.noarch.rpm"

Success

Installing "gpfs.docs-4.2.3-0.noarch.rpm"

Success

Installing "gpfs.ext-4.2.3-0.x86_64.rpm"

Failure

DBI1065E  Program installGPFS terminated prematurely.

Explanation:

An error has occurred during the execution and that has caused this
program to terminate prematurely.

User response:

Correct the problem and try the command again.

So,  have to find out why installation of "gpfs.ext-4.2.3-0.x86_64.rpm" failed.  Do we have any more tracing information?

Checked install trace,  we can see installer was actually calling "installGPFS -a -f" to install gpfs:

2019-05-01-21:58:54 3840448256                          -DATA- 10 InstallProcess::setCommand - , STRING = /root/db2/server_dec/db2/linuxamd64/gpfs/installGPFS -a -f
2019-05-01-21:58:54 3840448256                          EXIT InstallProcess::setCommand - , INT = 0  }
2019-05-01-21:58:54 3840448256                        -DATA- 10 GPFSFileset::update - , STRING = /root/db2/server_dec/db2/linuxamd64/gpfs/installGPFS -a -f

So, cd to /root/db2/server_dec/db2/linuxamd64/gpfs/,  installGPFS is actually a shell script, it has debug mode can be turned on by option "-d"

# USAGE: installGPFS -i | -g | -u [-h | -?] [-d] [-l logFile]
#          -h|-?       display the usage information.
#          -d          turn debug mode on.
#          -i          Install GPFS and update to fixpack level
#          -g          Upgrade installed GPFS base version and update to fixpack level
#          -u          Update to fixpack level
#          -l logFIle  Specifies the full path name to an output log file
#          -f          force install

So,  ran installGPFS  with debug mode:

$  ./installGPFS -a -f -d  > /tmp/gpfs.debug.out 2>&1

Checked /tmp/gpfs.debug.out,  saw this:

<skipped>

+ rpm -i gpfs.ext-4.2.3-0.x86_64.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
    m4 is needed by gpfs.ext-4.2.3-0.x86_64

<skipped>

So, gpfs installation failed due to missing dependency of m4.   Install it:

$ yum install -y m4

<skipped>

Before retry the db2_install,  uninstall the gpfs at first:

$ ./ uninstallGPFS

<skipped>

Then db2_install finally completed without any problem.