Creating custom installation repositories with IBM Packaging Utility

WebSphere® Application Server Liberty uses IBM® Installation Manager for installation and lifecycle management. Installation Manager accesses source repositories that contain the content for a software product installation. Repositories are available on product media, in IBM-hosted web-based repositories, and from Passport Advantage®. IBM Packaging Utility can help you create and customize enterprise repositories that contain the correct combination of products and maintenance levels needed for all aspects of your business.

About this task

You use Installation Manager to connect to an Installation Manager repository (or set of repositories) to find products and service updates that are available to you for installation. An Installation Manager repository is simply a tree-structured file folder that includes product payload and metadata. You can install the software products that you need directly from an IBM web-based service repository or download and unpack compressed files from Passport Advantage and install the products from the resulting unpacked file folders. The result of unpacking the files is also considered to be an Installation Manager repository. Like any Installation Manager repository, these unpacked files can be hosted on an internal HTTP server, FTP server, or network mount in order to make them available to the organization.

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 product documentation.

Procedure

Use Packaging Utility to create custom or "enterprise" Installation Manager repositories that contain specific products and maintenance levels that fit the needs of your business.

As an administrator, you can control the content of your enterprise repository, which then can serve as the central repository to which your organization connects in order to perform product installations and updates.

Packaging Utility essentially copies from a set of source Installation Manager repositories to a target repository and eliminates duplicate artifacts, helping to keep the repository size as small as possible. You can also delete (or "prune") a repository, removing maintenance levels or products that are not needed.

You can download the latest version of Packaging Utility from the IBM Support Portal.

Like Installation Manager, Packaging Utility has GUI and command-line interfaces. You must specify repository URLs for Installation Manager repositories that contain the offerings that you wish to copy.

For a list of repository URLs, see Online product repositories for Liberty offerings. Installation Manager repository URLs follow this pattern: 
http://www.ibm.com/software/repositorymanager/offering_name
Note: This location does not contain a web page that you can access using a web browser.

The target repository that you create with Packaging Utility will always support a full installation; therefore, you cannot use Packaging Utility to create a repository that is only a copy of a fix pack. You can, however, create a repository that contains the minimum content to support direct installation to a fix-pack level. Consider the following two examples that use the Packaging Utility command-line interface (PUCL.exe) that is available in the Packaging Utility installation folder.

  • Example 1
    Note: Note that you must read the license agreement that you can find with the product files and then signify your acceptance of the license agreement by specifying -acceptLicense in the command as shown in the following example.
    PUCL copy com.ibm.websphere.liberty.CORE.ND 
-repositories 
  http://www.ibm.com/software/repositorymanager/com.ibm.websphere.liberty.CORE.ND 
-target D:\LIB_CORE_version
-prompt 
-showProgress
-acceptLicense

    Because no version number is specified with the offering name, this command creates a new repository that supports direct installation to the latest fix-pack level for WebSphere Application Server Liberty.

  • Example 2
    PUCL copy com.ibm.websphere.liberty.CORE.ND_16.0.2.20160503_0200 
-repositories 
  http://www.ibm.com/software/repositorymanager/com.ibm.websphere.liberty.CORE.ND 
-target D:\LIB_CORE 
-prompt 
-showProgress
-acceptLicense

PUCL copy com.ibm.websphere.liberty.CORE.ND_16.0.3.20160829_1838 
-repositories 
  http://www.ibm.com/software/repositorymanager/com.ibm.websphere.liberty.CORE.ND 
-target D:\LIB_CORE 
-prompt 
-showProgress
-acceptLicense

    The first command creates a target repository with WebSphere Application Server Liberty 16.0.0.2. The second command adds the 16.0.0.3 fix pack to the same repository. You can now use this resulting repository to install fix pack 16.0.0.2, install fix pack 16.0.0.3, or update from 16.0.0.2 to 16.0.0.3.

Tip: With some offerings, such as IBM SDK Java™ Technology Edition, you can use Packaging Utility with the -platform option (sometimes called "platform slicing") to create a repository that is scoped to the platforms and architectures that are used by your organization. This feature is available in command-line mode by specifying the -platform option with the os and arch arguments as shown in the following example:
PUCL copy com.ibm.java.jdk.v8 
-repositories http://www.ibm.com/software/repositorymanager/com.ibm.java.jdk.v8 
-platform os=linux,arch=ppc64
-target D:\LIB_CORE
-prompt
-showProgress
-acceptLicense</p>
Your repository can be scoped for platforms other than the one on which it is created or stored. For example, you can run Packaging Utility on a Windows system to create a repository with the content needed to install on a Linux® system. During installation on Linux, you point Installation Manager to your custom repository.
The following table lists valid combinations for creating a local IBM SDK Java Technology Edition offering repository that is sliced by operating system and architecture.
Table 1. Valid combinations for creating a local IBM SDK Java Technology Edition offering repository using the Packaging Utility
Platform Options Resulting Repository
Windows os=win32,arch=x86 32-bit repository for 32-bit Windows OS and 64-bit Windows
os=win32.arch=x86_64 64-bit repository for 64-bit Windows
Linux Intel os=linux,arch=x86 32-bit repository for 32-bit Linux Intel and 64-bit Linux Intel
os=linux.arch=x86_64 64-bit repository for 64-bit Linux Intel
Linux Power® os=linux,arch=ppc 32-bit repository for 32-bit Linux Power and 64-bit Linux Power
os=linux.arch=ppc64 64-bit repository for 64-bit Linux Power
zLinux os=linux,arch=s390 32-bit repository for 32-bit zLinux and 64-bit zLinux
os=linux.arch=s390x 64-bit repository for 64-bit zLinux
AIX® os=aix,arch=ppc 32-bit repository for 32-bit AIX and 64-bit AIX
os=aix.arch=ppc64 64-bit repository for 64-bit AIX
Solaris Sparc os=solaris,arch=sparc 32-bit repository for 32-bit Solaris Sparc and 64-bit Solaris Sparc
os=solaris,arch=sparc64 64-bit repository for 64-bit Solaris Sparc
Solaris Intel os=solaris,arch=x86_64 64-bit repository for 64-bit Solaris Intel
HP-UX Itanium os=hpux,arch=ia64 64-bit repository for 64-bit HP-UX Itanium
z/OS® os=zos,arch=s390x 64-bit repository for z/OS

For more information on platform slicing, see the IBM Packaging Utility product documentation.