Installing and uninstalling 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 WebSphere® Application Server.

Before you begin

Installation Manager is a single installation program that can use remote or local software flat-file repositories to install, modify, or update new WebSphere Application Server 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.

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. You 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 documentation.

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.

Installing Installation Manager:

When the installation kit is available on your 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, you must 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.

Accessing 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.

Installing the product:

After you 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, you provide 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.

Working with installed products:

You can use Installation Manager commands to list installed products and product levels. You can also obtain this information for installed copies of WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5 products by issuing the versionInfo command from the product file system. You 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.

Using IBM Packaging Utility:

IBM 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 Installation Manager documentation.

Packaging Utility Version 1.5.2 introduced the capability to create "platform-scoped" repositories. The -platform option of the Packaging Utility copy command allows you to further customize and reduce the size of your repository by maintaining content for only those platforms that your organization uses. If you specify unsupported operating-system and architecture combinations for WebSphere Application Server offerings when you use the -platform option of the Packaging Utility copy command, however, unusable local repositories might be created. The following table lists valid combinations for creating a local WebSphere Application Server offering repository that is sliced by operating system and architecture.

Table 1. Valid combinations for creating a local WebSphere Application Server offering repository using the Packaging Utility copy command
Platform	Options	Resulting Repository
Windows	os=win32,arch=x86 os=win32	Windows 32 bit and 64 bit
Linux Intel	os=linux,arch=x86	Linux Intel 32 bit and 64 bit
Linux Power®	os=linux,arch=ppc	Linux Power 32 bit and 64 bit
zLinux	os=linux,arch=s390	zLinux 32 bit and 64 bit
AIX®	os=aix	AIX 32 bit and 64 bit
Solaris Sparc	os=solaris,arch=sparc	Solaris Sparc 32 bit and 64 bit
Solaris Intel	os=solaris,arch=x86	Solaris Intel 64 bit
HP-UX Itanium	os=hpux	HP-UX Itanium 64 bit
IBM i	os=os400	IBM i
z/OS®	os=zos	z/OS

Restriction: When using the Packaging Utility command-line interface (PUCL.exe) that is available in the Packaging Utility installation folder, you can only specify the -platform parameter once.

Restrictions:

If you have an earlier Alpha or a Beta version of WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5 and Installation Manager installed, uninstall them before installing this version.
If a non-administrator installs WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5 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, WebSphere Application Server 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. WebSphere Application Server requires write access in the app_server_root directory in order to function correctly.
To resolve this issue, perform one of the following actions:
- Install WebSphere Application Server into a directory other than Program Files or Program Files (x86).
  For example:
```
C:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer
```
- Disable UAC.
When you install a product using Installation Manager with local repositories, the installation takes a significantly longer amount of time if you use a compressed repository file directly without extracting it.
Before you install a product using local repositories, extract the compressed repository file to a location on your local system before using Installation Manager to access it.
Installation Manager console mode, which is included in Installation Manager Version 1.4.3 and later, does not work with WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5 offerings on systems other than z/OS.
The Installation Manager web interface, which is included in Installation Manager Version 1.8.0 and later, does not work with WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5 offerings.
You can use 64-bit Installation Manager Version 1.6 for the following installations only:
- WebSphere Application Server Version 8.5.0.1 and later
Using 64-bit Installation Manager Version 1.6 for anything else can result in issues with installation and deployment.
You can use 64-bit Installation Manager Version 1.6.2 or later to install this offering on Windows systems.
Installation on the Inspur K-UX operating system is supported in silent mode only. You must have IBM Installation Manager Version 1.7.3.1 to install the product on the Inspur K-UX operating system.
To install the product on Linux® on POWER® Little Endian (LE), you must use Installation Manager Version 1.8.0 or later.

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

Tip: Although almost all of the instructions in this section of the documentation will work with earlier versions of IBM Installation Manager, the information here is optimized for users who have installed or upgraded to Installation Manager Version 1.6 or later.

Important: Installation Manager can install any fix-pack level of the product directly without installing the interim fix packs; in fact, Installation Manager installs the latest level by default. For example, you can skip fix-pack levels and go from Version 8.5.0.1 directly to Version 8.5.0.5. Keep in mind, however, that later you can not roll back to any level that was skipped. If you directly install to Version 8.5.0.5, for example, you cannot roll back to Version 8.5.0.4. If you skip from Version 8.5.0.1 to Version 8.5.0.5, you can only roll back to Version 8.5.0.1. You should plan your installations accordingly.

About this task

Prepare your system as described in Installing Installation Manager and preparing to install the product.

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

Procedure

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 WebSphere Application Server 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 WebSphere Application Server plug-ins.

Notes on troubleshooting:

When you attempt to launch Installation Manager from a DVD that was mounted using the CD-ROM file system (CDFS) on an HP-UX operating system, it might fail to launch and point to a log file that contains an exceptions similar to one of the following:
```
java.util.zip.ZipException: Exception in opening zip file:
```
```
org.osgi.framework.BundleException: Exception in 
org.eclipse.update.internal.configurator.ConfigurationActivator.start() 
or bundle org.eclipse.update.configurator.
```
This issue might be caused by Installation Manager reaching the limit of number of descriptors that can be opened on a CDFS-mounted device. This upper limit is determined by the value for the tunable kernel parameter ncdnode, which specifies the maximum number of CDFS nodes that can be in memory at any given time. To resolve the problem, change the ncdnode system kernel setting to 250. If the problem persists, increase the setting.
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 your 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 you need to 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.
For more information on using Installation Manager, read the IBM Installation Manager documentation.
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 you 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.