Installing and uninstalling Liberty on distributed operating systems

IBM® Installation Manager is a common installer for many IBM software products. You can use Installation Manager to install and manage the product lifecycle of WebSphere® Application Server Liberty Network Deployment.

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 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.

Restrictions:

If you have an earlier alpha or beta version of WebSphere Application Server Liberty Network Deployment installed, uninstall it before installing this version.
If a non-administrator installs WebSphere Application Server Liberty Network Deployment 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 Liberty Network Deployment 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.
To resolve this issue, perform one of the following actions:
- Install the offering into a directory other than Program Files or Program Files (x86).
  For example:
```
C:\IBM\WebSphere\Liberty
```
- Disable UAC.
When you install an offering 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 an offering using local repositories, extract the compressed repository file to a location on your local system before using Installation Manager to access it.

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 product 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 1.6.2 or later.

Tip: Different users can use Liberty by using two different methods.

Install a new Liberty instance for each user. Each Liberty install is a new user profile.
Create multiple servers with different users. Each user should be part of a group that has access to the wlpdirectory and java_home used.

If you use option two, run the command to create the server as the user who will run the server and create the server in the user's home directory. If you are using Linux®, the command is similar to su user1 export WLP_USER_DIR=/home/user1 server create Server1.

Setting WLP_USER_DIR in the user's shell profile makes it easy to ensure that all Liberty commands act on the correct user directory.

Important: Installation Manager can install any fix-pack level of the offering directly without installing the intermediate fix packs; in fact, Installation Manager installs the latest level by default. For example, you can skip fix-pack levels and go from Version 8.5.5.1 directly to Version 8.5.5.5. Keep in mind, however, that later you can not roll back to any level that was skipped. If you directly install to Version 8.5.5.5, for example, you cannot roll back to Version 8.5.5.4. If you skip from Version 8.5.5.1 to Version 8.5.5.5, you can only roll back to Version 8.5.5.1. You should plan your installations accordingly.

About this task

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

Perform one of these procedures to install or uninstall WebSphere Application Server Liberty Network Deployment 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.

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 upper 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 bypass disk-space checking, add cic.override.disk.space=true to the config.ini file in IM_install_root/eclipse/configuration and restart Installation Manager.
- 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 product 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 offering, take the following steps:
- Make a backup copy of your current installation directory in case IBM support needs to review it later.
- Use Installation Manager to uninstall everything that you have installed under the installation location (package group). You might run into errors, but they can be safely ignored.
- Delete everything that remains in the installation directory.
- Use Installation Manager to reinstall the offering to the same location or to a new one.