Installing and uninstalling Liberty on distributed operating systems

IBM® Installation Manager is a common installer for many IBM software products. You can use IBM Installation Manager Version 1.8.5 or later to install and manage the product lifecycle of WebSphere® Application Server Liberty.

Before you begin

Through version 19.0.0.8, the minimum acceptable version of IBM Installation Manager is 1.8.5.

As of version 19.0.0.9, the minimum acceptable version of IBM Installation Manager is 1.9.0.

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.

Important:

Java™ SE 17 is the recommended Java SDK because it provides the latest features and security updates. As an alternative to installing Java SE 17, you can install another supported Java SDK version. Liberty runs on any of the Java SE versions that are listed in the Java SE versions column of the Supported Java Releases table on the Open Liberty website.

The Liberty end of support date for Java SE 8 is October 2026, fix pack 26.0.0.10.
The Liberty end of support date for Java SE 11 is October 2026, fix pack 26.0.0.10.
The Liberty end of support date for Java SE 17 is October 2027, fix pack 27.0.0.10.
The Liberty end of support date for Java SE 21 is October 2029, fix pack 29.0.0.10.

Because Java SE 22 is not a Long-Term-Support (LTS) version of Java, Liberty will not support Java SE 22 after Java SE 23 is released.

For more information, see Removal notices.

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 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 product 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.

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 create an Installation Manager. An 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 creating an 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 the Installation Manager installation command from the appropriate user ID to create the Installation Manager.

Accessing product repositories: All software materials that will be installed with IBM Installation Manager are stored in 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.

Note: 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.

Installing the product: After you have created an Installation Manager and have access to all necessary product repositories, you can use Installation Manager 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 Liberty 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.

About this task

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

Install a new Liberty instance for each user. Each Liberty installation is a new user profile.
Create multiple servers with different users. Each user should be part of a group that has access to the wlp directory 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.

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 using Installation Manager.

Procedure

If you have a beta version of WebSphere Application Server Liberty installed, uninstall it before installing this version.
Installing Liberty on distributed operating systems by using the GUI
Installing Liberty on distributed operating systems using the command line
Installing Liberty on distributed operating systems using response files
Uninstalling Liberty from distributed operating systems using the GUI
Uninstalling Liberty from distributed operating systems using the command line
Uninstalling Liberty from distributed operating systems using response files

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.