Compressed File Installation for IBM Support Assistant 5.0 Team Server

Prerequisites

If you have not yet done so, download the IBM® Support Assistant Team Server 5.0 Compressed File package with the embedded WebSphere® Application Server Liberty Runtime Server,

**Note: Since the compressed file install does not leverage IBM Installation Manager for the initial install, then the new IBM Support Assistant Tools Administration view cannot be used to install, update and uninstall tools. If you wish to have the tool management capabilities through the IBM Support Assistant UI, you will need to install IBM Support Assistant using IBM Installation Manager. See this Technote for more information.

Installation

The steps identified here assume that you have downloaded the appropriate installation package for the supported platform the application is being installed on. If your server instance is running under a different id, please make appropriate changes to the directory locations in the steps below.

1. Extract the contents to the desired directory. Install path example: C:\IBM for Windows or /opt/ibm for Linux/AIX.
   • Note that the product does not support installation into a directory path that contains '.' characters, space characters or non-ASCII characters.
   • When extracting the all-in-one tar.gz on AIX, you must use GNU `tar' to extract the contents due to limitations in the AIX 'tar' command's ability to handle long path names in the tar.gz file. (GNU `tar' for AIX can be downloaded from ftp.software.ibm.com. Select the latest version available under: /aix/freeSoftware/aixtoolbox/RPMS/ppc/tar/)
   • On Windows systems the IBM Support Assistant application must be installed on the C: drive.




 
2. The files that IBM Support Assistant operates upon (logs, etc.) are stored by default in the subdirectory <install.root>/isa/cases (for example C:\IBM\ISA5\isa\cases, if you installed IBM Support Assistant at C:\IBM\ISA5). No action is needed if you are satisfied with this default location. To select a different location, edit the file 'isa.properties' that is located in the top-level installation directory. In that file, un-comment the property named 'filestore.root' value and specify a different valid directory path. The files will then be stored in a folder structure named "/isa/cases" underneath the main directory that you specified.

   For example: If "/isa/cases" is located in "/tmp/files/isa/cases" open the isa.properties file with a text editor and uncomment and set the 'filestore.root'' property as shown below.

   • Note that the 'filestore.root' property in isa.properties is case-sensitive and requires the exact path to work properly. (For example: filestore.root=/IBM/ISA5 versus filestore.root=/ibm/isa5). Additionally, if you are configuring isa.properties on a Windows installation, all backslashes in a file path must use double-backslashes ('\\') or single forward slashes ('/').
     • Linux/AIX: filestore.root=/tmp/files/isa
       Windows: filestore.root=/tmp/files/isa or filestore.root=\\tmp\\files\\isa

First steps

Once IBM Support Assistant 5.0 Team Server is installed, you are ready to start the application. Directions for starting and stopping IBM Support Assistant, along with other helpful information can be found in the ReleaseNotes.txt file at the root of the installation directory or click here to view the on-line version.

Migrating case data from earlier releases

Users who have previously installed the IBM Support Assistant 5.0 Tech Preview, Beta 1, Beta 2 or Beta 3, may wish to copy their existing cases to the <install_location>/ISA5/isa/cases folder.

• • Note that if you copy over all the cases you will overwrite the example case '0000' provided in the IBM Support Assistant 5.0 GA release for education and training purposes. If the example case is deleted, overwritten or modified and you would like to restore it, you can simply uncompress the 0000_example_case.zip file found in the <ISA_install>/isa/cases directory. You may need to refresh your browser to pick up the 0000 example case from the file system.

System Requirements

Operating System	Software	Hardware
AIX	AIX Version 7.1 (ppc-64) Package dependencies: X11 is required to generate images by some problem determination tools. *	Disk: Minimal 1.5 GB (additional space may be required for logs and case artifacts) ** Memory: Minimum 512MB physical memory (1GB or more recommended, depending on artifacts analyzed by diagnostic tools) ***
Linux	Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Version 6 Server with Update 5 (x86-64) Package dependencies: X11 is required to generate images by some problem determination tools. *	Disk: Minimal 1.5 GB (additional space may be required for logs and case artifacts) ** Memory: Minimum 512MB physical memory (1GB or more recommended, depending on artifacts analyzed by diagnostic tools) ***
Windows	Windows 2008 Server R2 with SP1 Windows 2008 Server R2 x64 with SP1 Windows 7 with SP1 (x86-32 and x86-64)	Disk: Minimal 1.5GB (additional space may be required for logs and case artifacts) ** Memory: Minimum 512MB physical memory (1GB or more recommended, depending on artifacts analyzed by diagnostic tools) ***

* In a headless configuration, an X11 virtual frame buffer can be used. The relevant RedHat RPM is xorg-x11-server-Xvfb (see the ReleaseNotes.txt file in the IBM Support Assistant 5 install directory for more information)

** Diagnostic files added to IBM Support Assistant 5 will require additional disk space. This may be significant if large files (such as dump files) will be managed by IBM Support Assistant and should be considered during initial planning

*** Analysis of large files (such as dump files) can require a significant amount of memory depending on the size of the file

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