Getting WebSphere Application 7 Installed on Ubuntu 9.04

Dad Jokes, Humour, it

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I needed to do some development and testing in IBM WebSphere Application Server 7.0, however I was unable to get the bugger installed in my development environment (on Mac OS X 1.6 … well it has only been out for a week ) VMWare Fusion had to come to the rescue.

Although IBM do not support Ubuntu 9.04 as a platform, I did mange to get it working eventually through the following steps:

  1. Install Ubuntu 9.0.4 as per normal; and let it update itself to include the most recent patches and updates.
  2. Add the Multiverse Repository through Add/Remove Programs.
  3. Install Sun’s latest JDK by following these steps (credit to Brian)
  4. sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk sun-java6-plugin
    update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun

  5. Add the following to the top of the list in /etc/jvm (again, credit to Brian)
  6. /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

  7. Because Ubuntu uses dash as its default shell instead of bash, this breaks WAS’ installation routine when it comes to setting up the domain profile. (It hangs for ages at 31% when executing the importConfigArchive script, and the fails silently, which is nice.) To fix this you need to relink back to bash (according to Graham, this actually fixes a number of third-party software installation issues):
  8. sudo -i
    cd /bin
    unlink sh
    ln -s /bin/bash sh

  9. Install the Linux build of IBM WebSphere Application Server 7.0 as normal via sudo ./launchpad.sh to the default /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer directory.
  10. Because doing everything as root is not secure or cool – even for a development environment – sudo chown -hR the /opt/IBM directory to a dedicated appserver user.
  11. Make sure everything works by logging into the admin console via the First Steps , and finally do a sudo update-rc.d -f gdm remove to stop the automatic GUI when you reboot the machine/vmware image.

Job’s a good’un.

10 replies

  1. Thanks. This saved me from a very quiet day of getting nothing done 😉

  2. Thanks. This saved me from a very quiet day of getting nothing done 😉

  3. Thank you so much, You saved me so much pain because of the /bin/sh link

  4. Thank you so much, You saved me so much pain because of the /bin/sh link

  5. Thanks for pointing out the necessary dash->bash change needed for running on Ubuntu.  Would probably not have been able to get Websphere installed otherwise.

  6. Thanks for pointing out the necessary dash->bash change needed for running on Ubuntu.  Would probably not have been able to get Websphere installed otherwise.

  7. Thanks a lot, but can you explain more about step 7 please.

  8. Thanks a lot, but can you explain more about step 7 please.

  9. Thanks, can confirm that Step 5 resolved the issue for me.

  10. Thanks, can confirm that Step 5 resolved the issue for me.