Installing WebSphere Application Server 6.1 on Ubuntu

Posted on January 19th, 2007 by Rob Harrop in Spring.

Rob Harrop

Recently I've been doing some work with a client on WAS 6.1. Since we have a number of Spring users on WAS and I need to test the application, I decided it was time to get a copy of WAS running on one of my work laptops. I say 'one of' because I'm currently working on both my Mac (with OSX) and my ThinkPad (with Ubuntu) - more recently I've just been using the ThinkPad because I can have Oracle XE and WAS running without the need for a VM tool like Parallels. I still prefer the Mac, but to be honest there isn't much difference day-to-day - I just miss some of the more useful Mac tools like Spotlight, Quicksilver, TextMate and NewsFire.

Anyway, back to the main topic - installing WAS 6.1 on Ubuntu. I'm using Ubuntu Edgy and my first attempts at an install failed completely and I just couldn't figure out why. Thankfully a quick Google turned up this article. I was completely unaware that /bin/sh was linked to dash instead of bash - what on earth possessed them. I didn't really like the suggested solution of running the installer, letting it fail and then changing all the scripts in the installed directory. Instead, I just relinked /bin/sh with a quick sudo unlink /bin/sh followed by sudo ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh. After that, the installer ran like a dream and I was up and running with a WAS install in about 15 minutes.

Even on my ThinkPad with Oracle XE running at the same time, WAS runs pretty quickly. One of the nicest things about WAS is that the tools provided (admin console, command-line tools) are really robust. The Admin Console is noticeable for its performance - many other servers have consoles that are painfully slow.

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9 responses

  1. Carey says:

    Added on January 19th, 2007 at 6:02 pm

    I guess it worked, but it would have been safer to just run

    sudo ln -sf bash /bin/sh

    or

    sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash

    , neither of which would have left you with an unbootable system for a short time.

    The rationale for dash is described at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DashAsBinSh.

  2. Gunnar Wagenknecht says:

    Added on January 20th, 2007 at 5:04 am

    Interesting. I installed DB2 9.1 Express-C on a Ubuntu 6.06 VM last week and I noticed a subtle but breaking difference regarding the login shell.

    If I set /bin/bash as login shell for the DB2 user accounts the DB2 admin server doesn't start. But using /bin/sh as login shell it started fine.

  3. Mahes says:

    Added on March 1st, 2007 at 3:49 am

    We are migrating our project to WAS 6.1 from WAS3.x. The same code is working fine with was3.x but giving NotSerializableException with WAS6.x. I need some favour regading this Exception

    Regards,
    Mahes

  4. Emilio says:

    Added on May 18th, 2007 at 8:04 am

    [quote comment="13752"]We are migrating our project to WAS 6.1 from WAS3.x. The same code is working fine with was3.x but giving NotSerializableException with WAS6.x. I need some favour regading this Exception

    Regards,
    Mahes[/quote]

    I think this problem is related to your class implementation. WAS is a high available app server, so you must implement all your session classes as Serializable. Try to find every class which is bound to session (HTTP or Stateful SessionBeans) and implement it as serializable, this will solve the problem.

  5. Atchuth says:

    Added on October 3rd, 2007 at 11:07 pm

    I tried installing WAS 6.1 on my Ubuntu Fiesty 0S, but it says that the OS is not supported. Are you referring to the Community edition ?

    Thanks,
    Atchuth.

  6. rohit says:

    Added on November 2nd, 2007 at 2:47 am

    One doubt here ::

    From various sites i understand that minimum recomended Sys req for WAS ND 6.1 is AIX 5L 5.2 with Recommended Maintenance package 5200-07 (64-bit kernel support)OR AIX 5L 5.3 with Service Pack 5300-04-01 (64-bit kernel support).

    Now, is it ok to run WAS ND 6.1 on AIX 5L 5.3 5600 which is a higher version than recommended one..pls revert

  7. Mauro says:

    Added on April 9th, 2009 at 9:56 pm

    I test this on WAS 7 on Ubuntu 8.10 and works, additionally run:

    sudo aptitude install bc xauth alien

    Regards
    Mauro

  8. Archetype says:

    Added on May 11th, 2009 at 2:01 pm

    Thanks for this discovery. I also install WAS 7 on Ubuntu 9.04 64 bit and it works smooth as what I expect. I also have an installed DB2 Express and SVN server on my OS with 2GB of memory. It rocks. The catch is, I use Virtual Box. The purpose I used this approach because if in case will happen, I don't need to worry about fixing the problem. All I need is restore from the last install point. But fortunately, I did not find any error while doing my installation.

  9. Frédéric says:

    Added on June 30th, 2009 at 10:03 am

    I tried to install WAS 7 on Ubuntu 9.04 64 bits too, but it doesn't work even if I followed recommandations and tips listed above…

    The problem seems to be located during the ImportConfigArchive, taking almost 25 minutes to do… nothing !

    Here is the log content :
    (30 juin 2009 16:38:26), Process, com.ibm.ws.install.ni.ismp.installtoolkitbridge.ISMPInstallToolkitBridgeForNIFramework, wrn, Config action failed: 97SInstallInvokeWSProfile - /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/properties/version/nif/config/install/97SInstallInvokeWSProfile.ijc

    I've read that it can be a problem while "port validation" but I tried to deactivate it unsuccessfully (by commenting the appropriate line in file responsefile.express.txt).

    Does anyone has an idea ?

    Thanks all.

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