title: Websphere Application Server 6.1 for developers console install on RHEL 5 failing
body: <p>Does anyone know how to get the Websphere Application Server for developers (v6.1) installed via the console? </p>
  
  <p>I'm setting up a build server and the server I have is a RHEL 5.6 server with no Graphical console access (only ssh to a tty console).</p>
  
  <p>One of the projects I need to build on the server relies on WAS 6.1 (fix 23, at least), and as the build runs various WAS tools to generate WSDLs, EJBs, etc. I need to have WebSphere installed. So, I downloaded the developers edition, extracted the tar.gz to a directory and tried to install from there.</p>
  
  <p>I have read the various documents about the silent install and have done as suggested: created a responsefile (called <code>responsefile.txt</code>) with the following</p>
  
  <pre><code>-OPT silentInstallLicenseAcceptance="true"
  -OPT allowNonRootSilentInstall="true"
  -OPT installType="installNew"
  -OPT installLocation="/home/me/apps/was/v6.1"
  
  #This is only a developer install for builds, so no security, features, or profiles!
  -OPT PROF_enableAdminSecurity="false"
  -OPT feature="noFeature"
  -OPT createProfile="false"
  -OPT profileType="none"
  -OPT PROF_isDeveloperServer="true"
  
  #Logging settings for the install
  -OPT traceFormat=text
  -OPT traceLevel=CONFIG
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I run the <code>WAS/install -silent -options "${PWD}/WAS/responsefile.txt</code>, the script seems to run, then returns to the command line after 5 seconds or so. Similarly, <code>WAS/install -console -options...</code> does the same.</p>
  
  <p>I looked through the install script and added logging to show the various vars in use in the script (to see if there were any unexpected values, nope). The setup.jar <em>is</em> in the correct directory, and <code>JAVAHOME</code>is from the JDK supplied by the WAS installer (<code>${PWD}/JDK/jre.pak/repository/package.java.jre/java/jre</code>).</p>
  
  <p>So, I then ran the java command manually:</p>
  
  <pre><code>export JAVAHOME=${PWD}/JDK/jre.pak/repository/package.java.jre/java/jre
  ${JAVAHOME}/bin/java \
     -cp ${PWD}/WAS/setup.jar \
     -Xms265m -Xmx512m \
     run
     -silent \
     -options "${PWD}/WAS/responsefile.txt"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This time, various settings were output to the console, but it still returned after about 5 seconds without installing the software (no <code>/home/me/apps/was</code> created). Output was;</p>
  
  <pre><code>I       Process Type: install
  I       Install Type: nonOS400
  I       Install Mode: silentMode
  I       #Received OPT Properties
  #Fri Jul 22 07:21:33 EDT 2011
  traceLevel=CONFIG
  traceFormat=text
  PROF_hostName=dev-ci-svr
  silentInstallLicenseAcceptance=true
  allowNonRootSilentInstall=true
  profileType=none
  installLocation=/home/me/apps/was/v6.1
  installType=installNew
  PROF_enableAdminSecurity=false
  feature=noFeature
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I also tried as <code>root</code>, with the same results.</p>
  
  <p>The documentation also mentions a <code>-console</code> option, but this only gives the following message</p>
  
  <pre><code>The wizard cannot continue because of the following error: Invalid command line option: console is not supported (1001) (403)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Has anyone succeeded in installing WebSphere from the Linux command line?</p>
  
  <p>[Edit]
  OK, seems to be installing now. It turns out there is an environment var you can set to see more output from the installer <code>is.debug</code> (needed to decompile <code>setup.jar</code> to see this).</p>
  
  <p>When I run with this defined, I can at least see the problems it's failing over.</p>
  
  <p>Right, in the <code>responsefile.txt</code> I needed to remove the <code>createProfile</code> option (clashes with <code>installType</code>), and disable the OS pre-requisite check by adding <code>-OPT disableOSPrereqChecking="true"</code>.</p>
  
  <p>After this it installed. Simples.</p>
  
  <p>[Rant] The setup JAR should at least tell you why it's failing without needing to resort to undocumented settings, or decompiling the JAR.</p>