WebSphere from the ground up - part two

A week or so ago I posted on how to do an 'assume nothing' installation of WebSphere in order to run the OSGi Alpha Feature pack. Today the Open Beta of the OSGi Feature Pack was released and the requirements and installation process differ slightly from those required by the Alpha.

The basic steps are pretty much the same, differences are shown in this color:

1. Install the free-for-developers WebSphere Application Server Version 7
2. Install the 7.0.0.7 Fix pack and an update to the Java SDK for WAS
   
3. Install the Open Beta OSGi Feature pack using the IBM Installation Manager.

Following the instructions for the Alpha works up to half way through step 2. But here, as well as downloading the 7.0.0.7 Fix pack you will need to download an SDK update from here. The file will be called something like 7.0.0-WS-WASSDK-LinuxX32-FP0000007.pak. Put this file in the same directory as you put the 7.0.0.7 Fix pack, then run the UpdateInstaller as directed in the previous post to install both fixes.

To install the Open Beta you will need to start with this link . Scroll down till you find these two links:


The first link (Web install...) is the one you want. You will download a preconfigured version on the installation manager which already has links to the repositories containing the Beta download.

Click on the Web install link and follow through the next screens till you find an option to download the IBM installation manager. It is about 86MB and will be called something like iim.linux.x86_20100128.zip. Download it and unzip it in a temporary directory, then run the install script in that directory.

The installation manager will start up and ask if you want to install Version 1.3.4 of the installation manager. Continue with the installation of V1.3.4 through to the end when you will be asked if you want to restart, accept this option. When the installation manager restarts you will be prompted for an ID and password, these will be the same ones as you would have used to download WAS in the first place.

The next two steps are to 'Import' your existing WAS installation into the installation manager. After that you will be able 'Install' the Beta code from a remote repository which has already been configured in the Installation Manager.

At the end if the Beta installation the profile management tool will be launched, you will need to augment your profile with the OSGi feature pack. Again, the screens are easy to follow.

This is a fairly high level view of the instructions, there are excellent and very detailed steps available from here in the getting started guide.