Install IBM HTTP Server silently

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A silent installation uses the installation wizard to install the product in silent mode, without the graphical user interface. Instead of displaying a wizard interface, the silent installation enables the installation program to read all of our responses from a file that we provide.

 

Before we begin

Installing IBM HTTP Server using silent installation refers to using a file to supply installation options without user interaction. To configure the installation, change the options in the response file before we issue the installation command. Silent installation mode does not accept interactive installation options. To specify non-default options during a silent installation, we must use the response file. To install silently, we must accept the license agreement in the agreement option.

Verify that the required disk space is available.

See Preparing the operating system for product installation for more information. Do not use the default response file that is shipped on the product disc to install the product, because the value of the silentInstallLicenseAcceptance bean is "false". Copy the file to change the value to "true".

 

Procedure

1. Log on as root.

2. Log on as a member of the administrator group. Considerations for Windows operating systems follow:

   • Some steps for installing silently require the administrator group user to have the following advanced user rights:

     • Act as part of the operating system

     • Log on as a service

   • The installation wizard grants our Windows user ID the advanced user rights, if the user ID belongs to the administrator group. The silent installation does not grant these rights. If we create a new user ID on a Windows platform to perform the silent installation, we must restart the system to activate the proper authorizations for the user ID, before we can perform a successful silent installation.

   • When installing IBM HTTP Server as a Windows service, do not use a user ID that contains spaces. A user ID with spaces cannot be validated. Such a user ID is not allowed to continue the installation. To work around this problem, install with the service configured to run as LocalSystem, and then modify the user ID after install.

3. Copy the responsefile.txt file to our disk drive and rename it, for example myoptionsfile.txt. We can now customize it. Accept the IBM HTTP Server license by setting -W silentInstallLicenseAcceptance.value="true" in our response file.

4. Issue the proper command to use our custom response file. For example, issue one of the following commands:

   • mnt_cdrom/IHS/install -options myoptionsfile.txt -silent

   • "CD-ROM drive:\IHS\install" -options "myoptionsfile.txt" -silent

   To silently install IBM HTTP Server, the X Windows software must be installed on the system.

   We can find the sample options response file in the IBM HTTP Server directory on the product CD.

 

Results

The installation of the IBM HTTP Server product is successful with no error messages.

The IBM HTTP Server installation may hang during the silent install of GSKit. The following message displays in the installConfig.log file:

<message>error: failed to stat /mnt/xxx: Stale NFS file handle</message>

This problem might occur if the system has an unresponsive Network File System (NFS) mount, then the Linux rpm command, which is used to install the GSKit, attempts to query the unresponsive file system mount until it times out. To work around this problem, unmount the stale NFS mount, and then mount it again.