WAS v8.5 > Administer applications and their environment > Use the administrative clients

Use command-line tools

WAS v8.5 provides many tools that we can call from a command line.

There are several command-line tools used to start, stop, and monitor application server processes and nodes. These tools only work on local servers and nodes. They cannot operate on a remote server or node. To administer a remote server, we can use the wsadmin scripting program connected to the deployment manager for the cell in which the target server or node is configured.

The following information is common for each command:

Running command line tools on the Microsoft Windows Vista or later Microsoft operating system: On the Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7 operating systems, we can install WAS as either Administrator or non-Administrator. When it is installed as Administrator, certain operations (such as those involving Windows Services) require Administrator privileges. To ensure that WAS command-line tools have sufficient privileges, run them with elevated administrator authority on systems that have the Windows User Account Control (UAC) Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode policy enabled. When you run these command-line tools from a Command Prompt, run them from a Command Prompt window that is launched by performing the following actions:

Examples of these tools are the startServer command, stopServer command, firststeps command, and the Profile Management Tool. If we are using a Windows Server Core installation of Windows Server 2008, any WAS commands that require a graphical interface are not supported since a Windows Server Core system does not have a graphical user interface. Therefore, commands such as launchpad.exe or ifgui.bat are not supported on that type of Windows Server 2008 installation.

Restriction: These command-line tools do not apply to the Liberty profile. See Administer the Liberty profile instead.

Use the following general steps to run a command:

  1. Open a system command prompt.

  2. Determine whether to run the script from the profile or application server root directory.

    Most command-line tools function relative to a particular profile. To determine if a command requires the -profileName parameter, refer to the documentation for that specific command. If you run a command from the app_server_root/bin directory and do not specify the -profileName parameter, the default profile for the product sets profile-specific variables. To specify a different profile, use one of the following options:

    • cd app_server_root/bin directory and run the following command, specifying the profile of interest as the value for the profileName parameter:

        startServer server1 -profileName AppServerProfile

    • When a profile is created, the application server creates a proxy script in the profile_root/bin directory for each script in the app_server_root/bin directory that is applicable to the type of profile created. When a proxy script is invoked, the profile-specific variables for the script are set based on the profile from which the script is invoked. To run the command for a specific profile, navigate to the profile_root/bin directory for the profile of interest to run the command.

  3. Run the command of interest.


Results

The command runs the requested function and displays the results on the screen.

Refer to the command log file for additional information. When we use the -trace option for the command, the additional trace data is captured in the command log file. The directory location for the log files is under the default system log root directory, except for commands related to a specific server instance, in which case the log directory for that server is used. We can override the default location for the command log file using the -logfile option for the command.

For more information about using profiles, including how to obtain a list of profiles, see the information about manageprofiles.sh topic.


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