installing websphere portal express

Question

I'm trying to install websphere portal express 6.1 on my windows xp machine. I am using the following download link:

https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/iwm/web/reg/download.do?source=ESD-PORTALEXPRESS&S_PKG=CR557ML&S_TACT=105AGX10&S_CMP=LP&lang=en_US&cp=UTF-8

Note that you will have to have an IBM user id to see the links, but signing up is free and I suspect many of you already have one.

I have downloaded every file on the page linked above. Websphere portal is made up of LOTS of parts including Websphere Application Server, The portal itself, an express version of db2. The installation never seems to get beyond the W-2 disk install, which is where it installs db2 express. The install fails with a pop up that simply says the install failed, check the log file. I did. The log file says that the db2 express install succeeded, but needs a reboot. The installer cannot do this apparently. Now, I am running the install from a user that is an admin on the local machine, but also belongs to the work domain I'm in. The installation does warn that there might be issues with doing this during the install, but it never says anything specific and I'm yet to find a detailed error on why the install failed.

I have verified that the portal's user id has a password that abides by our domain rules.

It might also be of note that I have a full version of db2 already installed on my machine but the install doesn't let seem to look for that, nor does it let me disable any of the installation components. I suppose I think this might it because the install process creates a db2user on the windows account. Since I've already got a full version installed, that user exists already.

If anyone has any thoughts at all as to why this install might be failing, I would love to hear about it. Thanks!

• Jason

Answer 1

Found a solution:

Found a solution here: http://www.codeverge.net/item.aspx?item=65569

The specific solution was across between the following post:

If you have installed/uninstalled several times, it might be helpful to clean things up before installing again. Please: 1) uninstall DB2 Express via Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs 2) uninstall Portal and WAS by using \PortalServer\uninstall\uninstall.bat 3) after uninstalling Portal i) delete all files in install Directory (of Portal) ii) delete files in Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temp iii) delete files in Documents and Settings\Administrator that begin with a 'dot' iv) delete vpd.properties file in C:\Windows v) delete WPDB2INS folder and files included in it; should be C:\WPDB2INS vi) Using user manager, remove the DB2INS user that was created by the install 4) Reboot machine Try a new install after this. Make sure your cell/node/host names only include alphanumeric characters (the default cell/node name is your machine name and if it includes '-', ' ', or other non alphanumeric characters, this can be a problem. Also, ensure the account installing Portal Express has administration rights on the installation machine. Hope this helps. --travis

and a modification I made to the trail files in the setup directory. I modified the installresponse.txt file and put passwords in the following sections:

• WEBSPHERE APPLICATION SERVER ADMINISTRATIVE USER AND PASSWORD
• WEBSPHERE PORTAL ADMINISTRATIVE USER AND PASSWORD
• DB2 USER AND PASSWORD (NON-ISERIES)

I think the issue I was having is the password of the accounts being created on my windows xp machine were being assigned passwords that did not meet our minimum requirements.

I can't say for certain which one fixed it; however, I followed the steps presented in the post and then modified the aforementioned file and the install is chugging along nicely (albeit slowly).

Answer 2

It also worked for me, but I didn't delete the file C:\Windows\vpd.properties Instead, I only deleted the lines that referred to WebSphere Portal.

In that file there were other lines referring to the "Java Web Services Developer Pack" (jwsdp) that had nothing to do with WebSphere.