IBM Support

IBM Installation Manager and IBM Packaging Utility GUI crashes while advancing through wizard screens on recent updates of RHEL 6

Troubleshooting


Problem

The IBM Installation Manager and IBM Packaging Utility GUI crashes on RHEL 6 updates 5 and 6 during the installation of a product and while advancing through the wizard screens.

Symptom

The GUI crashes and a JVM termination window pops up with the following text:


JVM terminated. Exit code=1

/opt/IBM/InstallationManager/eclipse/jre_7.0.0.sr6_20131213_1238/

jre/bin/java

-Xms40m

-Xmx512m

Cause

An Eclipse defect, tracked here https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=441705, causes the crash.
According to the Eclipse bug description, the crash occurs only on Linux systems where the GTK version is "2.24" or higher and the "cairo" library's version is lower then "1.9.4".

To verify that this is indeed the cause for the crash, execute:


$ rpm -q gtk2

Example output:


gtk2-2.24.23-6.el6.s390x

gtk2-2.24.23-6.el6.s390


$ rpm -q cairo

Example output:


cairo-1.8.8-3.1.el6.s390x

cairo-1.8.8-3.1.el6.s390

Other things to looks for:

1.) Run the Installation Manager from command line and after it crashes look for this line in the output:

java: cairo-misc.c:380: _cairo_operator_bounded_by_source: Assertion `NOT_REACHED' failed.

2.) After the crash, the JVM produces a "javacore.<xxxxxxx,xxxx,xxxx,xxxx.txt" dump file. Searching this file for "cairo", you should see a stack trace looking like this:

1XMTHDINFO Thread Details

NULL


3XMTHREADINFO "main" J9VMThread:0x0000000040DAE100, j9thread_t:0x00007F39E402DCE0, java/lang/Thread:0x0000000000E2B6B0, state:R, prio=6
3XMJAVALTHREAD (java/lang/Thread getId:0x1, isDaemon:false)
3XMTHREADINFO1 (native thread ID:0x2F24, native priority:0x6, native policy:UNKNOWN)
3XMTHREADINFO2 (native stack address range from:0x00007F39E9733000, to:0x00007F39EA134000, size:0xA01000)
3XMCPUTIME CPU usage total: 3.763300160 secs
3XMHEAPALLOC Heap bytes allocated since last GC cycle=492088 (0x78238)
3XMTHREADINFO3 Java callstack:
4XESTACKTRACE at org/eclipse/swt/internal/cairo/Cairo._cairo_fill(Native Method)
4XESTACKTRACE at org/eclipse/swt/internal/cairo/Cairo.cairo_fill(Cairo.java:248)
4XESTACKTRACE at org/eclipse/swt/widgets/Caret.drawCaret(Caret.java:129)
4XESTACKTRACE at org/eclipse/swt/widgets/Caret.showCaret(Caret.java:544)
4XESTACKTRACE at org/eclipse/swt/widgets/Caret.setFocus(Caret.java:390)
4XESTACKTRACE at org/eclipse/swt/widgets/Canvas.gtk_focus_in_event(Canvas.java:174
...

Resolving The Problem

This issue is fixed in IBM Installation Manager 1.8.2.

If, for some reason, using IBM Installation Manager 1.8.2 is not option, it is possible to workaround the issue by upgrading the "cairo" library.

Download a version of the cairo library that is at least "1.9.4"

x86 64-bit example: ftp://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/sourceforge/f/fu/fuduntu-el/el6/current/TES… and execute:



    rpm -U cairo-1.10.2-3.el6.x86_64.rpm

x86 32-bit example: ftp://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/sourceforge/f/fu/fuduntu-el/el6/current/TES… and execute:



    rpm -U cairo-1.10.2-3.el6.i686.rpm

Another option is to not run the Installation Manager in GUI mode but in Command-line, Console or Web UI mode.

[{"Product":{"code":"SSUBFB","label":"IBM Engineering Lifecycle Optimization - Publishing"},"Business Unit":{"code":"BU059","label":"IBM Software w\/o TPS"},"Component":"Installation","Platform":[{"code":"PF016","label":"Linux"}],"Version":"2.0.0","Edition":"All Editions","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB59","label":"Sustainability Software"}},{"Product":{"code":"SSDV2W","label":"IBM Installation Manager"},"Business Unit":{"code":"BU053","label":"Cloud & Data Platform"},"Component":"Install","Platform":[{"code":"PF016","label":"Linux"}],"Version":"1.6.2;1.6.3;1.6.3.1;1.7;1.7.1;1.7.2;1.7.3;1.7.4;1.8;1.8.1","Edition":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB45","label":"Automation"}}]

Product Synonym

Rational Publishing Engine

Document Information

Modified date:
16 June 2018

UID

swg21690056