Installing Liberty on IBM i operating systems using the command line

You can install all WebSphere® Application Server Liberty offerings on IBM® i operating systems by using the Installation Manager command line.

Before you begin

Important:

Java™ SE 8 is the recommended Java SDK because it provides the latest features and security updates. An alternative to Java SE 8 is any supported Java SDK version.

Prepare for the installation before using this procedure. See Preparing the operating system for installation on IBM i for more information.

If you want to install Liberty assets from local directory-based repositories or an instance of the Liberty Asset Repository Service, configure the repositories. For more information about the Liberty asset repositories, see Installing assets using Installation Manager.

Important: Before installing Liberty, you must read the license agreement that you can find with the product files. Signify your acceptance of the license agreement by specifying -acceptLicense in the command as described in this topic.

If IBM Installation Manager Version 1.8.5 or later is not already installed, install it on the system where you want to install the product:

Through version 19.0.0.8, the minimum acceptable version of IBM Installation Manager is 1.8.5.

As of version 19.0.0.9, the minimum acceptable version of IBM Installation Manager is 1.9.0.

  1. Download IBM Installation Manager.
    There are three basic options for accessing Installation Manager installation files.
    • Download the most current version of Installation Manager from the IBM Installation Manager download website.
    • Install Installation Manager from product repositories on the media.
    • Download the files from the Passport Advantage® site, and use local installation

      Licensed customers with a Passport Advantage ID and password can download the necessary product repositories from the Passport Advantage site.

  2. Choose three separate locations for Installation Manager's binaries, runtime data (agent data), and shared data locations.
  3. Install Installation Manager using the Installation Manager command line.
    1. Sign on to the IBM i system with a user profile that has *ALLOBJ and *SECADM special authorities.
    2. On a CL command line, run the STRQSH command to start the Qshell command shell.
    3. Make sure that the umask is set to 022.
      To verify the umask setting, issue the following command:
      umask
      To set the umask setting to 022, issue the following command:
      umask 022
    4. Change to the location containing the Installation Manager installation files, and run the following command:
      installc -acceptLicense -log log_file_path_and_name
      Notes:

About this task

All product offerings, including the Liberty product offerings and other available software, are installed using the same Installation Manager commands. To install a different offering, follow these steps, but replace the offering ID and any optional features with the ID and features for the offering.
New: When you install Liberty, by default all Liberty features that apply to your Liberty product edition are also installed. Alternatively, you can install a different set of features or no features at all. For more information, see the Tips section.

Procedure

  1. Optional: If the repository requires a user name and password, create credential-storage and master-password files to access this repository.
    1. Optional: Create the main password file.

      The main password file is a text file that contains a passphrase such as This text is the main password. This file is used to secure your authentication credentials.

      If you create a main password file and use it when you create credentials, you must always specify the main password file.

      Tip: To secure this file, set permissions to restrict access to this file as appropriate for your operating system.
    2. Create a credential storage file by running the imutilsc saveCredential command.
      For Windows platforms
      imutilsc.exe saveCredential 
        -secureStorageFile storage_file
        -userName user_ID -userPassword user_password
        -url repository_URL_or_path 
      For LINUX platformsFor Solaris platformsFor HP UNIX platformsFor AIX platforms
      ./imutilsc saveCredential 
        -secureStorageFile storage_file
        -userName user_ID -userPassword user_password
        -url repository_URL_or_path 
      Tip: If the imutilsc command is unable to find the URL that is specified when you create the credential storage file, append /repository.config at the end of the repository URL location.
  2. Sign on to the IBM i system with a user profile that has *ALLOBJ and *SECADM special authorities.
  3. On a CL command line, run the STRQSH command to start the Qshell command shell.
  4. Make sure that the umask is set to 022.
    To verify the umask setting, issue the following command:
    umask
    To set the umask setting to 022, issue the following command:
    umask 022
  5. Change to the eclipse/tools subdirectory in the directory where you installed Installation Manager.
  6. Use the imcl command to install the product.
    ./imcl install com.ibm.websphere.liberty.ND_offering_version,optional_feature_ID
      -repositories repository_URL_or_path 
      -installationDirectory installation_directory 
      -sharedResourcesDirectory shared_directory
      -preferences preference_key=value
      -properties property_key=value
      -secureStorageFile storage_file -masterPasswordFile master_password_file
      -acceptLicense
    
    Tips:
    • New: When you install Liberty, by default all Liberty features that apply to your Liberty product edition are also installed.
      Rather than installing all features, you can install a custom set of Liberty addons and features by specifying them on the user.addon and user.feature properties, as shown in the following example. Note that the feature short names or symbolic names are separated by double commas:
      ./imcl install com.ibm.websphere.liberty.ND,embeddablecontainer             
      -properties user.addon=extendedPackage-1.0,user.feature=portlet-2.0,,portletserving-2.0
      -installationDirectory /QIBM/ProdData/WebSphere/Liberty/ND -acceptLicense
      -repositories /QIBM/LibertyProductRepo,https://your_onprem_asset_repo_url,/QIBM/LocalAssetRepo,/QIBM/LocalAssetRepo2.zip
      -sharedResourcesDirectory /QIBM/UserData/InstallationManager/IMShared
      -showProgress
      You can install assets from instances of the Liberty Asset Repository Service or local directory-based repositories with or without internet access. Add the repository URL, directory path, or archive file path on the -repositories parameter. These repositories are accessed in the order that they are specified. For more information about these asset repositories, see Installing assets using Installation Manager. To install assets from the IBM WebSphere Liberty Repository, you must have access to the internet. To enable access to the Liberty Repository, on the -properties parameter, set the user.useLibertyRepository option to true. The Liberty Repository is the last of the repositories that are accessed during installation.
      Important: If you do not want to install Liberty addons or features, specify the -properties user.addon="" user.feature="" parameter.
      For more information, see the following topics:
    • The relevant terms and conditions, notices, and other information are provided in the license-agreement files in the lafiles or offering_name/lafiles subdirectory of the installation image or repository for this offering.
    • The first time that you install a package by using the Installation Manager, you can specify the shared resources directory. The shared resources directory is where installation artifacts are located that can be used by one or more package groups. It is also used as a staging area for the product payload during installation operations. By default, this content is cached so that it can be used for rollback. Use your largest drive for this installation. You cannot change the directory location until after you uninstall all packages.
    • The offering_version, can be attached to the offering ID with an underscore, is a specific version of the offering to install (16.0.2.20160503_0200 for example).
      • If offering_version is not specified, the latest version of the offering and all interim fixes for that version are installed.
      • If offering_version is specified, the specified version of the offering and no interim fixes for that version are installed.
      The offering version can be found attached to the end of the offering ID with an underscore when you run the following command against the repository:
      imcl listAvailablePackages -repositories repository_URL_or_path
    • You can also specify none, recommended or all with the -installFixes argument to indicate which interim fixes you want installed with the offering.
      • If the offering version is not specified, the -installFixes option defaults to all.
      • If the offering version is specified, the -installFixes option defaults to none.
    • To install the embeddable EJB container and JPA client, specify the optional embeddablecontainer feature after the offering ID, separated by a comma:
      imcl install com.ibm.websphere.liberty.ND,embeddablecontainer

      The embeddable EJB container is a Java archive (JAR) file that you can use to run enterprise beans in a standalone Java Platform, Standard Edition (SE) environment. You can run enterprise beans by using this embeddable container outside the application server. The embeddable EJB container is a part of the EJB 3.1 specification and is primarily used for unit testing enterprise beans business logic.

      The JPA client can be used with the embeddable EJB container to provide Java Persistence API capability in a Java SE environment.

    • For initial installations, it is a good practice to specify the user_data_root; otherwise, the default value for the user_data_root, /QIBM/UserData/WebSphere/Liberty/EDITION, is used. Use the was.install.os400.profile.location property to specify the user_data_root.
    • The program might write important post-installation instructions to standard output.

    For more information on using the imcl command to install the product, see the IBM Installation Manager product documentation.

Example

Here is an example of using the imcl command to install WebSphere Application Server Liberty:
./imcl install com.ibm.websphere.liberty.ND
  -repositories https://downloads.mycorp.com:8080/WAS_Liberty_repository
  -installationDirectory /QIBM/ProdData/WebSphere/Liberty/ND
  -properties was.install.os400.profile.location=/QIBM/UserData/WebSphere/Liberty/ND
  -sharedResourcesDirectory /QIBM/UserData/InstallationManager/IMShared
  -secureStorageFile $HOME/WASFiles/temp/credential.store -masterPasswordFile $HOME/WASFiles/IM/password_file.txt
  -acceptLicense