How to Update Fixpack and iFix in IBM WebSphere 7 Silently

One of the WebSphere Administrator tasks is to keep the environment up-to-date and you should be familiar with the process. This assumes you already have WebSphere 7 installed and running on Linux environment.

You can either follow interactive (GUI) or silent mode to update the Fixpack and iFix (interim fixes) in WebSphere application server 7. Following will guide you how to do using a command line in another word silently.

WebSphere 7 is still used by more than 37% (as of April 2016) and thought it would be good to share the instructions with you all.

First thing first, you need to ensure you have latest update installer for WAS 7. If not you can download them from the following a link.

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=180&uid=swg24020446

• Download the update installer for the platform you need from the above link. This may take few minutes based on your Internet speed.
• Once downloaded, extract them to the temporary location (/tmp) on a server.

Note: Backup is the lifesaver so don’t forget to take before doing anything.

• Remove all the contents of /Path/to/Websphere_v7/UpdateInstaller/*
• Create a response file “UPDIResonsefile.txt” with following under /tmp

-OPT silentInstallLicenseAcceptance="true"
-OPT allowNonRootSilentInstall="true"
-OPT installLocation="/Path/to/WebSphere_v7/UpdateInstaller"

• Navigate to a folder where you extracted the update installer. In this ex:

/tmp/UpdateInstaller

• Run the install command giving location of response file as an argument

./install -options /tmp/UPDIResonsefile.txt –silent

This will take few minutes and upgrade “Update Installer to the latest version”.

Applying Fixpack update

Download the necessary fix pack from the following link to /tmp

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27004980#ver70

Following example is based on install IBM HTTP Server 37 Fix Pack.

• Create new silent file “IHSFIXPACKResonsefile.txt “ with following under /tmp

-W maintenance.package="/tmp/7.0.0-WS-IHS-AixPPC32-FP0000037.pak"
-OPT rootUserHasRunSlibcleanCommandSuccessfully="true"
-W product.location="/path/to/WebSphere_v7/HTTPServer"
-W update.type="install"

• Navigate to UpdateInstaller directory and run the update.sh command with the location of response files as an argument

/Path/to/WebSphere_v7/UpdateInstaller/update.sh –options /tmp/IHSFIXPACKResonsefile.txt -silent

Applying Interim Fix Update

The procedure is similar to applying fix pack. You may use the same response file used for fix pack installation. However, you need to replace the fixpack repository location with interim fix repository location.

For ex:

/Path/to/WebSphere_v7/UpdateInstaller/update.sh –options /tmp/InterimFIXPACKResonsefile.txt –silent

Above should give you an idea how to apply Fixpack in IBM WebSphere Application Server 7 environment. BTW, did you know WebSphere 9 is available on IBM Cloud? Try out, it’s cool!