Sterling Commerce 9.2 and 9.2.1 installation without IBM Installation Manager

Sterling Commerce 9.2 and 9.2.1 are integrated with IBM Installation Manager but there are challenges in this marriage.

The combination of IBM Installation Manager and SMCFS installer does not work on Linux. IBM Installation Manager must be run as root on a Linux machine while Sterling Multi Channel Fulfillment Suite installer does not allow installation as root. So after starts IBM Installation Manager as root, the installation fails after Sterling installer starting and complaining it is running as root.

A solution that implementation teams often use is to run the Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite installer directly without IBM Installation Manager.

After download the installer (example: STR_OM_FI_V9.2_ML_MP.zip for 9.2 or STR_OM_9.2.1_SELLING_ANDFF_MP_EN.zip for 9.2.1) and unzip it, you should have a folder like below.

[sterling@nzhangw510-fed19 9_2]$ ls -lh 9_2_installer/

total 1.5G

drwxrwxr-x. 3 sterling wheel 4.0K Feb 22 2013 atoc

-rw-rw-r--. 1 sterling wheel 674 Mar 20 2013 dlmgr.pro

drwxrwxr-x. 2 sterling wheel 4.0K Feb 22 2013 files

-rw-rw-r--. 1 sterling wheel 17M Feb 22 2013 ISADC92.zip

drwxrwxr-x. 2 sterling wheel 4.0K Feb 22 2013 Offerings

drwxrwxr-x. 2 sterling wheel 4.0K Feb 22 2013 plugins

-rw-rw-r--. 1 sterling wheel 44 Feb 22 2013 repository.config

-rw-rw-r--. 1 sterling wheel 4.9K Feb 22 2013 repository.xml

drwxrwxr-x. 2 sterling wheel 4.0K Feb 22 2013 ShareableEntities

Look for the SMCFS_9.2.0.jar or SMCFS_9.2.1.jar file. Depends on the version of the installer, you might found it at foundation/files/SMCFS_9.2.jar or files/SMCFS_9.2.jar. In my case it was just under the files folder.

[sterling@nzhangw510-fed19 9_2]$ find ./9_2_installer -name "SMCFS_9.2*.jar"

./9_2_installer/files/SMCFS_9.2.0.jar

Now follow the SterlingSelling and Fulfillment Suite Installation Guide to prepare your system before starting the installation.

To start the installation, run the following command and you should see the familiar Sterling Installation wizard.

export LANG=en_US

java -Djavataskargs="-XX:MaxPermSize=512m" -Dcomptaskargs="-J-Xms1024m -J-Xmx1664m" -jar ./9_2_installer/files/SMCFS_9.2.0.jar

BTW, you should use Java 1.6 for installation and running of SMCFS 9.2 and 9.2.1. I know some people had success with Java7 but it is not an officially supported Java version as of 2013.

Refer to the InstallSterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite Foundation in text mode article for “silent” installation or installation without UI.