Many of Orb Data’s customers have been interested in the latest Web GUI Fix Pack, v8.1.0.6, to enable them to move to a fully java-free experience for the operators. This panacea will remove the headache of juggling multiple java versions for the various operator applications. The Web GUI Event Viewer has been available as a fully functional replacement for the Active Event List (AEL) for a sometime now, but it was only recently (June 2016) that Web GUI v8.1 Fix Pack 6 delivered a “lightweight” version of the Event Dashboard.

Web GUI Lightweight Event Dashboard

However, following a recent green-field installation of Web GUI v8.1 Fix Pack 6, the Event Dashboard failed to load. The Event Dashboard tab opened but the page remained white (the background colour) and continually indicated it was loading/communicating to the server. Whilst trying to load the page the following message was continually being logged to the file “SystemErr.log”, located in the path “$JAZZSM/profile/logs/server1”:

SystemOut_16.08.10_13.36.00.log:[09/08/16 17:09:04:617 BST] 000000ac WebContainer E com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.internal.WebContainer handleRequest SRVE0255E: A WebGroup/Virtual Host to handle /secure/isclite/tiles/nop.jsp has not been defined.

After much head scratching the issue was identified as a problem in the silent response file used to build the Web GUI Servers. IBM Installation Manager had been used to record the response file for the product install using the “-skipInstall” option, as referenced in the Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus Version 8 Release 1 Installation and Deployment Guide. However, the resultant XML silent response file omitted some key elements that define the DASH environment:

<data key=’user.DashHomeContextRoot’ value=’/ibm/console’/>

<data key=’user.DashHomeWasCell’ value=’JazzSMNode01Cell’/>

<data key=’user.DashHomeWasNode’ value=’JazzSMNode01’/>

With the addition of those elements to the file it is possible to install both the base v8.1.0.4 code plus fix pack 6 as a single action using the standard IBM Installation Manager syntax:

cd $IMHOME/tools

./imcl -input <rsp_file_path>/webgui_8.1.0.6.xml -acceptlicense -log /tmp/webgui_8.1.0.6.log

As yet the full Web GUI experience isn’t java-free, some administration pages still rely on Java. However, with the Event Viewer, lightweight versions of the Event Dashboard and Maps plus the DASH widgets the operator’s experience can certainly be java-free.

Web GUI Netcool Health Dashboard

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