Installation of IBM Cognos Business Intelligence has failed. Return code : 1

As part of an IBM Business Monitor 8.0.1 installation, it is necessary to install Cognos Business Intelligence 10.1.

Sadly, for me, this was failing with a really useful (NOT!) exception: -

Installation of IBM Cognos Business Intelligence has failed. Return code : 1

which is thrown by IBM Installation Manager 1.6.

Looking at the IIM log here: -

/home/wasadmin/var/ibm/InstallationManager/logs/20130115_1135.xml

I could see: -

<entry num='428' time='1358250178752' elapsed='07:13.11' level='ERROR' thread='Worker-0'>
 <logger>com.ibm.cic.agent.core.Engine</logger>
 <class>com.ibm.cic.agent.core.Engine.Phase</class>
 <method>perform</method>
 <message>Installation of IBM Cognos Business Intelligence has failed.
Return code : 1</message>
</entry>

which was no more useful.

However, I dug further into the file system, and looked at the newly created WAS logs ( in this particular case, I was installing WAS 8.0.0.5 at the same time as BM, Cognos etc. ).

This led me to this log: -

/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/cognos/instlog/tl-BISRVR-10.1-6235.144-20130115_1141.txt

and this exception: -

File "/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/cognos/webcontent/documentation/en/ug_cra_t_customize_error_handling_smtp_mail_server.html" successfully extracted.
File "/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/cognos/webcontent/documentation/en/ug_cra_t_secure_error.html" successfully extracted.
File "/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/cognos/webcontent/documentation/de/ug_cra_t_customize_error_handling_smtp_mail_server.html" successfully extracted.
File "/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/cognos/webcontent/documentation/de/ug_cra_t_secure_error.html" successfully extracted.
Error: Call to mkdir() failed for directory "/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/cognos/webcontent/documentation/en/tours/images/": No space left on device.
Error: Failed to create directory "/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/cognos/webcontent/documentation/en/tours/images/".
Error: Call to mkdir() failed for directory "/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/cognos/war/gateway/lib/": No space left on device.
Error: Failed to create directory "/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/cognos/war/gateway/lib/".

which is probably quite important.

The Linux command df -kmh shows that my disk is 89% used, so I suspect that it's a good time to delete stuff and/or add more disk :-)

*UPDATE*

So, thinking that I'd cracked it, it failed again with the precise same error: -

Installation of IBM Cognos Business Intelligence has failed. Return code : 1

although I did not see the "No space left on device" error this time around.

I did, however, see this: -

Failed to extract file "." from tar file "/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/CognosImage/zipfiles/linuxi38664h/dojo15-linuxi38664h-gate-1.5.0.7.0-inst.tar.gz".

In desperation, I took a snapshot of my VM, remove the /opt/IBM directory structure ( thus breaking my WebSphere Message Broker / WebSphere MQ environment !! ) and installed Monitor again, this time as root rather than wasadmin, using the Launchpad.

You know what ? It installed perfectly, without exception :-)

The moral of the story ? Hmmmm, not yet sure, will think about it, and post back here.