Identity Manager installation fails when unable to find Java Runtime Environment (JRE)

  • 7002571
  • 05-Feb-2009
  • 21-Dec-2017

Environment

Novell Identity Manager 3.6
Novell Identity Manager 3.5.1
Identity Manager 4.6
Red Hat Linux

Situation

When trying to install Identity Manager (IDM) one of the following errors is returned to the prompt:

No Java virtual machine could be found from your PATH environment variable. You must install
a VM prior to running this program.

or:

JRE libraries are missing or not compatible....
Exiting....

Resolution

The IDM engine and Remote Loader (RL) installers never need a pre-installed Java Runtime Environment (JRE) in order to install or run, as these standard components come with these requirements.

This error is usually seen when the temporary directory to which files are extracted resides in a mount point using the 'noexec' flag.  This flag prevents anything from being executed under that mount point and is set by the operating system.  Sample output from the mount command showing /tmp mounted 'noexec' is shown below:

/dev/sda2 on /tmp type ext3 (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)

The easiest way to resolve this is to mount the partition with the noexec flag.  The following command, which requires 'root' privileges, can be used to remount /tmp with the noexec flag:

mount -o remount,exec /tmp

With this change the IDM installation should no longer complain about its inability to run the virtual machine extracted by the installer.

To set the partition back to normal either reboot the system which will apply settings from /etc/fstab or run the following command:

mount -o remount /tmp

The following could also explicitly set it back but should not be necessary:

mount -o remount,noexec /tmp

Another option would be to remove the 'noexec' line from /etc/fstab for the /tmp mount point entry.  This would be a permanent change so it should be changed back once completed unless you are sure this is a change to be made permanent.

Another option may be to export the IATEMPDIR environment variable after setting it to a location that has sufficient space and allows command execution; for example:
export IATEMPDIR='/opt/novell/new-tmp-dir'
#run IDM installer

Bug Number

1073929