IBM Cognos BI Installation & Configuration on Redhat Linux

Those who normally work with Cognos BI on Windows Server, find it difficult to install and configure on Linux. In this blog we’ll see steps involved in this installation and configuration on RHEL. There are three parts to it.

1)      Meet the pre-requisites (Hardware & Software)

2)      Install and configure Cognos BI Server components

3)      Install and configure HTTP server

Cognos Framework Manager and Transformer are client tools and must be installed on Windows.

Meet the pre-requisites (Hardware & Software)

Let’s start with step -1. You can go thru standard supported environment specification on IBM site (http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27037784). Here I am going to install Cognos BI V 10.2.1 on RHEL 6.4 system with the specification shown in below screenshot.

 We need to ensure installation of required patches before we start Cognos installation:

• glibc-2.12-1.80.el6 (both ppc and ppc64 packages) - 32 and 64 bit glibc libraries
• libstdc++-4.4.6-4.el6 (both ppc and ppc64 packages) - 32 and 64 bit libstdc++ libraries
• nspr-4.9-1.el6 (both ppc and ppc64 packages) - 32 and 64 bit nspr library for CAM ldap provider
• nss-3.13.3-6.el6 (both ppc and ppc64 packages) - 32 and 64 bit nss library for CAM ldap provider
• openmotif-2.3.3-4.el6 (both ppc and ppc64 packages) - 32 and 64 bit openmotif libraries

One way to get these libraries is to download them independently from various Linux websites and install them. The other and probably the better way is to use your OS (RHEL 6.4 in this case) disk or .ISO image for the process. I am going to use the second option here. First I copied “RHEL6.4-20130130.0-Server-x86_64-DVD1.iso” file in /data folder (newly created) then mounted it as /media and update repository.

mount -oloop RHEL6.4-20130130.0-Server-x86_64-DVD1.iso /media

vi /etc/yum.repos.d/server.repo
rpm --import /media/*GPG*

yum clean all

  

Now to check if glibc package is already installed or not, use below command:

rpm –qa | grep glibc

If package is installed you’ll get file list (name ending with .x64_64 or .i686) in return otherwise we need to install it including dependencies using below command:

 yum install glibc.i686    // For 32-bit

 yum install glibc.x86_64  // For 64-bit

Repeat the same process for libstdc++, nspr, nss, openmotif.

We also need to have JDK 7 installed as prerequisite. I am downloading IBM JDK 7 from IBM site (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/linux/download.html ) for Linux 64-bit environment and install it as shown below.

./ibm-java-x86_64-sdk-7.1-1.1.bin

It is installed in /opt/ibm/java-x86_64-71. Now we are ready for step-2.

Install and configure Cognos BI Server components

As shown below in snapshot, I have copied these 5 server components –

·         Cognos BI Server 10.2.1

·         Cognos BI Samples (optional)

·         Cognos SDK (optional)

·         Cognos Mobile (optional)

·         Cognos Dynamic Query Analyzer (optional)

 First unzip the package using below command –

  tar –xvf bi_svr_10.2.1_l86_ml.tar.gz

     cd linuxi38664h

     ./issetup

  It would open GUI based installation wizard, as shown below -

From here steps are self explanatory. I am selecting all four components from ‘Component Selection’ screen as I want all on my single server. By default ‘Cognos Content Database’ is not selected. In case, you plan to create content store somewhere else you can go ahead without it.

 Once the installation is over you can go ahead with Cognos Samples, SDK, Mobile and other server components. Add the bcprov-jdk14-134.jar  from  /cognos/c8_64/bin64/jre/1.5.0/lib/ext/bcprov-jdk14-134.jar to the $JAVA_HOME/lib/ext path

 cp /opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/bin64/jre/7.0/lib/ext/bcprov-jdk14-145.jar /opt/ibm/java-x86_64/jre/lib/ext

We also need to add JAVA_HOME in cogconfig.sh file before opening Cognos Configuration tool.

vi /opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/bin64/cogconfig.sh

And add below line as first executable command of cogconfig.sh file.

 Export JAVA_HOME=/opt/ibm/java-x86_64/jre

Save it and run it to start Cognos service.

./opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/bin64/cogconfig.sh

Just test if Cognos BI service is running successfully by opening “http://localhost:9300/p2pd/servlet” on browser.

Install and configure HTTP server

You can choose your choice of HTTP server here. I am using IBM HTTP Server (32-bit). It is no-charge and can be downloaded from –

www.ibm.com/software/webservers/httpservers/download

Unzip downloaded package, update JAVA_HOME in “IHS/install” file and run it.

tar –xvf ihs.7000.linux.ia32.tar

cd IHS

vi install

./install

It’ll open GUI wizard for installation.

 After successful installation we’ll add necessary virtual directories in configuration file.

 vi /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/conf/httpd.conf

Add below lines in httpd.conf

# Cognos #

# Load Cognos Apache 2.2 Module

LoadModule cognos_module "/opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/cgi-bin/lib/mod2_2_cognos.so"

# Add WebDAV lock directory, make sure the LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so and LoadModule dav_fs_module modules/mod_dav_fs.so are uncommented

DAVLockDB /tmp/DBLOCK

# Alias for the cgi scripts

ScriptAlias /ibmcognos/cgi-bin "/opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/cgi-bin/"

<Directory "/opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/cgi-bin">

AllowOverride None

Options None

Order allow,deny

Allow from all

</Directory>

# Alias for the Cognos webcontent folder

Alias /ibmcognos "/opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/webcontent"

<Directory "/opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/webcontent">

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews IncludesNoExec

AddOutputFilter Includes html

AllowOverride None

Order allow,deny

Allow from all

DAV on

</Directory>

Find out below lines and add ‘#’ in the beginning to comment them.

# LoadModule was_ap22_module /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/Plugins/bin/32bits/mod_was_ap22_http.so

# WebSpherePluginConfig /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/Plugins/config/webserver1/plugin-cfg.xml

We can save it now. We’ll create two file – one two start the server and another to stop it.

Create startIHS.sh with below code –

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/cgi-bin:/opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/cgi-bin/lib

./apachectl start

And stopIHS.sh with –

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/cgi-bin:/opt/ibm/cognos/c10_64/cgi-bin/lib

./apachectl stop

Copy both files in /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/bin and run startIHS.sh to start the server.

  cd /opt/IBM/HTTPServer/bin

./startIHS.sh

Here’s your Cognos BI server ready for use. Open “http://localhost:80/ibmcognos” on local machine or use IP address/hostname instead of ‘localhost’. In my case, HTTP server is running on 80 port number (default).

 If you want to upgrade it with fix pack 3 which is latest please get it from below link and install it.

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24037728

References:

IBM Cognos 10.2.1 official documentation (Knowledge Center)

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27037021#cbiv10r2m1en

Business Intelligence Installation and Configuration Guide

http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/documentation/docs/en/10.2.1/inst_cr_winux.pdf

Business Intelligence Architecture and Deployment Guide

http://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/documentation/docs/en/10.2.1/crn_arch.pdf