De Omni Scribili

Scribblings Of Ed Wiebe

Tivoli Storage Manager on OS X 10.11

I found that the latest version of TSM that I could get for OS X (v. 7.1) no longer works on OS X 10.11 (El Capitan). This is due to a change that Apple has made to the way that some file systems are protected from change. The security feature is called System Integrity Protection. It can be disabled but you'll have to Google that yourself. Another term used for this system seems to be "rootless". Basically directories like /usr/bin are locked and no user is able to make any changes to them, even root.

Unfortunately IBM puts the TSM tools in /usr/bin. Since this is no longer allowed the installation fails and the tools won't work. In fact you will see frightening warnings and error messages from the installer if you run it in the GUI (see images below).

The solution is to install things yourself in another location and hey voila! it's all fine again. At some point, probably in December, IBM will release a new version of TSM that installs itself properly.

See below for some suggested steps on how to fix this issue. You are one your own when you make changes such as these, but this did work for me.

# mount the dmg file
hdiutil attach 7.1.0.0-TIV-TSMBAC-Mac.dmg

# run the pkg installer (through the command line or through the GUI...) 
installer -pkg Tivoli\ Storage\ Manager.pkg -target /

# you will see an error message like the one below
#  installer: The install failed (The Installer encountered an error that 
#             caused the installation to fail. Contact the software 
#             manufacturer for assistance.)


# link the executables and libraries to the right locations
mkdir /usr/local/bin
mkdir /usr/local/lib

ln -fs /Library/ibm/gsk8/lib/libgsk8* /usr/local/lib
ln -fs /Library/Application\ Support/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsm* /usr/local/bin

# the preferences in /System/Preferences/Tivoli\ Storage\ Manager 
# should be untouched by the install process.
# if you've never installed TSM then you have to speak to your 
# TSM Administrators about the settings to use

# now you should be able to run dsmc at the command line, e.g.
dsmc inc

# what about dsmacd?
# I modified the plist file from the install package to refer to 
# /usr/local/bin instead of /usr/bin. 
# the plist is linked below ... 

cp com.ibm.tivoli.dsmcad.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons

# use launchctl to start dsmcad, the acceptor daemon
launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.ibm.tivoli.dsmcad.plist

# see if dsmcad is running
launchctl list | grep ibm

Here's the plist file (com.ibm.tivoli.dsmcad.plist).

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