OS Patch Levels prerequisite marked false during installation for RHEL/Oracle 9.x.

Products

• VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance
• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Smarts-DM 2.4 - OS Patch Levels prerequisite marked false during installation specifically for ncurses-compat-libs and oracle-epel-release-el9.

Example: 
Prerequisite of RPM will look like below:
Required OS Patch Levels
false   ncurses-compat-libs  5.9-14.el7_4.i686

Environment

• Smarts-DM - 2.4 
• TCSA - 2.4 
• Smarts - 10.1.x
• MnR/Watch4net - 7.x 

Cause

The Smarts application requires the "ncurses-libs" library from the operating system, which is utilized by the dmctl client to interact with the Domain Manager. However, this library, previously available as a runtime package in RHEL 7.x, has been phased out in RHEL 8.x and replaced by "ncurses-compat-libs" to provide backward compatibility.

Starting from RHEL 9.x, the "ncurses-compat-libs" package has been fully deprecated. To continue using it, the library must now be sourced from the EPEL repository.

Reference: Check “Moved Packages” chapter from RHEL9_Considerations

Resolution

For VSA, SMARTS-DM and TCSA-DM running on RHEL 9.x/Oracle 9.x

Library "libtinfo.so.6" & "libncurses.so.6" serves the purpose and DM works without any issue, hence create softlink for mentioned libraries or remove reference for libedit.so.0 library.

Steps to implement:

• Create/touch a file and name it of your choice in /tmp. Example: bypass.sh

• Add
  rm -rf /tmp/tmp_* /tmp_final_*
while true; do rm -f final_<suite>_sysinfo.txt; sleep 0.1; done
  in newly created file "bypass.sh"

• Provide required permission for created script as chmod 777 bypass.sh

• Run the script as ./bypass.sh in one terminal. NOTE: Script need to be run continuously until installation is completed. Upon completion of installation, script can be killed as Ctrl+C.

• Open new terminal or duplicate it and start installation.

• Once installation is completed, remove libedit.so.0 library reference as:

• Navigate to Installer Path IP/SAM/NPM/MPLS (<IP/SAM/NPM_BASE>/smarts/bin)
  
  
  • Run mv ../lib/libedit.so.0 ../lib/libedit.so.0_bkp

• After performing above, installation will not do RPM check and post installation utilities will not throw library error.

               NOTE: tmp_<suite>_sysinfo.txt and final_<suite>_sysinfo.txt need to be changed based on product installation.

               Example:
               IP: tmp_ip_sysinfo.txt
               SAM: tmp_sam_sysinfo.txt  
               NPM: tmp_npm_sysinfo.txt  
               MPLS: tmp_mpls_sysinfo.txt
               VoIP: tmp_voip_sysinfo.txt
               ESM: tmp_esm_sysinfo.txt 

 

For MnR running on RHEL 9.x/Oracle 9.x

          This instance throws library error while using mysql-client.sh utility

          Steps to implement:

• Create softlink as follows:

                                    ln -s /usr/lib64/libtinfo.so.6 /usr/lib64/libtinfo.so.5
                   ln -s /usr/lib64/libncurses.so.6 /usr/lib64/libncurses.so.5

Additional Information

The workaround we shared applies to both TCSA-DM and Smarts-DM, as both support Oracle Linux.
Neither TCSA-DM 2.4 nor Smarts-DM 2.4 differentiate between OEL, RHCK, or standard Oracle Linux — the pre-requisite checks are the same across all Oracle Linux flavors.