What to do if the X3 JAR file installer fails to run

1 minute read time.

You are trying to install a Sage X3 component but when executing the installer JAR file, you find that it fails to run, so how can you find out why it is not running?

It can be very frustrating when you launch the installer and it just does not launch, or perhaps starts up then falls over immediately.    There is often no indication as to what is going on and why its failing.  Luckily, there is a way to run the installer with debugging messages enabled which should hopefully help to identify the root cause of it not running.

In a nutshell, you simply run the JAR file from the command line, using the java command. The syntax will be:

java -DTRACE=true -DLOG=true -DDEBUG=true -jar %JARFILE2RUN_DIRECTORY%\%JARFILE2RUN%.jar

For example:

java -DTRACE=true -DLOG=true -DDEBUG=true -jar    D:\software\Sage\Adxadmin_94.1.15\adxadmin-94.1.15.jar

If you have access to the Sage Support "Investigation Scripts" then you can use the "mzJARinstallerDebug.cmd" script located in "..\InvestigationScripts\PowerShell\JARinstallerDebug"  otherwise you can simply run the above command line manually

If running manually, to easily capture all messages from the console you can redirect to a file

java -DTRACE=true -DLOG=true -DDEBUG=true -jar    D:\software\Sage\Adxadmin_94.1.15\adxadmin-94.1.15.jar>mzOutput.txt

So what happens when you do this and where do any messages get output to?   I’ll use the example of running the "adxadmin-94.1.15.jar" component

When using the mzJARinstallerDebug.cmd  script, you will see some useful information echoed to the screen, then get a security message.  Of course you may not get this far, depending on what the error condition you are experiencing but otherwise, when you say "Yes" to continue, the command script has finished, and the installer will launch normally (if it’s working OK)

 

In any case, you should then find any messages from the console echoed to the log file in the same directory as the script itself, and also a debug output file located in the %TMP% directory, called "IzPack_Logfile_at_XXXX.txt"
  

The kind of issue you may find in the logs could indicate a root cause such as:

  • Incompatible Java version being found
  • Problem with file permissions

Whilst this feature is not often used, it may be useful for you to know it’s available for the odd occasion you get a problem with the installation JAR file.