Ambari BigInsights Install wizard 'Error: Nothing to do'

Question

Today I've been doing some testing with Ambari on a cluster of servers so that I can deploy a BigInsights image. Everything seems to be going well with all the components being configured okay, that is until it does the final install. I see a image similar to this -

Examining the failures in more detail it shows messages like this:

yum -d 0 -e 0 -y install iop-select
Error: Nothing to do

Answer 1

Yum cannot find the iop-select package, which is listed as a required package for one of the services the Ambari wizard is installing. This can happen for a few reasons:

• You have a stale yum db.

  Solution: Refresh by running:

  sudo yum clean all
  

• The repository containing the installation bits for the service you are trying to install is not configured in the repoinfo.xml file.

  Solution: Check the stack definition in Ambari to make sure the repository information exists and is correct. For example in IOP 4.0 you would check file:

  /var/lib/ambari-server/resources/stacks/BigInsights/4.0/repos/repoinfo.xml 
  

  to make sure it has an entry similar to:

  <repo>
   <baseurl>http://ibm-open-platform.ibm.com/repos/IOP/RHEL6/x86_64/4.0</baseurl>
   <repoid>IOP-4.0</repoid>
   <reponame>IOP</reponame>
  </repo>
  

  If it doesn't exist add the correct entry for the BigInsights/IOP version you are using, save the file, and finally restart ambari server by running the following command:

  sudo ambari-server restart
  

  Once ambari-server restarts you can try the installation again.

Answer 2

It would seem that all nodes in the cluster fail to install due to a lack of initialisation of the repos, for example:

# yum search iop
Loaded plugins: product-id, refresh-packagekit, rhnplugin, security,  subscription-manager
This system is receiving updates from RHN Classic or RHN Satellite.
================================= N/S Matched: iop ===================================
xorg-x11-fonts-ethiopic.noarch : Ethiopic fonts

  Name and summary matches only, use "search all" for everything.

But if we clean the systems then is systems I can then discover the required packages:

# yum clean all
Loaded plugins: product-id, refresh-packagekit, rhnplugin, security,    
subscription-manager
Cleaning repos: BI_AMBARI-2.1.0-20150806_1901 IOP-4.1 IOP-UTILS-1.0 hostdb     
RHEL-ha RHEL-lb RHEL-optional RHEL-supplementary
              : RHEL-updates RHEL-v2vwin rhel-x86_64-server-6
Cleaning up Everything

# yum search iop
Loaded plugins: product-id, refresh-packagekit, rhnplugin, security,     
subscription-manager
This system is receiving updates from RHN Classic or RHN Satellite.
--<cut>--
=============================== N/S Matched: iop =================================
xorg-x11-fonts-ethiopic.noarch : Ethiopic fonts
**iop-select.noarch : Distribution Select**

  Name and summary matches only, use "search all" for everything.

After which you should find that all the installs go though without any error.