August 8, 2010

IBM RSA II adapter and Java RE

Today, I have to console remotely to one of RHEL 5 Server using IBM RSA II adapter. But, as i have updated my JRE versions, I have been faced with error when trying to use to use Remote Control (Remote Management) GUI tool inside the RSA system. I’ve found the error log, it said:

Initializing RemoteDisk v2.2
MCS v.3.6 initialized
Established connection to rsa.home.barfoo.org:1045
Connected via socket: Socket[addr=rsa.home.barfoo.org/10.0.0.150,port=2000,
localport=4292]
Closing socket
java.lang.NullPointerException
	at mcsClient.Row.isValid(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.Component.invalidateIfValid(Unknown Source)
	at java.awt.Component.setLocale(Unknown Source)
	at javax.swing.JComponent.(Unknown Source)
	at javax.swing.JPanel.(Unknown Source)
	at javax.swing.JPanel.(Unknown Source)
	at javax.swing.JPanel.(Unknown Source)
	at mcsClient.Row.(Unknown Source)
	at mcsClient.Options.(Unknown Source)
	at mcsClient.McsToolBar.(Unknown Source)
	at mcsClient.McsClient.begin(Unknown Source)
	at mcsClient.McsClient.init(Unknown Source)
	at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2Manager$
AppletExecutionRunnable.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Ausnahme: java.lang.NullPointerException

Desperately, I’ve searched over the internet and found some similar case with me. One of them is Christian. From his post, I’ve followed him by downloading the latest supported version of JRE. Christian also post the list of what Java JRE version works with an RSA II adapter running Firmware 1.10 (GGEP36B) as below:

Java JRE 1.50 U11 ……… works
Java JRE 1.50 U12 ……… works*
Java JRE 1.50 U13 ……… works
Java JRE 1.50 U14 ……… works
Java JRE 1.50 U15 ……… works
Java JRE 1.50 U16 ……… works
Java JRE 1.50 U17 ……… works
Java JRE 1.50 U18 ……… works
Java JRE 1.60 ……… works
Java JRE 1.60 U01 ……… works
Java JRE 1.60 U02 ……… works
Java JRE 1.60 U03 ……… works
Java JRE 1.60 U04 ……… works
Java JRE 1.60 U05 ……… works
Java JRE 1.60 U06 ……… works
Java JRE 1.60 U07 ……… works
Java JRE 1.60 U12 ……… not working (see above)
Java JRE 1.60 U13 ……… not working (see above)
Java JRE 1.60 U14 ……… not working (see above)

*: This version presents some small annoyances (garbled video output)

Update:

IBM already knows about the problem, but says it’s presumably a Java problem since it stopped working mid-version in between U11 and U12. (from Christian also)

Update the RSA II Firmware should fix the problem. Go to: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v7r1m0/index.jsp?topic=/rzahq/updatexseriesrsa.htm for detail.

Now, let start to work again!