Maximo 7.5 patch (7.5.0.4 and 7.5.0.5) Issue?

Recently while applying a Maximo 7.5 patch (7.5.0.4 and 7.5.0.5) a potential problem was discovered with the installer. The initial error indicated the installer was unable to connect to WebSphere or that the credentials were incorrect. After verifying that wasn’t the issue, further research identified a problem with the ThinWSadmin client and Java:

CTGIN2275E: WebSphere thin admin client installation verification completed with errors. stderr=JVMJ9VM019E Fatal error: Unable to find and initialize required class java/lang/Object

… more java library items

JVMJ9VM023I This may indicate that JAVA_HOME is incorrect, or that class libraries are not installed
JVMJ9VM015W Initialization error for library jclscar_24(14): JVMJ9VM009E J9VMDllMain failed

Could not create the Java virtual machine.

While we normally like to know the “why”, in this case it was more important to just get past it. The solution we opted for was to pull the sdk directory out of our Eclipse-BIRT environment and use it to replace the copy in IBMSMPsdk.

More specifically we used an IBM 32 bit v6 SDK. This allowed the installer to continue without further issue.

We should note this was only observed this with one specific client but did manifest itself on multiple servers and with two different patch levels. Using the same patch set elsewhere has worked as expected.