While installing TIBCO Spotfire Statistics Services (TSSS) on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.4 operating system, you may see the installation is failing with an error like:

Launching installer...
 =======================================================
 Installer User Interface Mode Not Supported

 Unable to load and to prepare the installer in console or silent mode.
 =======================================================

Here is example of detailed logs: 

/home/tibco/source/tmp/TIB_sf_statsvcs_7.11.0_linux24gl23_x86_64 $./TSSS_7.11.0_linux24gl23_x86_64.bin
Preparing to install
Extracting the JRE from the installer archive...
Unpacking the JRE...
Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...
Configuring the installer for this system's environment...
 
Launching installer...
 
=======================================================
 Installer User Interface Mode Not Supported
 
Unable to load and to prepare the installer in console or silent mode.
 =======================================================

This article describes the root cause and resolution for mentioned error, that you may get while installing TIBCO Spotfire Statistics Services (TSSS) or other java based applications on RHEL 7.4

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.4

This is a generic issue on RHEL 7.4 and not specific to the TIBCO Spotfire Statistics Services (TSSS) application. RHEL v7.4 comes with package stix-fonts. When this package is installed, the default font changed from Utopiato to STIX. So, java default fonts are mapped to STIX, including the sans-serif font family but the STIX fonts can have issues when integrating with Java which is used by TSSS.

In this case, the root cause of TSSS not being installed on RHEL 7.4 is the changed default font to STIX from the original default font Utopiato in this version of Linux (7.4), which does not work well with Java.

To resolve the issue, change the default font type from ‘stix-fonts’ to the original default font 'Utopia', and then install TSSS again. To change the default font to 'Utopia':

1) Create a file /etc/fonts/local.conf with the following content, in order to force back Utopia as the default font, used by java.

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
  <alias>
    <family>serif</family>
    <prefer><family>Utopia</family></prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>sans-serif</family>
    <prefer><family>Utopia</family></prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>monospace</family>
    <prefer><family>Utopia</family></prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>dialog</family>
    <prefer><family>Utopia</family></prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>dialoginput</family>
    <prefer><family>Utopia</family></prefer>
  </alias>
</fontconfig>

Note: Although this article discusses this issue in the context of the TSSS installation, this issue may also be see while installing other Java based products like TIBCO Spotfire Server (TSS) on RHEL 7.4. The given steps are still applicable for other products as well, since the root cause is the default font type which does not work well with Java.

Note: Always verify in the system requirements page of the given product version that RHEL 7.4 is a supported OS

External: RHEL defect: AWT java apps fail to start when stix-fonts is used as sans-serif font

• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1484079

External: Example: Upgrade RHEL from 7.3 to 7.4: ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException in sun.font.CompositeStrike.getStrikeForSlot

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45569367/upgrade-rhel-from-7-3-to-7-4-arrayindexoutofboundsexception-in-sun-font-composi