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Commerce installation on Windows platforms requires the use of a local user account. The purpose of a local user account is to define and use the commerce services such as the Configuration Manger and the WC Help Server. If you look at the properties of these services, you will see that it uses the local user for stopping and starting the services. These two services are created at the end of the installation process and it is for this purpose, I believe, Commerce requires a local user. I am not sure about what other purposes the local user is used for. But can you use a domain user instead of a local user?

The answer to this question is very clear from the documentation. It says: “Windows IDs must be defined on the local machine. IDs defined on a Windows domain server are not supported by the WebSphere Commerce installation program.”

During the installation on a screen, you enter the local user user ID and password. This very screen alerts you to this fact: “The user ID must be an existing Windows user ID defined on the local machine with Administrator authority”

Recently I had a unique opportunity of trying to break this IBM rule for WCS 6.0 installation. Obviously it did not work. The message I saw in the log file, once the installation failed is: “Setup.product.install, com.installshield.wizard.platform.win32.win32service.WindowsService, err, ServiceException: (error code = -120000; message = “The account name is invalid or does not exist, or the password is invalid for the account name specified. (1057)”; severity = 0)”

Here are some of the ways of interpreting the installation failure:

1. Possibility of entering an invalid password for user. I would rule out this possibility as I checked the password more than once to verify that it is accurate.
2. Based on the error we would not be able to know if the user does not exist or the account name is invalid or if the password is incorrect!
3. The installation process has rejected the domain name in front of the user Id.
4. The installation process is still looking for the local user to create the commerce services.
5. One of the requirements for the user ID is that it should not be more than 20 characters in length. In my case the combination of domain name and the user ID specified is over 20 characters. This could be another reason for the failure

In any case, we ended up using the local user.

Why would IBM not support a Domain User for commerce installation? That is a very good question and may not have answers that many would appreciate. Here is my thinking. The domain user installation was never tested to IBM Commerce team’s complete satisfaction. The other possibility is that IBM is not be interested in troubleshooting their client’s network issues that might interfere with the installation process.

Hopefully there will be some resolution to this in the future versions!