Informix Machine Notes
Here you find actual Machine Notes to Informix Products that we prepared for you.
=================================
MACHINE SPECIFIC NOTES
FOR
IBM Informix Dynamic Server 11.50.FC9 PRODUCT RELEASE
ON SUN SOLARIS AMD/Opteron 64bit
DATE: 25 Jul 2011
=================================
OS Information : Built on Solaris 10 on AMD/Opteron
System Requirements
===================
1. This product was built and tested on Solaris 10 AMD/Opteron using the
following compilers from Sun Studio 11:
Sun C 5.8 Patch 121016-02 2006/03/31
Sun C++ 5.8 Patch 121018-02 2006/04/26
with the following patches:
120759-12 Sun Studio 11_x86: Sun Compiler Common patch for x86 backend
121018-02 Sun Studio 11_x86: Patch for Sun C++ 5.8 compiler
121016-02 Sun Studio 11_x86: Patch for Sun C_x86 5.8 Compiler
121616-01 Sun Studio 11_x86: Patch for Sun dbx 7.5_x86 Debugger
118677-02 SunOS 5.10_x86: patch for Solaris make and sccs utilities
121208-03 SunOS 5.10_x86: ld & libc.so.1 Patch
119961-02 SunOS 5.10_x86, x64, Patch for assembler
119964-06 SunOS 5.10_x86: Shared library patch for C++_x86
120754-02 SunOS 5.10_x86: Microtasking libraries (libmtsk) patch
121621-02 SunOS 5.10_x86: Patch for mediaLib in Solaris
The product was built with the following compiler option:
"-xtarget=generic64 -xarch=amd64"
This compiler option is expanded to:
"-xarch=amd64 -xcache=64/64/2:1024/64/16 -xchip=opteron"
2. Solaris patch information for the IBM Informix Dynamic Server
a. Install the recommended patch cluster for your OS version.
The cluster is available at http://sunsolve.Sun.COM/.
For example, if you are running Solaris 10, download and install
10_x86_Recommended.zip.
b. System specific patch for VP notify problem
Some Solaris OS and system patch combinations can be one of the
many possible causes of the VP countdown problem, where the
instance appears to hang and the following messages appearing in
the online log:
12:00:13 VP Notify mechanism incomplete after 5 minutes.
This can be due to slow network file access. Will
try 12 more times.
This issue can occur in the following releases:
Solaris 10 without patch 118855-15
Resolution:
Solaris 10 with patch 118855-15 or later
For more information visit:
http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-26-102281-1
c. Sun Solaris 10 patch alert
Installation of certain Sun Solaris patches can cause a listener thread
within the Informix Dynamic Server to fail with an operating system
error of 13, preventing new network connections to the database server.
Sun Microsystems, Inc. has issued a Sun Alert Notification (Sun Alert
ID 102576) for this problem:
On Solaris 10 libnsl(3LIB) or TLI/XTI API routines May Cause Listener
Programs for Databases or Other Network Aware Applications to Stop
Responding.
This issue can occur in the following releases:
Solaris 10 with patch 118855-03 through 118855-19 and without patch
118855-20
Resolution:
Solaris 10 with patch 118855-20 or later
For more information visit:
http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-26-102576-1
d. Sun Solaris 10 Maintenance Update 4
Some IBM Informix Dynamic Server utilities stop unexpectedly on
systems running Solaris 10 Update 4, especially if the systems have
Intel processors.
Resolution: Solaris 10 Update 5 or later.
3. IBM Informix Dynamic Server is supported to work with and without Zones
on Solaris 10. Read the following document for more information, this
would be also applicable to Solaris AMD/Opteron system:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/data/informix/ids/IDS-SunSPARC-reqs.pdf
4. The UNIX graphical tools provided with this release require 64-bit
X Windows System X11R6 and Motif 2.1 or later runtime libraries.
If these tools cannot find the location of the X and Motif shared
libraries, set the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include
these locations: /usr/openwin/lib/amd64 and /usr/dt/lib/amd64.
5. The High Performance Loader utilities, onpload and ipload, require a
minimum of 35 MB of memory and 70 MB of swap space in order to run.
6. IBM Informix Dynamic Server uses the libraries and utilities provided by
the IBM Global Security Kit (GSKit) for data encryption and Secure Sockets
Layer (SSL) communication. The GSKit is bundled with the server and will
be installed on your machine as part of the server installation process.
Here are more details on the GSKit:
a. The GSKit is also bundled with other IBM products and might
already be present on your machine. If the GSKit was previously
installed, but is older than version 7.0.4.27, IDS will upgrade the
GSKit on your machine to version 7.0.4.27. If GSKit is not
installed, IDS will install GSKit in /opt/ibm/gsk7_64
directory on your machine.
b. The GSKit installation directory must have 40 MB of free disk space.
Check the following web site for the latest Solaris AMD/Opteron system
requirements for IBM Informix Dynamic Server:
http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/ids/requirements/solaris-x86.html
System Configuration
====================
1. System V IPC Parameters
On Solaris 10, all System V IPC facilities are either automatically
configured or can be controlled by resource controls.
Check project.max-shm-memory on your system, IBM recommend the value
of 4398046511104 for the IBM Informix Dynamic Server.
Refer to rctladm(1m) man page for more information about available
resource controls.
Examples:
a. To display the current value of project.max-shm-memory set to the
project and system wide, where IDS is running under the default
project, run this command:
# prctl -n project.max-shm-memory -i project default
b. To display the values of all the resource controls for a specific
IDS process, run this command:
# prctl <oninit pid>
c. To set the value of project.max-shm-memory for the project default
to 4 TB without restarting the system, run this command:
# prctl -n project.max-shm-memory -r -v 4tb -i project default
d. To perform the same action as in example c, but instead use
the projmod command to modify the attribute value for
project.max-shm-memory in /etc/project the local source of
project information file, run this command:
# projmod -a -K 'project.max-shm-memory=(priv,4TB,deny)' default
2. Location of Shared Memory
The ONCONFIG variable SHMBASE should be set to the following:
SHMBASE 0x10A000000L
3. Environment Variables
It is recommended that the environment variable INFORMIXSTACKSIZE be
set to 128 (the default is 64) if the application involves operations
which would require the IBM Informix Dynamic Server to perform recursive
database tasks (for example, cascading deletes).
Feature Notes (alphabetized by feature)
=============
1. High Performance Loader
User-defined conversion routines for the High Performance Loader must be
provided in a dynamic, shared library called ipldd11a.so. This shared
library is installed in the $INFORMIXDIR/lib directory. You can set the
location of this file with the HPL_DYNAMIC_LIB_PATH configuration parameter
in the file pointed to by PLCONFIG environment variable. For more details
see the "High-Performance Loader User's Guide".
To create a 64-bit shared library, the flags "-xarch=amd64" can be used
to convey to the compiler that a 64-bit object is to be generated.
Onpload will use shared memory during its execution. It will allocate
memory beyond the address for the server, leaving room for server shared
memory expansion.
2. IPv6 Support
IBM Informix Server supports Internet Protocol Version 6 (128 Bit Internet
Addresses) as well as IPv4 (32 Bit Addresses).
In order for the machine name specified in the SQLHOSTS file to resolve to
the correct IP address, the name services files on the operating system
should be correctly configured. If the machine has IPv6 address configured
and the listener thread is bound to an IPv6 address, then the name
resolution files /etc/nsswitch.conf should be configured to fetch IPv6
addresss. Also use the appropriate /etc/hosts setting if local machine
settings are used.
For compatibility with older IBM Informix client and server products,
assign the same hostname with both an IPv4 address and an IPv6 address.
If the listener needs to be bound to an IPv4 address and the name services
resolve the name in the order of the IPv6 address followed by IPv4 address,
then an explicit IPv4 address needs to be put in nodename field of SQLHOSTS
file. Client applications should also use the same setting.
3. ISMP - InstallShield Multi-Platform
A JRE is embedded in the installation program. If you have problems with the
embedded JRE, you can use your own. The minimum recommended JRE version
is 1.4.2.
4. J/Foundation (Java in the Server)
J/Foundation supports the JRE 5.0 release from Sun Microsystems/IBM, which
uses the Solaris native threads based Java Virtual Machine.
The JRE 5.0 is available under $INFORMIXDIR/extend/krakatoa/jre and
should be used with J/Foundation.
To use this JRE, set the value of the ONCONFIG variable JVPJAVAHOME as
follows:
JVPJAVAHOME <jvphome>/jre
where <jvphome> is $INFORMIXDIR/extend/krakatoa
For developing Java UDRs used with J/Foundation, use the JDK 5.0 which
can be downloaded from
http://java.sun.com/javase/index.jsp
http://www.ibm.com
For IBM Informix Dynamic Server ONCONFIG settings for J/Foundation,
refer to "onconfig.std" in $INFORMIXDIR/etc.
5. Large Memory Addressability (LMA)
IBM Informix LMA provides the ability to support system configurations
with greater than 4GB of RAM. Most UNIX systems are limited to 4GB of
RAM based on the memory addressing limitations of 32-bit architectures.
The values for the following ONCONFIG parameters are increased from
32-bit to 64-bit platform by LMA support:
- The maximum number of buffers in BUFFERPOOL is 536870912.
- The maximum of LRU queues for lrus field in BUFFERPOOL is 512.
- The DS_TOTAL_MEMORY, which is the total memory available for
decision support memory, is only limited by the amount of virtual
memory available (2^40)/2 MB. The sort memory comes out of the
DS_TOTAL_MEMORY memory and hence there is no explicit limit on the
amount of sort memory.
- The read ahead parameter RA_PAGES is only limited by the number of
buffers and therefore can be any value less than 536870912. The
"chunk" write algorithm is not dependent on the amount of buffers or
shared memory and can write as many pages in a single I/O as possible.
- The maximum size of any shared memory segment is 4398046511104 bytes.
- The value for SHMADD is 4294967296 kilobytes.
Please refer to IBM Informix Administrator's Reference manual for the
information about the related configuration parameters setting.
6. MQ DataBlade Module
The MQ DataBlade module provides mechanism for data exchange between
IDS and queues managed by Websphere MQ.
MQ DataBlade requires minimum version 6.0 of Websphere MQ to be installed.
7. Network Protocols
The following protocol(s)/interface(s) are supported on this platform:
TLI using TCP/IP
SOCKETS using TCP/IP
IPC using stream pipe
To use TLI with TCP/IP:
a. NETTYPE in the ONCONFIG file and the nettype field in the
sqlhosts file entry must contain "ontlitcp".
b. To enable an IBM Data Server Client to connect to Informix
Dynamic Server, NETTYPE in the ONCONFIG file and the value data
of protocol in the sqlhosts file entry must contain "drtlitcp"
To use SOCKETS with TCP/IP:
a. NETTYPE in the ONCONFIG file and the nettype field in the
sqlhosts file entry must contain "onsoctcp".
b. To enable an IBM Data Server Client to connect to Informix
Dynamic Server, NETTYPE in the ONCONFIG file and the value data
of protocol in the sqlhosts file entry must contain "drsoctcp"
If a CLI or JCC client wants to connect to IDS via DRDA while supporting
SQLI connections you could add a DBSERVERALIASES entry to ONCONFIG which
corresponds to the sqlhosts file.
When using either TLI or SOCKETS, set the "connections" field in
the ONCONFIG NETTYPE parameter and the kernel driver ndd parameter
"tcp_conn_req_max_q" to the maximum number of expected concurrent
connections.
If the "tcp_conn_req_max_q" is set too low, you will see a client
error with sqlcode = -908 and isamcode = 13. If the NETTYPE
"connections" field is set too low, you will see a server
listener-thread error with err = -25571.
To use IPC (interprocess communication) with stream pipe:
a. NETTYPE in the ONCONFIG file and the nettype field in the
sqlhosts file entry must contain "onipcstr".
Fast poll is supported with all TCP/IP and stream pipe interfaces.
FASTPOLL in the ONCONFIG file can be set to 0 to disable the fast poll.
By default the fast poll is enabled (value is 1).
Remote 32-bit applications and tools (example: ESQL/C, 4GL, ISQL) can
only connect to the IBM Informix Dynamic Server using the TCP/IP
protocol.
Local 32-bit applications and tools can connect to the 64-bit server using
either the TCP/IP or the IPC stream pipe protocols.
The protocol used for supporting MaxConnect on this platform is
"ontliimc".
8. OnLine Backup and Restore (ON-Bar)
Some of the functions invoked by ON-Bar are in a shared library supplied
by third party storage management vendors. For ON-Bar to access these
functions, the library must be installed in one of the three ways
noted below.
a. Rename the library to $INFORMIXDIR/lib/ibsad001.so.
b. Create $INFORMIXDIR/lib/ibsad001.so as a symbolic link to the
library.
c. Set the BAR_BSALIB_PATH parameter in $INFORMIXDIR/etc/$ONCONFIG
to the full pathname of the library.
This shared library must be compiled in 64-bit mode.
Informix Interface for Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) is supported on this
platform. The interface is built with TSM API version 5.3.4.
9. Optical
The name of the IBM Informix shared library for Optical on Solaris is
iosm11a.so. This library must be located in $INFORMIXDIR/lib (or must have
a link provided in $INFORMIXDIR/lib).
Refer to the "Optical Subsystem Guide" for more information about
enabling optical functionality.
10. Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM)
PAM functionality is supported on Solaris (64bit) operating system.
The PAM is dependent on the libpam.so library supplied by the
Operating System vendor.
Use of PAM can be enabled or disabled by the system administrator. By
default, IBM IDS will use the traditional authentication mechanism in
order to avoid wide spread changes required by the users.
The PAM service identifies the PAM module. This PAM module typically
resides in /usr/lib/security and its parameters are listed in
/etc/pam.conf.
11. Secure Sockets Layer
IBM Informix Dynamic Server uses the libraries and utilities provided by
the IBM Global Security Kit (GSKit) for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
communication. The GSKit provides iKeyman utility (gsk7cmd_64, gsk7ikm_64)
and a non-java utility (gsk7capicmd_64) for managing digital certificates
necessary for SSL communication.
a. Product prerequisite for iKeyman utility:
The iKeyman utility requires the IBM Java Runtime Environment
(JRE) or IBM Java Development Kit (JDK) version 1.5 or
higher with the Java Cryptography Extension (JCE) security package.
b. Environment for iKeyman utility:
- JAVA_HOME must be set to the JRE/JDK installation directory
- PATH must include <JRE/JDK installation>/jre/bin
- CLASSPATH must include <GSKit installation>/classes/cfwk.zip,
<GSKit installation>/classes/gsk7cls.jar and
<JRE/JDK installation>/jre/lib/ext/ibmpkcs11.jar
c. Before uninstalling GSKit, verify that it is not needed on your
system. It is possible that software other than Informix Dynamic
Server requires GSKit. Uninstalling entails removing the GSKit
packages with the pkgrm command-line tool
As root user run the pkgrm command to remove each package as
needed. For example, the following command removes a GSKit
version 7 package:
pkgrm gsk7bas
d. If you want to restore Secure Sockets Layer capability after you
have uninstalled GSKit, see the readme file in $INFORMIXDIR/gskit
for how to install GSKit.
12. Simple Password Communications Support Module
The name of the IBM Informix shared library for Simple Password CSM
on Solaris is libixspw.so.
Features not supported
======================
1. OnSNMP
2. Shared Disk Secondary Servers
3. Web Feature Service DataBlade Module
4. XML Publishing
Migrating to this 64-bit Version
================================
1. To migrate to this 64-bit version from previous versions of the server
(64-bit as well as 32-bit), refer to the migration process described in
the IBM Informix Migration Guide, Version 11.50.
To revert from this 64-bit version to all versions other than a 32-bit
server, refer to the IBM Informix Migration Guide, Version 11.50.
2. To revert from 64-bit 11.50 (this server) to a 7.31 32-bit server by
following the steps described in the IBM Informix Migration Guide, Version
11.50, in the section "Reverting from Dynamic Server 11.50".
To revert from 64-bit 11.50 (this server) to 32-bit 9.2x:
---------------------------------------------------------
a. Disconnect all users from this server. The 64-bit server should be
in online mode.
b. Run the following command as user informix or DBA:
$INFORMIXDIR/etc/conv/update.sh -32
c. Revert to 9.2x 32-bit by following the steps described in the IBM
Informix Migration Guide, Version 11.50, in the section, "Reverting
from Dynamic Server 11.50".
Known Defects
=============
Refer to section I in doc/ids_defects_11.50.txt for the information
regarding known issues.
Defects Fixed in current Release
================================
Refer to section II in doc/ids_defects_11.50.txt for the information
regarding defects fixed in this release.
Defects Fixed in Previous Releases
==================================
Refer to sections III to VIII in doc/ids_defects_11.50.txt for the information
regarding defects fixed in previous release.
(C) Copyright IBM Corp. 2006, 2011
