Informix Machine Notes

                      =================================
                            MACHINE SPECIFIC NOTES
                                    FOR
                 IBM Informix Database Server 12.10.FC4 PRODUCT RELEASE
                             ON Solaris x86 64Bit
                               DATE: 03 Jun 2014
                      =================================

OS Information : Built on Solaris 10 update 8 on x86.
                 Certified on Solaris 11.

System Requirements
===================

1.  This product was built and tested on Solaris 10 for Intel using the 
    following compilers from Oracle Solaris Studio 12.2:

        Sun C 5.11 SunOS_i386 2010/08/13
        Sun C++ 5.11 SunOS_i386 2010/08/13

2.  Solaris patch information for the IBM Informix Database Server

    Install the recommended patch cluster for your OS version.

3.  IBM Informix Database 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 Database 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 GSKit8 is not
          installed, Informix server will install GSKit in /opt/ibm/gsk8_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 x86 system requirements 
for IBM Informix Database Server:

Click here for a list


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. 

    The resource controls have the following default values on Solaris 10:

           process.max-sem-nsems    512
           project.max-sem-ids      128
           project.max-shm-memory   1/4 of physical memory
           project.max-shm-ids      128

    Check project.max-shm-memory on your system, IBM recommend the value 
    of 4398046511104 for the IBM Informix Database Server. 

    On systems that have zones enabled, zone-wide resource controls are
    specified in the zone configuration.

    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 Informix server 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 
          Informix server 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 Database 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 "-m64" 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 

    The Informix database server supports Internet Protocol Version 6 (128 Bit 
    Internet Addresses) as well as IPv4 (32 Bit Addresses).
   
    In order for the machine name that is specified in the SQLHOSTS file to 
    resolve to the correct IP address, the name services files on the operating 
    system must be configured correctly. If the machine has an IPv6 address 
    configured, and the listener thread is bound to an IPv6 address, then the 
    name service switch files /etc/nsswitch.conf must be configured to fetch 
    an IPv6 address. Also any local machine settings must be set correctly in 
    the /etc/hosts file.

    For compatibility with earlier version of Informix client and server 
    products, assign each host name 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 the IPv4 address, then an explicit IPv4 address needs to be put in the 
    host name field of SQLHOSTS file. Client applications should also use the 
    same setting. 

3.  J/Foundation (Java in the Server)

    J/Foundation supports the JRE 6.0 release from Sun Microsystems/IBM, which
    uses the Solaris native threads based Java Virtual Machine.

    The JRE 6.0 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://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javasebusiness/downloads/java-archive-downloads-javase5-419410.html

    For IBM Informix Database Server ONCONFIG settings for J/Foundation,
    refer to "onconfig.std" in $INFORMIXDIR/etc.

4.  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.

5.  MQ Messaging Database Extension

    The MQ extension provides mechanism for data exchange between
    Informix server and queues managed by Websphere MQ.

6.  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. The NETTYPE entry 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 the database 
             server, the NETTYPE entry in the ONCONFIG file and the protocal
             value in the sqlhosts file entry must contain "drtlitcp"

      To use SOCKETS with TCP/IP:
          a. The NETTYPE entry 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 the database 
             server, the NETTYPE entry in the ONCONFIG file and the protocal
             value in the sqlhosts file entry must contain "drsoctcp"

      If a CLI or JCC client wants to connect to the database server through
      DRDA while supporting SQLI connections, you must add a DBSERVERALIASES 
      entry to the ONCONFIG file that corresponds to the sqlhosts file entry.

      When using either TLI or SOCKETS, set the "connections" field in
      the NETTYPE parameter in the the ONCONFIG file, 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. The NETTYPE entry in the ONCONFIG file and the nettype field in 
             the sqlhosts file entry must contain "onipcstr".

    Fast poll is supported with TCP/IP and stream pipe interfaces. To disable
    fast poll, set the FASTPOLL parameter to 0 in the ONCONFIG file. 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 Database 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 for supporting IBM Informix MaxConnect on this platform
    is "onsocimc".

7.  OnLine Backup and Restore (ON-Bar)

    ON-Bar uses the XBSA interface. 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, 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.

    Using $INFORMIXDIR/lib/ibsad001.so as a symbolic link to the library is 
    deprecated and shall be discontinued.

    Informix Interface for Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) is supported on this 
    platform. The interface is built with TSM API version 5.3.4.

8.  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.

9.  Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM)

    PAM functionality is supported on Solaris (64bit) operating system.
    PAM requires the libpam.so library that is supplied by the Operating 
    System vendor.

    Use of PAM can be enabled or disabled by the system administrator. By 
    default, the Informix server will use the traditional authentication 
    mechanism to avoid changes for the users.

    The PAM service identifies the PAM module. This PAM module usually is
    located in /usr/lib/security and its parameters are listed in
    /etc/pam.conf.

10. Secure Sockets Layer

    IBM Informix Database Server uses the libraries and utilities provided by
    the IBM Global Security Kit (GSKit) for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
    communication. 

       a. Before uninstalling GSKit, verify that it is not needed on your
          system. It is possible that software other than Informix Database
          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 
          SSL and GSKit Crypt packages:
          pkgrm gsk8ssl64 gsk8cry64

       b. 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.

11. 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 Database Extension

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 12.10.

    To revert from this 64-bit version to all previous 64-bit versions refer 
    to the IBM Informix Migration Guide, Version 12.10.

2.  To revert from 64-bit 12.10 (this server) to a 7.31 32-bit server
    follow the steps described in the IBM Informix Migration Guide, Version 
    12.10, in the section "Reverting from Informix Version 12.10".


Known Defects in this release
=============================

For information about known defects in this release, see: 
Click here for a list


Defects Fixed in this release
=============================

For information about defects fixed in this release, see: 
Click here for a list


(C) Copyright IBM Corp. 2006, 2014