Informix Machine Notes

                      =================================
                            MACHINE SPECIFIC NOTES
                                    FOR
           IBM Informix Dynamic Server 11.50.FC7 PRODUCT RELEASE
			    On Linux Power Series
                               DATE: 10 May 2010
                      =================================

OS Information : Built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant Update 6).
                 Certified on RHEL 5, SUSE SLES 10 and 11, 
                 Asianux 2.0 and 3.0.

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

1.  This product was built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 
    (Nahant Update 6) for 64-Bit Power Series Architecture with Kernel 
    version 2.6.9-55.EL and glibc 2.3.4-2.39, using the following 
    compilers:
	
	gcc/g++ 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-9)

    The following packages have to be installed on your Linux system:

        elfutils-libelf-0.97.1
        libaio-0.3.105
        libgcc-3.4.6
        libstdc++-3.4.6
        ncurses-5.4
        pam-0.77

    This product has been certified on:

        - Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 5 (Kernel: 2.6.18, Glibc: 2.5).
          The following packages have to be installed:

          elfutils-libelf-0.125
          libaio-0.3.106
          libgcc-4.1.1
          libstdc++-4.1.1
          ncurses-5.5
          pam-0.99.6.2

        - SUSE SLES 10 (Kernel: 2.6.16, Glibc: 2.4). The following packages 
          have to be installed:

          libaio-0.3.104
          libelf-0.8.5
          libgcc-4.1.0
          libstdc++-4.1.0
          ncurses-5.5
          pam-0.99.3.0

        - SUSE SLES 11 (Kernel: 2.6.27, Glibc: 2.9). The following packages 
          have to be installed:

          libaio-0.3.104
          libgcc43-4.3.3
          libstdc++43-4.3.3
          ncurses-utils-5.6
          pam-1.0.2

        - Asianux 2.0 (Kernel: 2.6.9, Glibc: 2.3.4). The following packages 
          have to be installed:

          elfutils-libelf-0.97.1
          libaio-0.3.103
          libgcc-3.4.3
          libstdc++-3.4.3
          ncurses-5.4
          pam-0.77

2.  The UNIX graphical tools ipload, onperf and xtree only require 
    OpenMotif runtime libraries version 2.2.x. The minimum version is 
    2.2.3, i.e. openmotif-2.2.3 or openmotif-libs-2.2.3.

3.  The Korn shell is required for the ISM and IDS alarmprogram scripts. 
    Install it as /bin/ksh.

4.  If a suitable library libaio.so.1 is found, IBM Informix Dynamic Server 
    enables Kernel Asynchronous I/O (KAIO) automatically. Otherwise KAIO is 
    disabled. The minimum version of libaio is 0.3.103.

5.  The High Performance Loader utilities, onpload and onpladm, require a
    minimum of 35 MB of memory and 70 MB of swap space in order to run.

6.  libelf.so should be a valid link on the system. Generally,
    /usr/lib64/libelf.so is linked to /usr/lib64/libelf.so.1.

7.  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 /usr/local/ibm/gsk7_64
          directory on your machine.

       b. The GSKit installation directory must have 30 MB of free disk space.

       c. The RPM Package Manager is required to be installed on the system.

Check the following web site for the latest Linux system requirements
for IBM Informix Dynamic Server:

    http://www.ibm.com/software/data/informix/linux/ids.html


System Configuration
====================

1.  Kernel Parameters

    The values of the kernel parameters that were used for testing this
    product are given below. These values might need to be tuned depending
    on the application and availability of system resources. They
    can either be dynamically changed in the /proc file system or are defined
    in the kernel sources and can be changed by rebuilding the kernel.

    SHMMAX:   4398046511104
    SHMMIN:   1
    SHMMNI:   4096
    SHMSEG:   4096
    SHMALL:   4194304
    SEMMNI:   128
    SEMMSL:   250
    SEMMNS:   32000
    SEMOPM:   32

    - The value of the kernel parameter "SEMMSL" should be set to at least
      100. This is the maximum number of semaphores per set. 

2.  Location of Shared Memory

    The ONCONFIG variable SHMBASE should be set to the following:

        SHMBASE 0x100000000


Feature Notes  (alphabetized by feature)
=============

1.  High Performance Loader

    User-defined conversion routines must be provided in a dynamic, shared
    64-bit library called ipldd11a.so. This 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 file pointed to by
    PLCONFIG environment variable. For more details, refer the manual
    "High-Performance Loader User's Guide".

    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.  Kernel Asynchronous I/O (KAIO)

    KAIO is enabled by default on this platform. It can be disabled by setting
    the environment variable KAIOOFF=1 in the environment of the process that
    starting the server.

    When using KAIO, it is recommended to run poll threads on separate VPs by
    specifying NET as VP class in the NETTYPE onconfig parameter, e.g.
    NETTYPE ipcshm,...,...,NET or
    NETTYPE soctcp,...,...,NET

    On Linux, there is a system wide limit of the maximum number of parallel
    KAIO requests. The file /proc/sys/fs/aio-max-nr is containing this value.
    It can be increased by the Linux system administrator, e.g. by

    # echo new_value > /proc/sys/fs/aio-max-nr

    The current number of allocated requests of all OS processes is visible
    in /proc/sys/fs/aio-nr.

    By default, IBM Informix Dynamic server is allocating half of the maximum
    number of requests, and assigns them equally to the number of configured
    CPU VPs. The number of requests allocated per CPU VP can be controlled by
    the environment variable KAIOON, by setting it to the required value before
    starting the server. The minimum value for KAIOON is 100. If Linux is about
    to run out of KAIO resources, e.g. when dynamically adding many CPU VPs, 
    warnings will be printed to the online.log file. In this case, the Linux 
    system administrator should add KAIO resources as described above.

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 2147483647.

        - 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. 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 2147483647. 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.

    Refer to IBM Informix Administrator's Reference manual for the
    information about the related configuration parameters setting.

6.  MQ DataBlade

    The MQ DataBlade module provides mechanism for data exchange between 
    IDS and queues managed by Websphere MQ.

    MQ DataBlade requires Websphere MQ 6.0 package to be installed. 
 
    Note : MQ DataBlade expects Websphere MQ libraries installed in the
           default location /opt/mqm. Otherwise create symbolic links 
           from /opt/mqm/lib64 to the 64-bit Websphere MQ libraries.

7.  Network Protocols

    The following protocol(s)/interface(s) are supported besides shared memory
    on this platform:

       Berkeley sockets using TCP/IP
       IPC using stream pipe (implemented using Unix Domain Sockets)

    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.

    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 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 sockets or the IPC stream pipe protocols.

    The protocol used for supporting MaxConnect on this platform is
    "onsocimc".

8.  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 the 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.

9.  Optical

    The Optical feature has not been tested with the Optical Simulator.
    The name of IBM Informix shared library for Optical 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 Linux 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 widespread 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. Processor Affinity

    The processor affinity feature, that allows the pinning of a CPU VP
    processor to a physical processor in a multi-cpu configuration, is
    supported on this platform.

12. 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 1.4.1 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. Uninstall by identifying and removing GSKit 
          packages using the command-line interface:

          Run rpm command with the -qa option to obtain a list of installed 
          GSKit packages with their exact names.
          For example:
          rpm -qa | grep gsk

          As root user run the rpm command to remove each package as needed.  
          For example:
          rpm -ev gsk7bas-7.0.4.27

       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.

13. Simple Password Communications Support Module

    The name of the IBM Informix shared library for Simple Password CSM
    on Linux is libixspw.so.


Features not supported
======================

1.  J/Foundation

2.  Basic Text Search DataBlade Module

3.  Web Feature Service DataBlade Module

4.  XML Publishing

5.  Shared Disk Secondary Servers

6.  OnSNMP


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 VII in doc/ids_defects_11.50.txt for the information
regarding defects fixed in previous release.


(C) Copyright IBM Corp. 2002, 2010