Informix Machine Notes

                      =================================
                            MACHINE SPECIFIC NOTES
                                    FOR
                 IBM Informix Database Server 12.10.FC5 PRODUCT RELEASE
                               ON SOLARIS 64bit
                               DATE: 09 Mar 2015
                      =================================

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

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

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

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

2.  IBM Informix Database Server is supported to work with and without Zones
    on Solaris 10. Read the following document for more information:

    ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/data/informix/ids/IDS-SunSPARC-reqs.pdf

3.  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/sparcv9 and /usr/dt/lib/sparcv9.

4.  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.

5.  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 35 MB of free disk space.

Check the following web site for the latest Solaris system requirements 
for IBM Informix Database Server:

    http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=630&uid=swg27013343


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

1.  Kernel Parameters

    a) 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 the rctladm(1m) man page for more information about 
       available resource controls. 

       Examples:

       1. 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

       2. To display the values of all the resource controls for a specific 
          Informix server process, run this command: 
         
          # prctl   

       3. 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

       4. To perform the same action as in example 3, 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

    b) Informix server Failure with a Large Intimate Shared Memory Page Size

       On certain hardware configurations, Solaris 10 can use very large 
       memory pages for Solaris Intimate Shared Memory (ISM): 32 MB or 
       256 MB instead of the previous limit of 4 MB. Informix server uses 
       Solaris ISM for shared memory segments that are forced to be 
       memory-resident by the RESIDENT configuration parameter, however 
       Informix server might experience problems if 32 MB or 256 MB pages 
       are used by Solaris (APAR 36804462).

       If you receive a message that contiguous shared memory segment
       allocation failed and the value of the SHMBASE configuration
       parameter is the same as its value in onconfig.std, then Informix server
       might fail unexpectedly. To prevent this problem, set the Solaris 10 
       operating system mmu_ism_pagesize configuration parameter to limit
       the memory pages to 4 MB for ISM. To set this parameter, edit the
       /etc/system file and add the following line:

         set mmu_ism_pagesize = 4194304

       Then restart the Solaris computer.

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)

    The IBM Runtime Environment, Java(TM) Technology Edition, Version 7.0 
    release is installed in /view/eo-ids1210-rel-o-sol64-lxldm1sun03/vobs/tristarm/sqldist/extend/krakatoa/jre and should be 
    used with the J/Foundation component.

    A Java user-defined routine (UDR) runs in a Java virtual processor. Use 
    the VPCLASS configuration parameter to specify the number of virtual 
    processors for the server. You configure Java virtual processors in 
    the "Java configuration parameters" section of the onconfig configuration 
    file. The default onconfig.std file is in the /view/eo-ids1210-rel-o-sol64-lxldm1sun03/vobs/tristarm/sqldist/etc directory.
 
    To develop Java UDRs for the server on this platform, use Java Platform, 
    Standard Edition Development Kit (JDK) 7 or an earlier version according 
    to Java compatibility guidelines. That kit can be downloaded from  
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk7-downloads-1880260.html.
 
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.

    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.

    Note: MQ extension 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.

6.  Network Protocols

    The following protocols and interfaces 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 protocol 
             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 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. The NETTYPE entry in the ONCONFIG file and the nettype field in 
             the sqlhosts file entry must contain "onipcstr".
 
    Remote 32-bit or 64-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.

    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).

    The protocol for supporting IBM Informix MaxConnect on this platform
    is "ontliimc".

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 5.3.2.

8.  OnSNMP

    The SNMP agent for OnSNMP is based on SNMP Research (SNMPR).

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 operating systems. 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.                                               

11. 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 the GSKit 
          SSL and GSKit Crypt packages:
          pkgrm gsk8ssl32 gsk8cry32 

       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.

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
======================


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.

    To revert from 64-bit 12.10 (this server) to 32-bit 11.50, 11.10, 10.00, 
    or 9.40:
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    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 9.40, 10.00, 11.10 or 11.50 32-bit by following the steps 
       described in the IBM Informix Migration Guide, Version 12.10, in the 
       section "Reverting from Informix Version 12.10".

2.  All UDRs and Database Extensions that are built in 32-bit mode must be 
    re-compiled in 64-bit mode to work with the 64-bit server. If you have 
    any UDRs that were developed on 32-bit, make sure that the proper size 
    and alignment of the data structures are used for the UDRs to work 
    correctly on 64-bit after re-compilation in 64-bit mode.


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. 2002, 2015