Installing the Informix database and Spatial module

Installation is being performed on a Red Hat Linux 9.0 system. We shall install the IBM Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) version 9.40 from CD-ROM.

Prerequisites

• Java JRE version 1.3 should be installed. (versions greater than this won't work). I installed the JRE (not SDK) for version 1.3.1_10 (the latest version I could find) from http://java.sun.com/products/archive/j2se/1.3.1_10/index.html.
• Insert CD. We shall assume that the CD is mounted at /mnt/cdrom.
• Read the documentation in /mnt/cdrom/SERVER/doc.

Installation

The following are the exact steps I took to install the server on Red Hat 9.0. Java 1.4.2 was already installed, but didn't seem to be needed for installing these options. The instructions I followed are in /mnt/cdrom/SERVER/doc/in_svr.bk.pdf, page 8 ("Installing on UNIX and non-RPM installed Linux").

1. Created user informix in the informix group (this is the database "superuser"). I didn't propagate this user to the network.
2. Logged in as root, created installation directory /opt/informix and set the owner and group of this directory to informix. The permissions on this directory are drwxr-xr-x.
3. I didn't bother configuring role separation.
4. Still as root, I set the environment variable $INFORMIXDIR to /opt/informix.
5. Changed to the root directory of the CDROM cd /mnt/cdrom.
6. Still as root, ran ./ids_install.
7. Opted to install the Informix Dynamic Server and the Demo IDS Server (options 1 and 5)
8. Answered "N" to the question "Do you want to specify SERVERNUM"?
9. Installation finished without any apparent errors.
10. The instructions in the pdf file say to run $INFORMIX_DIR/RUN_AS_ROOT.server at this point, but this didn't come up in the on-screen instructions. Perhaps this is relevant to one of the options that I didn't install. I did not run this script.

Populating the demo database

As a test, we can set up the demo database.

1. Become a "normal" user (i.e. not superuser)
2. Set the environment variables as follows (see /opt/informix/demo/server/profile_settings):

INFORMIXSERVER=demo_on
INFORMIXDIR=/opt/informix
ONCONFIG=onconfig.demo
INFORMIXSQLHOSTS=$INFORMIXDIR/etc/sqlhosts.std
PATH=$INFORMIXDIR/bin:$PATH

1. You can now run dbaccessdemo to set up the demo database (at the end of the script you can hit "N" to stop the script copying the SQL files to the current directory.
2. Run dbaccess stores_demo to get access to the database

Installing Informix System Administrator (ISA)

I could have done this during the installation procedure above.

1. As root, in the /mnt/cdrom directory, ran ./ids_install.
2. Entered "4" to install the ISA.
3. Opted to let the system install its own versions of Apache and Perl, in case my installations were incompatible.
4. Set the hostname and accepted the default port (1025).
5. Entered my email address and allowed the system to send a confirmation email.
6. Entered password for "informix" user (same as password for Unix informix user).
7. Entered read-only user called "resc" with password.
8. Opted to enable Java-enabled features and entered location of JRE 1.3 executables directory (on my computer, this was /usr/java/jre1.3.1_10/bin). (Note that newer versions of the JRE do not work with Informix)
9. Accepted the default port number of 1026 for the ISA servlet engine.
10. Answered "yes" to all remaining questions

Setting up the demo database is ISA

1. Log on to the ISA interface: go to http://marlow.nerc-essc.ac.uk:1025/ (or wherever you installed it). Log in with the username and password you specified when you installed ISA
2. Click on "Specify Local Informix Servers". Add the following lines to the config file that appears, then click "Save":

INFORMIXSERVER       demo_on
INFORMIXDIR          /opt/informix
ONCONFIG             onconfig.demo
INFORMIXSQLHOSTS     $INFORMIXDIR./etc/sqlhosts.std
END

1. The demo_on database should now appear on-line.

Installing Spatial Datablade Module

I installed version 8.20 of the Spatial Datablade Module using the following steps:

1. The only option for Linux seemed to be to install from RPM. From the CD directory I ran (as root) rpm -i spatial.8.20.UC1.LINUX.rpm. No error messages were returned.

-- JonBlower - 05 May 2004