IBM® Informix® 12.10 Virtual Appliance

Configuring the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance

Use this information to configure the IBM® Informix® Virtual Appliance to work with your host operating system.

Keyboard layout and settings

GNOME desktop (X11)

To adjust the keyboard layout in the GNOME desktop:
  1. Click the Computer menu (on the lower left corner of the desktop), and then select YaST.
  2. At the prompt, enter the user root password.
  3. In the YaST Control Center System Group section, choose the Keyboard Layout applet.
  4. From the Keyboard Properties window, select your keyboard layout and type from the menus.

Network configuration

The IBM Informix Virtual Appliance is configured with two network connections.
eth0
Use this connection to access the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance from your host operating-system by specifying the host name informixva and the IP address 192.168.179.100.
eth1
Use this connection to access the Internet from the Linux server. This connection uses the NAT protocol and is useful if you are required to download components to update your image.
Configuring a different static IP address: If the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance is not accessible at the static IP address 192.168.179.100, it might mean that your VMware Workstation or VMware Player was set up to use a different subnet for host-only networking.

To adjust the VMware Workstation subnet settings on Windows systems:

  1. Select Edit > Virtual Network Settings > Host Virtual Network Mapping.
  2. Find VMware Network Adapter VMnet1, and click the > button on the right side.
    If you cannot modify the VMnet1 settings, instead add a VMware Host Virtual Adapter. To add a adapter in VMware Workstation:
    1. Select Edit > Virtual Network Settings > Host Virtual Adapters > Add…..
    2. Click the Host Virtual Network Mapping tab.
  3. Select Subnet, and change the subnet setting to 192.168.179.0 (mask: 255.255.255.0).
  4. Confirm the changes.
  5. Restart your VMware image.

If you are using VMware Player instead of VMware Workstation, run the vmnetcfg.exe file in the VMware Player installation directory to apply the changes.

Setting the subnet mask on Mac OS X systems

Configure your Mac OS X system to support network communication between your host system and the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance by following these steps:
  1. From a terminal window on your host system, change directories to the following location:
    cd /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion
  2. Stop the network with the following command:
    sudo ./boot.sh --stop
  3. Modify the following three files to replace the existing subnet value with 192.168.179.100:
    config
locations
vmnet/dhcpd.conf
  4. Restart the network: 
    sudo ./boot.sh --start

After reconfiguring the subnet, verify that you can ping 192.168.179.100 from the host.

Exchanging data between the host and the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance

The IBM Informix Virtual Appliance is configured to allow for data exchange, using a variety of methods, between the virtual appliance and the host operating system.

You can communicate between the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance and the host machine using ssh and scp. See the man pages for additional information.

You can exchange data between the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance and the host operating system. You can ftp into the appliance after you first configure the ftp service.

Enabling the ftp service:
  1. On the appliance desktop, select Computer.
  2. Click YaST.
  3. When prompted, enter the Administrator (root) password.
  4. Click System Services (Run Level).
  5. Click vsftpd.
  6. Click Enable.
  7. Click Finish.

The default ftp configuration is to allow anonymous logins only. When you use ftp to access the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance, log in with user ID anonymous and press Enter when prompted for a password. You can disable the password prompt and you can enable ftp for normal users by modifying the vsftpd.conf file. See the ftp man pages for additional information.

The appliance supports two Ethernet cards. You can either use the fixed IP address 192.168.179.100 or the dynamic IP address that has been assigned by the DHCP client.

To determine the dynamic IP address, run the command ifconfig from a terminal window and find the inet addr value in the eth1 section of the output.

Note: Depending on the execution environment and the network configuration of the host operating system, the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance may be visible using one IP address or the other but not necessarily both and may or may not be visible using the hostname.

Shared folder access

VMware supports a shared folder that can be accessed both from the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance and from the host operating system. The IBM Informix Virtual Appliance is configured with two shared folders:
Table 1. Shared folders
Shared folder name Use
c:\Temp For use with Windows systems
/tmp For use with Linux systems

If the host operating system folder does not exist on your host machine, you must create it. From within the appliance, shared directories are accessed from the /mnt/hgfs directory. For example, if you create a directory named C:\Temp on your Windows host system, you can access files from the appliance using /mnt/hgfs/Temp. For Linux host systems, you can access files from the appliance using the /mnt/hgfs/tmp directory.

To use a shared-folder, you might be required to enable the feature.

For VMware Workstation:
  1. Select VM > Settings > Options > Shared Folders
  2. Change the default option from Disabled to Always enabled
For VMware Player:
  1. Select VMware Player > Shared Folders
  2. Change the default option from Disabled to Always enabled

Using VMware Workstation, you can edit the shared folder properties to share any existing host folder. You can add new shared folders or edit existing shared folders to change the location of the host directory.

Changing the VMware memory configuration

The resources available on the host machine determine the performance of the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance. Adjust the amount of memory that is used by the appliance if you notice poor or slow performance.

To adjust memory settings while you use VMware Player:

  1. Click VMware Player at the top of the appliance screen, then select Troubleshoot > Change Memory Allocation.
  2. Adjust the memory settings as required. The display shows the minimum, recommended, and maximum amounts of memory to allocate.
  3. Click OK when finished. The change will take effect after the virtual appliance is restarted.

To adjust memory settings while you use VMware Workstation:

  1. Select VM > Settings to open the Virtual Machine Settings window.
  2. On the Hardware page, select Memory and move the slider to adjust the setting.
  3. Click OK. The change will take effect after the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance is restarted.

Be careful not to allocate too much memory to the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance; doing so can limit the memory available for use by the host.

Changing the screen resolution

The default screen resolution for the appliance is 1024 x 768. You can change this resolution to suit your host computer display settings.

To change screen resolution:

  1. Click Computer in the lower left corner of the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance screen.
  2. Click Control Center below the System heading.
  3. In the Control Center, click Screen Resolution.
  4. Change the screen resolution in the Resolution list, and then click Apply.
  5. Click Keep Resolution to apply the changes.

Checking file system consistency

The fsck utility is disabled in certain virtual appliance configurations to reduce startup time. If the fsck utility is disabled, you can enable it so that the file system is checked for errors and inconsistencies when the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance boots.

You enable fsck by editing the /etc/fstab file. The number in the last (sixth) field specifies whether fsck is enabled and if so, the order in which the file systems are checked. To enable fsck, first create a backup of the /etc/fstab file, then edit the file and modify the last field of either the root or data file system line. For example, setting the last field of the root file system to 1 and the data file system to 2 causes the root file system to be checked first, followed by the data file system.

The file system consistency check will run automatically the next time the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance is shut down and restarted.

Enabling support for Java in Informix

You must have a Java development kit (JDK) installed to run these steps. To determine whether a Java JDK is installed on your system enter the following command in a terminal window:
javac
If a Java JDK is installed, usage information is displayed. If it is not installed, you receive a command not found message. If a Java JDK is not installed, you must locate and install a copy to run these steps.

The IBM Informix Virtual Appliance and the Informix demonstration instances are already configured to support Java, but you must set CLASSPATH to include the krakatoa java libraries before you can run the krakatoa examples. These instructions assume that you are at a shell prompt and that your current working directory is $INFORMIXDIR/extend/krakatoa/examples.

The demo_on Informix instance must be online. The IBM Informix Virtual Appliance is configured to start the demo_on instance automatically each time the virtual appliance is powered on. Use the createDemo, startDemo, stopDemo, and removeDemo scripts to create, start, stop, or remove the demo_on instance. The scripts must be run as user informix.

  1. Edit all of the files that have an sql extension (such as: Circle.sql, Env.sql, JDBC.sql, LO.sql) by replacing $INFORMIXDIR with /opt/IBM/informix in the file contents.
  2. For 32-bit systems, modify the Make file by removing -fwritable_strings from the definition of CFLAGS. This step is not necessary for 64-bit systems.
  3. Set the CLASSPATH environment variable:
    export CLASSPATH="${INFORMIXDIR}/extend/krakatoa/krakatoa.jar:
${INFORMIXDIR}/extend/krakatoa/jdbc.jar:${CLASSPATH}"
  4. Build the example:
    make
  5. If you are logged in as user informix, run the example. If you are logged in as developer, then you must first modify your server to configure the EXTEND role; otherwise the SQL statements that create the UDRs fail.
    ./run.sh

Starting and stopping the Apache server

The IBM Informix Virtual Appliance is preconfigured with Apache web server, which starts automatically when the virtual appliance is started. Follow these steps to start or stop the server:
  1. Log in as root.
  2. Run either of the following commands:
    /opt/IBM/OpenAdmin/OAT/StartApache
/opt/IBM/OpenAdmin/OAT/StopApache

Changing the size of the data disk (SLES only)

You can change the size of the data disk if you require extra disk space for your applications. The method for changing the size of the disk depends on the VMware client you are using. You cannot change the size of the disk that uses VMware Player.

The size of the ROOT disk cannot be changed. You can add new data disks or increase the size of the existing DATA disk.

Changing the disk size is a two-step process. You first configure the virtual machine, and then configure Linux to take advantage of the additional space.
  1. For VMware Infrastructure Client:
    1. Start the VMware Infrastructure Client.
    2. Select the virtual machine whose disk size you want to change.
    3. If necessary, suspend or power off the virtual machine.
    4. Click Edit virtual machine settings located on the Getting Started tab.
    5. Click the Hardware tab and then click the disk whose size you want to change.
    6. Enter a new disk size in the Capacity box and click OK.
    For VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion (Mac OS) client:
    1. Shut down the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance if it is running.
    2. From a command prompt, change to the directory in which the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance was installed
    3. Resize the disk using the vmware-vdiskmanager program from a command prompt. For example, to change the disk to 60 GB enter the following command:
      vmware-vdiskmanager -x 60GB DATA.vmdk
      See the VMware documentation for more information about using the vmware-vdiskmanager program.
You must now configure the operating system to use the new disk space.
  1. Start the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance if necessary.
  2. From a terminal window in the IBM Informix Virtual Appliance, run the following command as user informix:
    stopDemo
  3. Unmount the data drive by running the following command as user root:
    umount /data
  4. Start YaST by clicking Computer > YaST Administrator Settings.
  5. Enter the root password if prompted.
  6. In the System group, click Partitioner.
  7. Click Yes when the warning message is displayed.
  8. Select the disk whose size you modified in the first set of steps then click Resize.
  9. Use the slider to resize the disk, and then click OK.
  10. Exit from YaST.
Parent topic: Informix Virtual Appliance

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For the release notes, see the Release Notes page.
timestamp Release date: March 2013