================================= MACHINE SPECIFIC NOTES FOR Informix Dynamic Server 7.31.UC4 PRODUCT RELEASE DATE: 22 Oct 1999 ================================= PORT NUMBER: 050829(DAT CARTRIDGE) 050825(TAPE CARTRIDGE) 050827(8MM CASSETTE) 050831(CD ROM) IRIS JOB NUMBER: 23489 Informix Dynamic Server Shared Memory Parameters and Kernel Parameters: ============================================================================== Note: ADJUSTING a parameter means using the 'adjust' feature in the kernel menu configuration. SETTING a parameter means using the 'set' or 'new default' feature in the kernel menu configuration. Asynchronous I/O configuration The kernel parameters NABUF and MAXAIO must be adjusted in order to allow the Informix Dynamic Server to perform correctly. The recommend value is an 'adjust' of 128 times the number of CPU VPs. For instance, on a system running 6 Informix CPU VPs, NABUF and MAXAIO need to be adjusted by 768. If NABUF and MAXAIO are configured too small, Informix will report the error message "KAIO: out of OS resources" in its online.log file. Message queue configuration This section applies only if there are clients connected to the database using the IPCSHM nettype. Informix recommends a message segment size of 32 (kernel parameter MSGSSZ). The number of messages headers (MSGTQL) and message segments (MSGSEG) depend on the number of clients connected to the database using the IPCSHM mechanism. Setting MSGTQL and MSGMNI to 2 times the number of clients and MSGSEG to 4 times the number of clients is a good start. Fine-tuning can be achieved by monitoring the actual message queue activity using "ipcs -aq". Semaphore kernel configuration SEMMSL should be set at 1024, and SEMMNS to 4096. Note: In previous Informix release notes, SEMMNI was set to 8192 for testing. This is no longer necessary. Fine-tuning of semaphore parameters ca be achieved by running "ipcs -as" to see what is actually used. Shared memory configuration In order to allow shared memory locking in RAM, the following two parameters must be set as follows: SHM_LOCK_OK 1 SHM_LOCK_UID 0 (or -1) The kernel parameter SHMMAX must be increased to reflect the amount of shared memory configured for the BUFFERS, LOCKS, and SHMVIRTSIZE parameters of Informix. Likewise, SHM_LOCK_MAX should be increased when applicable. File descriptor configuration The parameter SFNOLIM must be configured to be slightly bigger than the number of chunks in the database. Furthermore, NFILE must be adjusted by the number of chunks multipled by the number of CPU VPs. Typically, on a database with 5 CPU VPs and 400 chunks, one would use SFNOLIM set to 512, and NFILE adjusted by 2000. Fine-tuning of NFILE can be achieved by checking the "file-sz" column in the output of the command "sar -v". Users MAXUSERS should be updated to reflect the number of clients locally connected to the database (host mode). TCP connectivity N_TCP_PCB_FREE should be adjusted to reflect the number of clients connected to the database via the network. Note: Adjusting N_TCP_PCB_FREE should adjust NTLI and NTRW automatically. If fine-tuning is desirable, the command "netstat -m" can be used to monitor how many TCP connections are used/free. ** onconfig configuration guidelines for IDS on Dynix/ptx * The number of CPU VPs must be less than or equal to the number of physical processors. * Using the processor affinity mechanism is strongly recommended. * Best I/O sizes for physical and logical log buffers are 64K or 128K. * Use of resident shared memory segments is recommended * USEOSTIME should be set to zero Machine Specific Notes: ======================= 1. The following protocol(s)/interface(s) are supported for this platform: TLI using TCP/IP IPC using stream pipe IPC using shared memory To use TCP/IP with TLI, the NETTYPE in the ONCONFIG file and the nettype field in the sqlhosts file entry must contain "ontlitcp". To use IPC (interprocess communication) with stream pipe, NETTYPE in the ONCONFIG file and the nettype field in the sqlhosts file entry must contain "onipcstr". To use IPC (interprocess communication) with shared memory, NETTYPE in the ONCONFIG file and the nettype field in the sqlhosts file entry must contain "onipcshm". 2. The Processor Affinity feature that allows the pinning of a CPU VP process to a processor in a multi-cpu configuration is supported on this port. This feature can be activated through the two onconfig parameters of AFF_SPROC and AFF_NPROCS. 3. Supported Devices for the Onarchive utility: QIC, 8mm and 4mm DAT tapes. 4. The OnPerf performance monitoring capability is supported. OnPerf was tested with ptx/WINDOWS V4.4.2 package. 5. The DB/Cockpit DBA monitoring tool is not available in this release. at this time. 6. Some operating systems lower the priority of processes as the processes age. NOAGE which controls priority aging is supported on this platform. In other words, processes running on a machine may acquire CPU usage and get reduced priority on the system. To avoid lowering of priority value of Online processes, NOAGE feature has been implemented. Processes run in real time priority when the value of NOAGE is set to 1 in the ONCONFIG file. NOAGE feature should be used only on a multiprocessor machine. The requirements of other time sharing processes running on the system need to be taken into consideration when using NOAGE feature. When NOAGE and Processor Affinity features are used together, not all the CPUs should be used as it may starve the other processes. In other words, when NOAGE is set, the number of CPUVPS should be one less than the number of physical processors. 7. Shared memory residency is supported in this release. In order to allow resident segment locking, the following kernel paramenter must be set as follows: SHM_LOCK_OK 1 And the following parameter in ONCONFIG must be set: RESIDENT 1 8. TERMINFO is supported in this release. 9. The High Performance Loader is available with this release. The onpload and ipload tools are supported. They require a minimum of 35MB of memory and 70MB of swap space in order to run. User-defined conversion routines must be provided in a dynamic, shared library called ipldd07a.so. This library must be located in /usr/lib (or must have a link provided in /usr/lib). 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. 10. Configuring the Operating System Audit Subsystem The objective of this section is to specify how to configure the OS audit subsystem to be able to record INFORMIX-OnLine audit records in the OS audit log. The following steps need to be performed in order to use the INFORMIX-OnLine OS auditing feature. 10.1. A new audit class "ix" must be introduced to the OS audit subsystem as the class for INFORMIX-Online DBMS generated audit events. 10.2. A new event "AU_INFORMIX" must be introduced to the audit subsystem. This will be an event type belonging to the "ix" audit class, and will be used by the INFORMIX-OnLine DBMS. 10.3. The OS audit subsystem must be configured to audit events of the event class designated by "ix". 10.4. The OS audit subsystem must be operational, and auditing enabled. Starting the audit system ========================= Once you have completed the configuration steps above, enable auditing with the new configuration. The OS auditing must be enabled for all users that might use the OnLine product, and for the Event type AU_INFORMIX, of the event class "ix". Please refer to DYNIX/ptx System Administration Guide Volume 2 (System Auditing) in order to accomplish this. The class type "ix" must be introduced by inserting a line defining the class in /etc/auclass. The audit class number should be within the range 91-100 (which is available for definition by users). A sample entry in /etc/auclass file is shown below. # Informix Online classes 99:ix::For Informix OnLine The event type AU_INFORMIX must be introduced to the OS by inserting a line defining this event in the file /etc/auevent. The Event type ID should be within the range 20000 - 29999 (which is the valid range for user defined audit events). A sample entry in /etc/auevent file is shown below. # Informix events 20002:AU_INFORMIX::For Informix OnLine Please pay careful attention to the formats, even of the comments, because they are parsed by audit commands and perhaps by the other audit library functions at runtime. Setting up the System Audit Mask ================================ To receive INFORMIX-OnLine Audit Data, Audit Mask must be configured to accept class "ix" for the particular user. Please refer to DYNIX/ptx System Administration Guide Volume 2 (System Auditing) for more information on Audit Masks and how to configure them. A sample entry in /etc/audit_aliases file (which stores the "alias" information that uniquely identifies an audit mask) is given below. # Normal user audit. This will audit the user as they login or change # user states. It will also audit basic DAC and priv failures. # normal: s{login, su, ix}, d{open, ix}, p{ }, o{su, ix} Important files in configuring OS audit subsystem. ================================================= /etc/audit_aliases /etc/auevent /etc/auclass HOW TO DO IT ============ To select which INFORMIX-OnLine events are to be audited, specify audit masks using the "onaudit" utility. Refer to the INFORMIX-OnLine Trusted Facility Manual (TFM) for further details. To extract audit records from operating system audit trail, use "onshowaudit -O" to extract INFORMIX-OnLine records. Refer to the INFORMIX-OnLine TFM for further details. NOTE: ----- The INFORMIX-OnLine Trusted Facility Manual indicates that the "-f" option of the onshowaudit utility (to specify the path of audit trail file) can be used for extracting audit records from the Informix audit trail only. On Sequent DYNIX/ptx however, the user has to specify the "-f" option of the onshowaudit utility for Operating System managed auditing also, to extract the audit records created by Informix OnLine. 11. Maximum size of a shared memory segment allocated by Informix Dynamic Server with (SHMBASE at 0x10000000) is about 2.75 GB. This may be limited by actual memory available and/or kernel configuration. 12. Enterprise Replication (ER - referred to as CDR earlier) is supported in this release. 13. OnSNMP is supported. Sequent ptx/Agent and ptx/Agent SDK should be installed to use this feature. Please note that ptx/Agent 1.3.1 and ptx/Agent SDK 1.3.1 packages have to be procured from Sequent Computer Systems and installed on the machine to use onsnmp and ER. Please note that SR_AGT_CONF_DIR and SR_MGR_CONF_DIR environment variables are NOT to be set. The 7.31 IDS distribution includes the following: bin/onsnmp The OnSNMP subagent itself, packaged as a separate process (referred to as a "loosely coupled dynamic" subagent by SNMP Research). bin/onsrvapd The daemon which spawns off a subagent for each server it discovers. snmp/*V1.mib SNMP V1 compliant MIB files defining the instrumentation provided with OnSNMP. snmp/*V2.mib SNMP V2 compliant MIB files defining the instrumentation provided with OnSNMP. 14. Set the value of kernel parameter SEMMNU to at least the maximum number of open ipcshm connection, plus the number of semaphore undo structures required by other processes in the system. 15. Some of the functions called by ON-Bar are in a shared library supplied by third party storage management vendors. For ON-Bar to access the functions, the library has to be installed in one of the three ways noted below. 18.1. Rename the library to /usr/lib/ibsad001.so. 18.2. Create /usr/lib/ibsad001.so as a symbolic link to the library. 18.3. Set the BAR_BSALIB_PATH paramter in $INFORMIXDIR/etc/$ONCONFIG to the full pathname of the library. 16. In this release, partition profiling can be disabled by setting a new configuration parameter, TBLSPACE_STATS, to 0 in the onconfig file. When TBLSPACE_STATS is set to 0, the output of onstat -g ppf will read "Partition profiles disabled". Disabling the partition profiling will result in fewer cache invalidations and less bus traffic due to fewer updates to the partition structure in the shared memory. This feature benefits especially the NUMA systems, since disabling partition profiling will reduce intra-quad memory updates. By default, the value of this parameter is 1 (collection of partition statistics enabled), as with earlier versions of OnLine products. 17. It is observed that when an OnLine server using the TLI protocol is shut down abnormally and restarted immediately, the following error may appear in the log file: listener-thread: err = -25572: Network driver cannot bind a name to the port. System error = 5. To bring up OnLine engine immediately, use another TCP port. Alternatively, use netstat(1A) to ensure the TCP port is released before bringing up the server again. 18. If you are using a NUMA system and have several IP addresses configured on the same physical interface please note: The Informix TCP listener thread binds to a particular IP address/port, it listens for incoming calls addressed to only one IP address. So, if there are multiple IP addresses configured on the system, a TLI client will not be able to connect to the server (If the DNS is configured to resolve the hostname on a rotary of the four IP addresses, you don't even know which of those addresses has been selected by the Informix TCP listener). The solution is that in the $INFORMIXDIR/etc/sqlhosts file, use "*hostname" instead of "hostname". It will make the Informix TCP listener bind to INADDR_ANY instead of on a particular address. 19. Online DSA Version 6.x and 7.x cannot use raw partitions on Sequent ELS (Entry Level System). The generic system limit for raw I/O transfer size is 128 Kbytes for DYNIX/ptx. It is a function of the varying disk device drivers to change this allowable limit during initialization. The ADAPTEC AHA-1542CF controller on ELS systems limits the maximum raw I/O size to 120 512-byte blocks (60 kbytes). Note that the ad(7) man page is incorrect in stating the limit as 254 sectors (127 Kbytes) as per Sequent Report 211660. The only supported disk drivers on ELS systems is the ADAPTEC AHA1542CF SCSI. For this reason, Informix Online DSA Version 6.x and 7.x will not function on ELS systems with raw disk usage. 20. Informix Storage Manager (ISM) is supported in this release. The devices that are currently supported are QIC-525 1/4" cartridge drive (model - Tanberg 3820) 4mm DDS drive (model - HP C1533A) 4mm DDS Autoloader 8mm drive (model - Exabyte EXB-8500DT) 21. Informix Enterprise Command Center (IECC) support IECC ServerAgent is NOT supported for this release on this platform. Because of this, only the following Tools within IECC Win NT/95 Client can be used against the 7.31 server. ISM Administrator Enterprise Replication SQL Editor For more information on how to configure and use these Tools please refer to IECC Tools section within IECC Users Guide. Be sure to also refer to IECC Client Release Notes. 22 The shadow password feature is supported on this platform. In order to use this feature, /etc/shadow, in addition to /etc/passwd, must be in use. This is the default behavior on Sequent. 23. IDS 7.31 is supported only on Dynix/ptx 4.4.2 or higher operating system releases. In order to assure full Y2K compliance of the OS, please contact Sequent Service. Sequent Service can conduct an audit of the installed Sequent software components and deliver a fastpatch if applicable. 24. Users of this release of 7.31 should have these or higher versions of the following packages installed on their machines DYNIX/ptx(R) Base V4.4.2.4 DYNIX/ptx(R) Public Software V4.4.2 DYNIX/ptx(R) Encryption V4.4.2 ptx/LAN v4.5.1 ptx/TCP/IP V4.4.3 ptx/NFS v4.6.2 ptx/EFS v1.3.3 ptx/SVM v2.0.3 ptx/WINDOWS V4.4.1 ptx/WINDOWS Contributed V4.4.1 ptx/C++ v5.0.11 ptx/AGENT V1.3.1 ptx/AGENT SDK V1.3.1 25. Communications Support Service using Communications Support Module (CSM) with - Simple-Password is supported in this release. There is a known issue(107801) with CSM, when ClientSDK 2.20.x is installed on top of 7.31.x IDS server release. A PTS entry is logged for it. As a consequence of this bug, the IDS server, when initialized with CSM option, fails to build sysmaster. Please note the following workaround to avoid this problem. In your concsm.cfg file, please specify the library path as shown below - (Refer to Section 4-14 of Administrator's Guide for Informix Dynamic Server Version 7.3, for details on how to configure and use CSM) For Simple-Password CSM: SPWDCSM ("/usr/informix/lib/csm/ispws07a.so", "", "") Please note that this problem is specific to ClientSDK 2.20.x and IDS 7.31.x combination and ONLY occurs when used with CSM option. This will be fixed in future releases. 26. The following is a list of bugs fixed in this release 1) Bug Number : 100746 Short Description: DISABLING PASSWORD SHADOWING ON DYNIX/PTX GIVES ERROR 951 WHEN ATTEMPTING TO CONNECT TO DBSERVER 2) Bug Number : 100936 Short Description: ISM_COMPRESSION=TRUE DOESN'T CREATE A COMPRESSED ARCHIVE OF THE DATA ON SEQUENT