Video: How to install infx

A short video demonstration of how to install infx. Less than four minutes and you are done, quicker still if you don't keep stopping to explain it.

infx v1.4b available for download

infx v1.4b is now available for download at http://www.infx.me/download.

This version mostly contains performance enhancements, especially in the dashboards, as well as some bug fixes and other features.

New features include...
  1. infx sqlhelp command line help for the SQL Admin API
  2. independent refresh of dashboard sections/consoles

Full release notes are included below.

Monitoring informix with nagios and infx

infx contains a status monitor, that will provide the real time state of an instance. It doesn't record any history, or send any notifications.

If, for example, you want to be notified when there is a problem, you need to use a third party monitoring tool. infx provides the status information about informix, and the monitoring tool records the history and sends notifications etc.

The purpose of this post is to describe the process of integrating the infx status monitor with another monitoring tool, in this case nagios.

overview

1. set up infx server with nagios user and plug in
2. create the check_infx command to output the host status
3. set up nagios sudo permissions for check_infx command
4. define the infx service check in nagios
5. restart the nagios service

infx v1.3b available for download

infx v1.3b is now available for download at http://www.infx.me/download.

This version contains bug fixes as well as enhancements.

New features include...
  1. automatic apache set up
  2. email notifications
  3. ifxclone utility

Full release notes are included below.

File systems for Informix

When you are setting up an Informix instance you have two options for storing your data. One is to use chunk files, stored in file systems. The other is to access devices directly as raw chunks. This makes a difference to how you allocate the storage. It does not change the way you create and access databases, or the SQL and other commands used.

This post will concentrate on settings and options to use on file systems for chunk files. Other posts will cover using raw devices, RAID and SAN settings etc.

Basic Informix instance customization

When installing and setting up infx, you may want to customize the Informix environment.

The infx discovery service automatically detects instances and sets their basic Informix connection parameters e.g. INFORMIXDIR, INFORMIXSERVER, and ONCONFIG. You may also need to specify a DBDATE parameter, or other environment variable such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

It is important to make these settings before starting an instance with the infx utilities. These variables will be set before start up, as well as when executing the infx services.

infx uses a multi level approach that allows you to apply settings to just one specific instance, or to all instances.

Installing informix software with infx

When installing Informix, consider installing to a version specific location, instead of accepting the default.

This will allow you to install multiple versions, and switch between them as needed.

For example, to install and test a new version, while the existing version continues to run.

Use the infx idsinstall command to automatically install Informix software to a version specific location.

Automatic Informix instance discovery and set up

After you install infx, you run the discovery service to locate existing Informix instances. This automatically configures infx to access and manage them.

The infx disco command locates instances in the output of onstat -g dis, reads their ONCONFIG files, and creates the required files and directories.

This all happens automatically in the background, the purpose of this post is to go through each of those steps in more detail.

Installing infx

Just a short note about installing infx.

The infx package file e.g. infx-v1.2b.tar.gz, is a tar archive file.

You cannot gunzip it, use tar to extract the contents directly from the archive instead.

i.e. tar xvf infx-v1.2b.tar.gz

Sorry about any confusion.

Thanks,

Jason

infx v1.2b available for download

infx 1.2b is available for download at http://www.infx.me/download

This release contains bug fixes and a few enhancements.

It fixes issues with the dashboards under Internet Explorer. Some issues are still outstanding with Firefox. I always recommend you download and install the Google Chrome browser.

It also has enhancements for setting up SSH keys to access remote hosts, and to remotely install and update infx.

The release notes are attached.

Please feel free to contact me with questions and comments.

Thanks,
Jason