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.

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