Installing IBM Db2 Bridge

IBM™ Db2 Bridge® is available as an RPM package from Passport Advantage Online for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) versions 8 and 9. Before downloading and installing IBM™ Db2 Bridge®, ensure that your system is configured for secure TLS communication, and have IBM™ Global Security Kit GSKit installed.

About this task

It is important that you use Transport Layer Security (TLS) for secure connections.
Attention: TLS was developed in 1999 as the successor to the popular encryption protocol Secure Socket Layer (SSL). Because of the popularity of SSL, the acronym is now synonymous with encryption technology and by association, TLS. As a result, some Db2® commands and database objects that are related to TLS encryption still contain 'ssl' in their names. However, Db2 does not use the SSL protocol for data encryption. Any references to SSL in this guide can be interpreted as TLS.

If you do not have TLS certificates and keys, the IBM® Db2 Bridge installer generates a self-signed certificate and key. This generated self-signed certificate and key is placed in the /var/lib/ibm_db2bridge_platform/sslkey folder.

If you already have your own certificates and keys, ensure that the certificate is on the host. A path to that host needs to be provided later when setting up IBM Db2 Bridge.

Procedure

  1. Download the IBM Db2 Bridge RPM package from Passport Advantage Online:
    1. Click Customer Sign In.
    2. Enter your IBM ID and password for your Passport Advantage Online account. If you don't have an IBM ID, create one.
    3. Click Download Software.
      In the Software downloads page, all of the products that you are entitled to download appear under All results. You can also search products by product name, product description, or part number.
    4. Click the result for IBM Db2 Bridge to start the download.
  2. Extract and install the IBM Db2 Bridge RPM package: 
    yum localinstall -y <extracted-rpm-file>

    This command checks for missing dependencies on the system and generates requests for permission to install them.

    In addition to installing dependencies, the RPM package completes the following tasks:
    • Creates a user called migplat, which is the owner of the processes.
    • Creates a home directory for the user in /var/lib/ibm_db2bridge_platform and installs the Db2 runtime client.
    • Creates links in /usr/local/ for the db2bridge_server and db2bridge_client commands.
    • Defines the ibm_db2bridge_platform service on the system.
  3. Optional: If it is not already installed, then install the Global Security Kit (GSKit). For more information on installing IBM Global Security Kit (GSKit), see Installing IBM Global Security Kit packages with the rpm command.
  4. Optional: Using openSSL, generate your self-signed certificates: 
    openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout key.pem -x509 -days 365 -out cert.pem -subj "/C=US/ST=state/L=locality/O=temporary org/CN=temporary certificate"

    Ensure that you have a trusted and registered Transport Layer Security (TLS) key and certificate.

What to do next

Once you have your IBM Db2 Bridge package installed, you are ready to set it up.