Hardware and software requirements on Linux systems

Host names

IBM MQ does not support host names that contain spaces. If you install IBM MQ on a system with a host name that contains spaces, you are unable to create any queue managers.

64-bit Linux distributions might no longer support 32-bit applications by default

If the 32-bit Linux® support libraries are not installed, 32-bit applications will not run. If you need this functionality, install the 32-bit support libraries. Here are the names of the packages that contain the required libraries:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux for System x (64 bit):
glibc.i686
libstdc++.i686
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server for IBM Z:
glibc.s390
libstdc++.s390 

Ubuntu Linux for System x (64 bit):
libc6:i386
libstdc++6:i386 
Ubuntu Linux for IBM Z:
libc6-s390
lib32stdc++6

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System x (64 bit):
glibc-32bit
libstdc++6-32bit
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for IBM Z:
glibc-32bit
libstdc++6-32bit

Check the System Requirements for IBM MQ to see which Linux distributions are supported on IBM MQ. For example there is no 32-bit support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 (all architectures), or for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server for IBM Z 8.

Java Message Service

From IBM MQ 9.3.0, Jakarta Messaging 3.0 is supported for developing new applications. IBM MQ 9.3.0 continues to support JMS 2.0 for existing applications. It is not supported to use both the JMS 2.0 API and the Jakarta Messaging 3.0 API in the same application.

Java 8 is bundled with IBM MQ 9.0 but client components are built with Java 7 compatibility flags on.

For development, a JDK is required, and a JRE is required for running. The JRE does not need to be the JRE installed with IBM MQ, but has to be one from the supported list.

For a list of supported JDKs, see System Requirements for IBM MQ.

On Linux: On the Power platform, the 32 bit and 64 bit JDKs are typically installed to different locations, for example, the 32 bit JDK is located in /opt/IBMJava2-ppc-50 and the 64 bit JDK is located in /opt/IBMJava2-ppc64-50. Ensure that the PATH variable is correctly set for your applications that use Java.

java -version

Transport Layer Security (TLS)

If you want to use the TLS support, you need the IBM Global Security Kit (GSKit) version 8 package. This package is supplied with IBM MQ as one of the components available for installation.

Installing the g++ version runtime support

If you intend to run TLS channels then you must have the g++ runtime libraries installed. The GNU g++ libraries are called libgcc_s.so and libstdc++.so.6. On RPM based systems these are installed as part of the libgcc and libstdc++ software packages.

The version of these libraries installed must be compatible with g++ version 3.4.

See System Requirements for IBM MQ for further details on the required packages for TLS support.

On 64 bit platforms, install both the 32 bit and the 64 bit versions of the package so that 32 bit and 64 bit processes can both use TLS functions.

IBM MQ Explorer requirements

RDQM (replicated data queue manager)

Pacemaker is one of the prerequisites for RDQM. Pacemaker requires that certain Linux packages are installed on the system. The list for RHEL 7.6 assumes that a minimal set of system packages has been installed that includes of all the mandatory and default packages from the @core package group and mandatory packages from the @base package group. The list for RHEL 8.2 assumes that a minimal set of system packages has been installed that includes the mandatory and default packages from the mandatory groups of the Server environment group.

The prerequisites for supported levels of RHEL 7 (Pacemaker 1) are:

• cifs-utils
• libcgroup
• libtool-ltdl
• lm_sensors-libs
• lvm2
• net-snmp-agent-libs
• net-snmp-libs
• nfs-utils
• perl-TimeDate
• psmisc
• redhat-lsb-core

The prerequisites for supported levels of RHEL 9 (Pacemaker 2) are:

• libxslt
• net-snmp-libs
• nfs-utils
• nfs-utils-coreos
• perl-TimeDate
• python3-lxml
• python-unversioned-command

These packages in turn have their own requirements (which are not listed here). When Pacemaker is installed, it reports any missing packages that also need to be installed before installation can complete successfully.

Requirements for IBM MQ classes for .NET

See Prerequisites for .NET Core on Linux for the dependencies required to run .NET on Linux.