Hardware and software requirements on UNIX and Linux systems

Before you install IBM® MQ, check that your system meets the hardware and operating system software requirements for the particular components you intend to install.

Hardware and software requirements are set out at System Requirements for IBM MQ.

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

On 64-bit Linux® distributions, when you run the dspmqver command to display the version of IBM Global Security Kit for IBM MQ (GSKit), you might get a message suggesting that the 32-bit version of GSKit is not installed. For more information see the Command failure section of dspmqver (display version information).

If the 32-bit support libraries are not installed, any applications dependent on 32-bit GSKit 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:

For Red Hat®.


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

For Ubuntu.


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

For SUSE Linux.


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.

Java Message Service and SOAP transport

If you want to use Java Message Service and SOAP support, you need an IBM Java 7 SDK and Runtime Environment Version 7.0 or later.

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 : Apache Axis V1.4 provides support for SOAP and is shipped on the server DVD, but not installed.

For further information about SOAP with IBM MQ , see IBM MQ transport for SOAP.

On HP-UX : To run a 64-bit or 32-bit JVM use the -d64 or -d32 parameters on the command line when running a Java application to ensure the correct JVM is used.

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. To use the Postcard application described in Verify the installation using the Postcard application, you must use a 32-bit JDK.

On Solaris : The 32-bit and 64-bit JDKs are typically installed to the same directory. To run a 64-bit JVM use the -d64 or -d32 parameters on the command line when running a Java application to ensure the correct JVM is used.

You can check the version installed using the following command:


java -version

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

If you want to use the SSL support, you need the IBM Global Security Kit (GSKit) V8 package. This package is supplied with IBM MQ as one of the components available for installation.

HP-UX

To use SSL, IBM MQ clients on HP-UX must be built using POSIX threads.

Linux

Installing the g++ version runtime support: If you intend to run SSL 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 SSL 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 SSL functions.

MQ Explorer requirements

Linux: MQ Explorer can be installed either as part of the product installation, or from the stand-alone MQ Explorer support pack MS0T. See MQ Explorer Requirements for the minimum requirements that your system needs, if you want to use the MQ Explorer .
Note that MQ Explorer is available for use only with IBM MQ for Linux, x86 and x86-64 platforms.

Unicode support on AIX®

If you need to convert data to and from Unicode on your system, you must install the following file sets:


bos.iconv.ucs.com   Unicode converters for AIX sets
bos.iconv.ucs.ebcdic Unicode converters for EBCDIC sets
bos.iconv.ucs.pc   Unicode converters for PC sets

Solaris 11 operating system

If you are installing on the Solaris 11 operating system, ensure that the IPS package (package/svr4) that supports pkgadd and equivalent utilities is installed.