17. Installing DB2 Express-C on SimplyMEPIS 6.0

SimplyMEPIS 6.0 is based on the Ubuntu package management system and repositories, and is currently amongst the top 5 Linux distributions (according to distrowatch.com). In 6.0, SimplyMEPIS only supports the 32-bit architecture, but the new release, 6.5, supports the 64-bit architecture.

Note that IBM does not officially support this distribution for DB2 9. Any problems you encounter using this distribution must be replicated on a supported distribution before IBM Support can help you resolve the issue.

These installation notes are based on a single-partition 32-bit installation using the 2.6.15-26.386 kernel.

17.1. Installation notes

No problems were encountered during the default installation.

17.2. Post-installation notes

After installation, I could not create the SAMPLE database, or any database for that matter. DB2 returned this strange error:

SQL0440N No authorized routine named RTRIM of
type "FUNCTION" having compatible arguments was found

I then rebooted and logged back in as root, then opened a terminal session:

su - db2inst1
db2sampl

and then SAMPLE database creation worked as expected. After this, I logged out as root, then back in as db2inst1 and all DB2 tests completed successfully.

If you want to enable external connectivity to your DB2 server, you must open up ports 523 and any DB2 instance services (use db2 get dbm cfg | grep SVCENAME to retrieve the service names and check /etc/services for the equivalent port values) in your firewall.