UNIX®, Linux, and macOS Pre-Installation

Step 1: Review Supported Platforms

Default:

• Review InterSystems Supported Platforms before installing to make sure the technologies you intend on using are supported.

• Review Supported File Systems for details on optimal file systems and mount options for journaling.

Step 2: Review Platform Specific Notes

Default:

• Review specific details for your platform:

  • AIX®

  • Red Hat Linux

  • SUSE Linux

  • Ubuntu

Step 3: Install a Web Server

Default:

• Install the Apache httpd web server. This web server supports auto-configuration during the installation process.

More:

• Install another supported web server (you will have to manually configure this web server).

• Proceed without a web server (you will have to manually configure a web server in order to access web applications, including the Management Portal).

• If you are performing an unattended installation and are not auto-configuring the Apache web server, make sure that you set the parameter ISC_PACKAGE_WEB_CONFIGURE="N".

Step 4: Configure Large and Huge Pages (AIX® and Linux)

Default:

• Linux:

  • Huge pages are recommended for most systems. See Configuring Huge Pages on Linux.

More:

• IBM AIX®

  • Large pages should be configured for high-performance environments. See Configuring Large Pages on IBM AIX®.

Step 5: Maximum User Processes Recommendations

Default:

• This step is primarily recommended for production systems or those that are expected to perform memory intensive processes.

• Ensure that the maximum user processes is set high enough to allow all InterSystems IRIS processes for a given user, as well as other default processes, to run on the system.

Step 6: Determine Owners and Groups

Default:

• Determine or create the user account that you will identify as the owner of the instance.

• Determine or create the group you will identify as group allowed to start and stop the instance.

More:

• If your operating systems contains the useradd and groupadd utilities (or mkgroup and mkuser on AIX®), you can instead create accounts for the effective user for InterSystems IRIS superserver and the effective group for InterSystems IRIS processes during the installation.

• If your operating system uses Network Information Services (NIS) or another form of network-based user/group database, it may be best to create the InterSystems IRIS effective user and effective group in your network database prior to installing. For details, see Owners and Groups.

• Review Owners and Groups.

• Review UNIX® User and Group Identifications.

Step 7: Set Swappiness (Linux)

Default:

• This step is primarily recommended for production systems or those that are expected to perform memory intensive processes.

• For systems with less than 64GB of RAM: a swappiness of 5 is recommended.

• For systems with more than 64GB of RAM: a swappiness of 1 is recommended.

• The swappiness value determines how frequently your system will swap memory pages between the physical RAM and swap space.

Step 8: Install the VS Code ObjectScript Development Environment (Linux and macOS)

Default:

• On Linux and macOS environments, install InterSystems ObjectScript extensions for Visual Studio CodeOpens in a new tab.

• This can be done before or after installing InterSystems IRIS.

• The development environment enables you to use VS Code to connect to an InterSystems IRIS server and develop code in ObjectScript.

Step 9: Acquire an InterSystems IRIS Kit

Default:

• Acquire an installation kit from the WRC InterSystems IRIS kit download siteOpens in a new tab.

Step 10: Uncompress the Installation Kit

Default:

• If your installation kit is in the form of a .tar file, for example iris-2019.3.0.710.0–lnxrhx64.tar.gz, you should uncompress the file into a temporary directory to avoid permissions issues. See the example provided below.

More:

• The installation files uncompress into a directory with the same name as the .tar file, for example /tmp/iriskit/iris-2019.3.0.710.0–lnxrhx64.

• Because legacy tar commands may fail silently if they encounter long pathnames, InterSystems recommends that you use GNU tar to untar this file. To determine if your tar command is a GNU tar, run tar --version.

Example:

# mkdir /tmp/iriskit 
# chmod og+rx /tmp/iriskit 
# umask 022 
# gunzip -c /download/iris-<version_number>-lnxrhx64.tar.gz | ( cd /tmp/iriskit ; tar xf - )

Step 11: Install the Required Dependencies

Default:

• Run the requirements checker using the following command:

  /<install-files-dir>/irisinstall --prechecker
  

  

• Install any missing dependencies.

More:

• If you try to install InterSystems IRIS with missing dependencies, the installation will fail with a message specifying which dependencies to install before rerunning the installer.

• The requirements checker always runs during instance startup. The startup fails if the requirements are not met.

Step 12: Choose Your Installation Strategy

Default:

• Use irisinstall to run a Development, Server, or Custom installation.

More:

• Use irisinstall_client to run a client-only installation.

• Use configuration merge

• Use an Installation Manifest.

• Perform an Unattended Installation.

• Add Unix® Installation Packages to an InterSystems IRIS Distribution.