Hardware and software requirements on 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.

For basic hardware and software requirements, see System Requirements for IBM MQ.

Host names

IBM MQ does not support host names that contain spaces. If we install IBM MQ on a system with a host name that contains spaces, we 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. For 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. For example there is no 32-bit support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Version 15 (all architectures), or for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server for IBM Z Version 8.

Java Message Service

Java 8 is bundled with IBM MQ Version 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 the applications that use Java.

We can check the version installed using the following command:

java -version

Transport Layer Security (TLS)

To use the TLS support, we need the IBM Global Security Kit (GSKit) V8 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 we 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

On Linux, IBM MQ Explorer can be installed either as part of the product installation, or by downloading and installing the stand-alone IBM MQ Explorer from Fix Central. See IBM MQ Explorer Requirements for the minimum requirements that the system needs, if we want to use the IBM MQ Explorer. Note: IBM MQ Explorer is available for use only with IBM MQ for Linux, x86 and x86-64 platforms.

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
• gnutls
• libcgroup
• libtool-ltdl
• lvm2
• net-snmp-libs
• nfs-utils
• perl-TimeDate
• psmisc
• PyYAML

The prerequisites for supported levels of RHEL 8 (Pacemaker 2) are:

• cifs-utils
• libxslt
• net-snmp-libs
• nfs-utils
• perl-TimeDate
• psmisc
• python3-lxml
• python36

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.

Parent topic: Check requirements on Linux