Programming Zen

DB2 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Antonio Cangiano

Earlier today I headed over to the local Apple Store to purchase a copy of Snow Leopard, the newest version of Apple’s operating system. There was a decent line up, as I expected. Not the kind of line up you’d encounter with the launch of a new iPhone, but it was fairly busy for a Friday morning. When I arrived, I took my place at the end of the queue where rumors were swirling around about the store having sold out of single copies of Snow Leopard in its first hour. Luckily, that was just a rumor as I suspected, and they still had a few copies left. So I got my copy for $39.99 (CND) including taxes and left.

The installation was pretty much automatic and took roughly an hour. No versions to select from, no serial numbers to insert, no online activations, and a price that “keeps honest people honest”. Yes, it’s just an update, but $25 (US) for an improved operating system is definitely a fair price. Microsoft are you listening? My first impression is that Snow Leopard is a very polished version of Leopard and it’s darn fast. Well done Apple.

DB2 users may be wondering if it is safe to install this version of Mac OS X 10.6 or if their existing installation will go awry. I’m happy to report that DB2 Express-C 9.5 FixPack 2 for Mac works fine on Snow Leopard. Both pre-existing installations and brand new installations of DB2 work properly, I can attest to that. So install away my friends!

Installing DB2 on Snow Leopard

Antonio Cangiano

Antonio Cangiano is an Engineering Manager and AI Specialist at IBM. He authored Ruby on Rails for Microsoft Developers (Wrox, 2009) and Technical Blogging (The Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2012, 2019). He is also the Marketing Lead for Cognitive Class, an educational initiative which he helped grow from zero to over 3 Million students. You can follow him on Twitter.

15 responses to “DB2 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard”

  1. Leon Katsnelson

    Antonio, awesome as usual. I think a lot of people will be glad to hear that DB2 works on the latest version of Mac OS.

    Leon Katsnelson
    http://FreeDB2.com

  2. Barry

    Thanks for doing this Anthony. I finished upgrading my laptop and Mac Pro, and all is well. *happy face*

  3. Stéphane J

    Thanks for the test 🙂

  4. Shawn

    It doesn’t work for me after the upgrade. When running db2start I get this..

    SQL5043N Support for one or more communications protocols failed to start successfully. However, core database manager functionality started successfully.

  5. Antonio Cangiano

    Hi Shawn,

    that’s definitely odd, I didn’t experience any issues.

    – Did you get the error when issuing ‘sudo db2start’?
    – Is your pre-existing installation installed as root or as your regular user?
    – Do you still have a /etc/sysctl.conf file?

    Thanks in advance,
    Antonio

  6. Yair

    Hi,

    I’m having the same problem as Shawn. Getting a SQL5043N error. I have /etc/sysctl.conf and it looks fine…

    Thanks,
    Yair

  7. Yair

    Sorry about the mess, just wanted to update that I solved the problem. Seems that the upgrade backs up the /etc/services file into services~previous, and creates a new one without the line for the db2 service. You need to find the line in the old /etc/services that has the service definition for db2 and add it back to the new /etc/services, then run db2stop and db2start.

    Cheers

  8. Ahmed

    Hello,
    I have got a new MacBook Pro. I want to install Oracle into it. The only problem I have is that I can’t find sysctl.conf file. I have done “find” search but no effect. Does anybody know how to fix that problem?

  9. Antonio Cangiano

    Ahmed, I assume that you mean DB2, but either way, just create the file /etc/sysctl.conf file if it doesn’t exist.

  10. Michael Walker

    Sigh,

    I am having trouble getting any browser to play nicely with db2fs. When I try with Firefox 3.5.3, Mac OS throws up a “firefox-bin quit unexpectedly” dialog and db2fs pops up a “DBI1435E” dialog (says it can’t find supported browser).

    Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3

    Any ideas as to what is going wrong?

    Thanks,
    Michael

  11. Bill M

    The above link to the fixpack leads me to the general download of xpress-C, but I can find no download for the fixpack, just the one for Leopard. Can you tell me how I can get to this fixpack download?

  12. Balazs

    Michael, you can use db2fs with Firefox 2. Since it is unmaintained, it is best to save it under a separate tree, not under Applications, that way you won’t accidentally launch it and use it.

  13. Giancarlo

    I have the DBI1435E” dialog (says it can’t find supported browser) too and I used several browsers.
    Any solution.
    Using Snow Leopard…

  14. Marco

    I too encountered the SQL5043N message after upgrading toe Snow Leopard and resolved it by restoring the db2service line. Thanks Antonio and Yair

  15. Rene

    I upgraded to Mac OS Lion. I installed the DirectoryService from Snow Leopard to avoid the linkage errors. db2start works find without exceptions but when I try to connect using port 50001 i get the following error:

    2012-05-09-21.05.17.429490+120 I5878E352 LEVEL: Event
    PID : 725 TID : 4429311488 PROC : db2ckpw
    INSTANCE: felderr NODE : 000
    EDUID : 1 EDUNAME: db2sysc
    FUNCTION: DB2 UDB, trace services, pdInvokeCalloutScript, probe:20
    STOP : Completed invoking /Users/felderr/sqllib/bin/db2cos_trap

    2012-05-09-21.05.17.430184+120 E6231E1410 LEVEL: Critical
    PID : 725 TID : 4429311488 PROC : db2ckpw
    INSTANCE: felderr NODE : 000
    EDUID : 1 EDUNAME: db2sysc
    FUNCTION: DB2 UDB, oper system services, sqloEDUCodeTrapHandler, probe:10
    MESSAGE : ADM14001C An unexpected and critical error has occurred: “Trap”. The
    instance may have been shutdown as a result. “Automatic” FODC (First
    Occurrence Data Capture) has been invoked and diagnostic information
    has been recorded in directory “/Users/felderr/sqllib/db2dump/”.
    Please look in this directory for detailed evidence about what
    happened and contact IBM support if necessary to diagnose the
    problem.
    DATA #1 : Signal Number Recieved, 4 bytes
    6
    DATA #2 : Siginfo, 104 bytes

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