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 you install IBM MQ on a system with a host name that contains spaces, you are unable to create any queue managers.

Linux support for 32-bit and 31-bit applications

64-bit Linux® distributions might no longer support 32-bit applications by default. On 64-bit System x distributions, install the required 32-bit system packages in order to run 32-bit applications.

[MQ 9.4.0 Jun 2024] From IBM MQ 9.4.0, 64-bit Linux distributions on IBM Z (S390X architecture) no longer support 31-bit applications at all. For more information, see Deprecations, stabilizations, and removals in IBM MQ.

Attention: There is no separate 32-bit client installation package. The client installation package and redistributable client contain both 32-bit and 64-bit IBM MQ client libraries. The included 32-bit libraries can be used by 32-bit applications on supported platforms where 32-bit support is offered by the operating system.

If the 32-bit Linux support libraries are not installed, 32-bit applications 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.

Note: The following dependencies will satisfy both IBM MQ applications and GSKit 8.

For Red Hat® Enterprise Linux for x86-64:

glibc.i686
libgcc.i686libstdc++.i686

For Ubuntu Linux for x86-64:

libc6:i386
libgcc-s1:i386
libstdc++6:i386

For SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for x86-64:

glibc-32bit
libgcc_s1-32bit
libstdc++6-32bit

In some cases, a 32-bit IBM MQ application might fail with an FFST showing details like this example (the uid value, which is shown in the example as 12345, might vary):

 Probe Id          :- XY051170
  Component         :- InitPrivateServices
  Major Errorcode   :- xecI_S_NOT_AUTHORIZED
  Comment1          :- xcsGetpwuid failed to get password entry for process with real uid 12345.
  Comment2          :- Details: getuid() returned 12345; getpwuid_r(12345) failed with errno=0.
  Comment3          :- A user name of "UNKNOWN" will be used, which will likely cause later authorisation failures. 
                       Note this FFST can be turned off by exporting env var AMQ_NOFFST_PROCESS_UID.

If you encounter this issue, you must install an additional 32-bit operating system component.

For SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for x86-64:

sssd-client.i686

For Ubuntu Linux for x86-64:

libnss3:i386

For SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for x86-64:

sssd-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 15 (all architectures), or for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server for IBM Z 8.

Java Message Service

[Jakarta Messaging 3.0] From IBM MQ 9.3.0, Jakarta Messaging 3.0 is supported for developing new applications. IBM MQ 9.3.0 and later continue to support JMS 2.0 for existing applications. It is not supported to use both the Jakarta Messaging 3.0 API and the JMS 2.0 API in the same application. For more information, see Using IBM MQ classes for JMS/Jakarta Messaging.

Java 8 is bundled with IBM MQ 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 your applications that use Java.

You can check the version installed using the following command:

java -version

IBM MQ Explorer requirements

On Linux, IBM MQ Explorer can be installed by downloading and installing the stand-alone IBM MQ Explorer from Fix Central. See IBM MQ Explorer Requirements for the minimum requirements that your system needs if you want to use IBM MQ Explorer.

Note: IBM MQ Explorer for Linux is available for use only with IBM MQ on 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 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 8 (Pacemaker 2) are:

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

The prerequisites for supported levels of RHEL 9 (Pacemaker 2) are:

libxslt
net-snmp-libs
nfs-utils
nfs-utils-coreos
perl-TimeDate
python3-lxml
python-unversioned-command

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.