Just in case anyone is interested, the problem has been identified.
The easy install program adds the informix user (the one running the informix instance) to the local Administrators (not the same as informix-admin) group. It appears this membership is required for the service to start up. However, the customer has a policy to remove/clean up any users from the local Administrators group that have not been approved centrally. This policy is enforced at reboot. While we can add the user manually, and the service starts, upon next reboot it will be wiped again.
Customer is reluctant to allow a user in local administrators - so if anyone has any experience around this topic, I would appreciate the insight.
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Tomáš Polakovič
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Original Message:
Sent: Tue January 23, 2024 07:39 AM
From: Tomáš Polakovič
Subject: The Informix service in Cognos Easy install would start and stop right away
Thank you Patrick, yes, I suspect a patch as well. Antivirus should not be an issue - we tried to disable it as per above with no difference.
The linked article is about the Cognos service stopping, our issue is with Informix, but in theory, it could still apply - we will try to change the entry.
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Tomáš Polakovič
Original Message:
Sent: Tue January 23, 2024 06:07 AM
From: Patrick Neveu
Subject: The Informix service in Cognos Easy install would start and stop right away
Hi Tomáš,
Between last December and now, it might be a patch issue or something related to your anti-virus.
You might also have a look to this article from IBM support: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/7087846
Best regards,
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Patrick Neveu
Collaboration Betters The World (CBTW)
IBM Champion
Original Message:
Sent: Mon January 22, 2024 11:26 AM
From: Tomáš Polakovič
Subject: The Informix service in Cognos Easy install would start and stop right away
Installed Cognos Analytics 11.2.4 Easy install on Windows Server 2019 last December and it was left in working state (service and Cognos were up and could be logged into). There was no work done on the instance since - it was supposed to be used for Planning analytics authentication only - only one or more server reboots.
When I tried to continue the setup in January, found out that the informix service does not stay up. It starts and stops right away. There is nothing new in ol_cognoscm.log for today and in olsrvice.log there's only this for each startup attempt:
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09:56:25 Service was shut-down externally.
09:56:25 ol_cognoscm: Failure in SuMain(): WaitForMultipleObjects(): 0: The operation completed successfully.
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I found a doc about the informix user not being local - but it is local - as well as the informix admin group. The password is set to never expire, there is nothing useful in windows event logs. Customer tried disabling antivirus, no change.
This same Cognos version works fine on my local laptop.
Any troubleshooting clues would be really appreciated.
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Tomáš Polakovič
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