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 Informix password and instance installer

Joel Schumacher's profile image
Joel Schumacher posted Fri October 31, 2025 11:19 AM

Two informix password questions.

1) I installed IDS 14.10FC12.5 and installed a local Informix and ifxjson user.  It prompted me for a password.  Is this password only used to create the account and set up the onit services? Or is it used in other ways with normal use?  The heart of the question is, if I change the informix/ifxjson password later, do I need to do something to let the installation know the new password?  Or are we beyond that?  It was just needed for setup?

2) I used the instmgr.to set up a new instance.  One of the last screens (or was it the last screen) prompts for the informix password.  Note that I opened notepad and typed in the password.  And I copy/paste it.  I pasted it into the IDS setup when it wanted passwords for the two new accounts.  So no chance of typos or typing something I didn't realize I was typing.  I saw it in notepad and saw what I was copying.

But it prompts for the informix password and I paste the password I just used in the IDS setup.  Then it starts the install.  A couple of small windows quickly pop up and dissappear with messages about what it's doing.  Then it pops up this message

The database server could not be launched because the informix user password was incorrector or expired.  If it did not expire, then enter the correct password below.

If you do not know the correct password or it has expired, enter a new password in the User Manager, check Password Never Expires box, and re-enter the new password below.

Password [             ]  < and hiere is where I'd enter the new password.

There was no informix password until I installed IDS a few minutes ago.  I'm pretty sure it didn't expire in about 10 minutes.  I even tested by setting up a task manager task to run a dummy .bat file.  I set the user that runs the task as informix. So that when I saved the task, it asks for the informix password. Pasted the password (still in the clipboard) and it accepted it.  The informix password seems to be set to exactly what I set it to when I installed IDS.  But the instance installer is saying it's the wrong password.

It created things like rootdbs_dat.000, user1_dat.000 (I tried to change the default data space name to user1 which has been the standard here).  Why it's adding the _dat wasn't what I wanted, but if that's the worst thing, I can live with that.  What's next?  I don't see a service?  Are the spaces initialized, all I need to do is add the service?

Is there a way to install the instances manually?  like set up an onconfig, do the onspaces to add the various spaces, etc. set up the services?  Or a command line version of instmgr that actually works?

Sorry to bombard all of you with questions.  I've been working with Informix for over 35 years now, but most of it on the development side at JCPenney.  Then at this new smaller company where I'm now the DBA too.  Which, as most of you know, doesn't require a lot of time. Just install and go, for the most part.  Now we're upgrading to 14.10 and it seems a bit more complicated to get working.

-Joel Schumacher

Andreas Legner's profile image
Andreas Legner IBM Champion posted Fri October 31, 2025 01:25 PM

Hi Joel,

you didn't state it, but it seems you're talking about IDS on Windows, right?

Also, you mentioned upgrade, but not whether this occurs on a machine that already had IDS installed (and therefor at least an informix user)?

Why all this matters?  First of all, on Windows you get to choose between local and domain installation, with implications on whether plain (local) user informix or domain\informix is used / gets created (same for ifxjson user) which could both co-exist and with differing passwords; and later on it determines whether users will be authenticated by an instance locally or in the domain.

You mentioned "local Informix and ifxjson user", so I'm assuming local installation.  Are you sure this is what you wanted? Or should domain users be able to connect?  And could your conflict come from an already existing domain\informix user?

For the first question, yes, those users will be used in services, along with their passwords, and if a password gets renewed it also needs to be updated in the respective service  (or you choose to have the service running under the system account).

Now not having a service, for the instance you're just about to create using instance manager, seems logical as you're not able to run the instance manager to completion because of this pw problem, doesn't it?  You shouldn't try and create the service manually, also since there's more to creating an instance, esp. a number of registry entries.

Thus far very quickly ... HTH,
 Andreas

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