Installing IBM DB2 v. 8.x on Linux without X11

To install DB2 manually follow the below steps:

  1. Download DB2 v.8.x for Linux (I downloaded v. 8.1 Express) and transfer the gzip’ed tar-file to the Linux box.
  2. Unpack the distribution to the /tmp directory:

    tar zxf DB2ExE82_Linux.tar.gz -C /tmp
  3. Change to root and go to the unpacked DB2 directory and start the installation:

    cd /tmp/Linux
./db2_install
  4. Select the package to install – I chose “DB2.EXP” since I was installing DB2 Express.
  5. Create an user for the DB2 instance and an user for the administration server (make sure the users belong to a valid group and that the users have a home directory):

    useradd db2inst1
useradd db2as
groupadd db2inst1
groupadd db2as
mkdir /home/db2inst1
mkdir /home/db2as
chown db2inst1:db2inst1 -R /home/db2inst1
chown db2as:db2as -R /home/db2as
<associate the group with the user e.g. using yast under SuSE or manually editing
the /etc/groups file if you are so inclined>
  6. Create an instance:

    cd /opt/IBM/V8.1/instance
./db2icrt -u db2inst1 db2inst1
  7. Create the administration server:

    cd /opt/IBM/V8.1/instance
./dascrt -u db2as
  8. Set the environment for the db2inst1 user by adding the following to the users ~/.profile:

    ./sqllib/db2profile
export DB2INSTANCE=db2inst1
export DB2PATH=~/sqllib
export PATH=$PATH:$DB2PATH/bin
  9. Log in as the db2inst1 user and check the installation by creating the SAMPLE database:

    su - db2inst1
db2sampl

Sources: