Error: INFORMIXDIR /home/informix is not owned by group
Posted in 2025
Dinesh Gulve got 'INFORMIXDIR is not owned by group' running oninit and onmode on SLES 15 SP5 with Informix 15.0. David Williams suggested onsecurity and Andreas Legner asked about the install. The oninit file lacked its setuid and setgid bits (shown as -r-xr-xr--). Paul Watson gave the correct permissions, and Dinesh confirmed configuration then succeeded.
Auto-generated by Claude from the posts below — may be imperfect; read the full thread.
Topics: Server Administration, Platform-Specific Issues
Hi,
OS:
NAME="SLES"
VERSION="15-SP5"
VERSION_ID="15.5"
PRETTY_NAME="SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP5"
ID="sles"
ID_LIKE="suse"
ANSI_COLOR="0;32"
CPE_NAME="cpe:/o:suse:sles:15:sp5"
Informix:
ibm.server.15.0.0.1.Linux.64.x86_64.tar
Issue:
Where we run any command [oninit, onclean, onmode] with informix user which we get error as "Error: INFORMIXDIR /home/informix is not owned by group <unknown> (gid=-1)". The permissions for /home/informix is informix:informix with 774. We have tried multiple google searches and tries whatever is possible but the issue is not getting resolved.
Same setup on other flavors like RHEL, Rocky is working as expected.
Can anyone please help here?
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Dinesh Gulve
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Hi, https://www.ibm.com/docs/sk/informix-servers/14.10.0?topic=unix-onsecurity-utility Run onsecurity possibly with verbose or debugging options. Regards, David. ------------------------------ David Williams Senior Database Platform Engineer Flutter London ------------------------------
Hi Dinesh, this seems to indicate that the stat() call somehow doesn't return a valid group ID for group informix. How are your users and groups defined? Did you let the Informix installer create both user and group informix? Also, can you post "ls -l /home/informix/bin/oninit", please? Andreas ------------------------------ Andreas Legner Informix Dev HCL Software ------------------------------
ls -l /home/informix/bin/oninit -r-xr-xr-- 1 root informix 27614144 Feb 22 04:40 /home/informix/bin/oninit ------------------------------ Dinesh Gulve ------------------------------
Oh, this clearly is missing its s-bit super-powers - how did you install this, into this directory? Using the Informix installer and running as root? ------------------------------ Andreas Legner Informix Dev HCL Software ------------------------------
should be -rwsr-sr-- 1 root informix 29165408 May 2 2023 /home/informix/live/bin/oninit On 4/7/2025 9:08 AM, Dinesh Gulve via IBM TechXchange Community wrote: 0100019610947144-9640e4d5-f9f0-4907-9c1f-9ea268fbb7e8-000000@email.amazonses.com"> ls -l /home/informix/bin/oninit -r-xr-xr-- 1 root informix 27614144 Feb 22 04:40 /home/informix/bin/oninit ------------------------------... -posted to the "Informix" group
yes..we installed informix using root. =============================================================================== Please Wait ----------- =============================================================================== Informix Administrative Password -------------------------------- Type 'back' to go to the previous step or 'quit' to cancel the installation. In order to create and run a server instance on this platform, you must provide a password for the user that will be running the instance. Enter the password for user informix (user will be created).: =============================================================================== Server Instance --------------- Type 'back' to go to the previous step or 'quit' to cancel the installation. Create a database server instance? ->1- Yes - create a server instance 2- No - do not create a server instance ENTER THE NUMBER FOR YOUR CHOICE, OR PRESS <ENTER> TO ACCEPT THE DEFAULT: ------------------------------ Dinesh Gulve ------------------------------
Thanks a lot Paul !!!!! I am able to proceed ahead. DB configuration is successful. ------------------------------ Dinesh Gulve ------------------------------