Pre-installation tasks for a fresh installation

Before installing Adaptive Server:

Create a “sybase” account on your system to perform all installation tasks.

The “sybase” user must have permission privileges from the top (or root) of the disk partition or operating system directory down to the specific physical device or operating system file.
Log in to the machine as the “sybase” user.

Maintain consistent ownership and privileges for all files and directories. A single user—the Sybase System Administrator with read, write, and execute permissions—should perform all installation, upgrade, and setup tasks.
Decide where to install the Adaptive Server software. Make sure that there is sufficient available disk space. Do not use any spaces in the path name of the directory.
Verify that the operating system meets the version level, RAM, and network protocol requirements for your platform.
Verify that your network software is configured.

Sybase software uses network software even if Adaptive Server and Sybase client applications are installed on a machine that is not connected to a network.

Ping the host if you are having connection problems, or to verify your network configuration.
The operating system shared memory default of most Linux releases is 32MB. The minimum required by Adaptive Server is 64MB for a default Server with 2K pages. You must increase the amount of shared memory if you plan to increase the total memory of Adaptive Server.

Use the sysctl(8) method to check and adjust the operating system shared memory parameter.
- To check the current shared memory size, enter:
```
# /sbin/sysctl kernel.shmmax
```
- To adjust the shared memory size, enter the following, where nnn is the new size in bytes (at least 64MB which is 67108864 bytes):
```
# /sbin/sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=nnn
```
  To guarantee that this value is applied every time the system is started, add this line to your /etc/rc.d/rc.local file (/etc/init.d/boot.local on SuSE systems).
On Linux RHEL Update 3.0 and higher, Adaptive Server version 15.0 running on multiple engines requires the security feature Exec-Shield to be disabled. To disable Exec-Shield:
1. Add the following lines in /etc/sysctl.conf:
```
kernel.exec-shield=0
kernel.exec-shield-randomize=0
```
2. As SU, enter:
```
/sbin/sysctl -P
```
  for the disabling of Exec-Shield to take effect.
For more information, see the Red Hat website.
If you are having trouble starting the installer, make sure you have the required operating system patches for the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 1.4.2.

For information about the required operating system patches, see the JRE vendor Web site.
You must know what product edition you are installing. Your options are:
- Developer Edition
- Express Edition
- Enterprise Edition
You must decide if you want licensing events to trigger e-mail alerts and what severity causes e-mail alerts.

If you choose to have e-mail notification of license events, you must know the:
- SMTP server host name
- Port number for an SMTP server
- E-mail return address
- Recipients of the notifications
- Severity level of an event that will trigger mail. Your choices are:
  - None
  - Informational
  - Warning
  - Error