Finding Informix DB Server - informix

Question

I have a server and I know that there is an Informix installed on it, but I don't know who installed it. There is closed source client connecting to this server but I cannot get anything about it apart from username and password. I have no idea how to connect it, I don't know what would be the port number and server name of it. I have downloaded SQuirreL with JDBC Informix drivers.
How can I connect to JDBC Informix server without knowing the port and server name?

Answer 1

In short, you will need the port number, server name (and database name as well) to connect to Informix.
Assuming that you have permissions to hunt around on the box where Informix is installed, there are a few places where the details about your Informix server are likely to be found. Since I don't see any details as to the platform on which IDS (Informix) is installed in your case, I'll try to provide info for both Unix and Windows platforms. But first, a bit of background:
There are not too many parameters needed to set up a connection to Informix. Typically, all you would need are:
username
password
Server IP Address
Port
Server Name (the name of the Informix instance)
Database Name (the name of the db on [Server Name] to which you want to connect)
It sounds like you need to find out the last three.
Linux:
On a Linux platform (as well as Windows, I believe), there are environment variables that point the way to where on your system Informix is installed. The most important of these is %INFORMIXDIR%, which points to the root directory of your Informix installation. A lot of the time however, Informix is installed in /opt, so try there.
In %INFORMIXDIR%/etc on typical installs is a file called sqlhosts (it may have a suffix for your specific server instance, but it'll start with sqlhosts). In this file is the server name, and possibly the port number. %INFORMIXDIR%/etc/sqlhosts contains plaintext data in the following format:
ServerName NetType HostName Port/ServicesName
The first value is the server name you seek. The fourth value (Port/ServicesName) is either the port number, or the name of the entry in /etc/services which references the port number. If you don't see a port number, look in /etc/services.
For example, sqlhosts will probably contain something like this:
myservername onsoctcp informix.mydomain.com 12345
In this case, your server name is "myservername" and the port is 12345
Alternatively, it could look like this:
myservername onsoctcp informix.mydomain.com informixservice
in which case you would have to go look in /etc/services for a line that says
informixservice 12345/tcp
which will tell you the port.
Windows
Caveat: I've never dealt with Informix servers installed on Windows, however based on the IBM documentation, it doesn't seem much different in regards to the task at hand.
Instead of the file %INFORMIXDIR/etc/sqlhosts, the information you seek is contained in the registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\INFORMIX\SQLHOSTS
Use regedit.exe to read the values stored in this entry.
If you don't find a port number in that reg key, the Windows equivalent of Unix's /etc/services file is
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\services
Examine this file with a text editor (notepad works fine).
Hopefully this helps. Good luck.

Answer 2

*Short answer: You can not .*
This kind of situation involves security issues , so , the database doesn't "publish" it self at your network for everyone knows it's there.
If you need discovery without contact the administrator of your (your?) environment, will need to use hackers techniques (nmap utility already help here) to discover some informations (IP, Port) and you still missing informations like servername, protocol ,username and password.
Just caution, because attempt of connection at Informix database listener will be logged.
Now, if you have access at the server where the database is you can look for sqlhosts file and get all this.
Another alternative, more reasonable is just ask to your DBA/Admin the configurations justifying why you want the access.

Answer 3

You CAN find servers on a host:
onstat -g dis
will listed servers even if they are offline (or potentially decommissioned).
Server information is in /INFORMIXTMP on UNIX/Linux and I would expect a simlar folder under C:\ in Windows.

Answer 4

You should add more information about working environment: what platform your client is, what platform your server is, do you have access to server machine etc.
If you know that something from your computer connects to other machine then you can use netstat to discover it. If you work on Linux then there is -p option that shows pid and application name to each connection.
At first we have to discover pid of closed source client:
[root#test1 ~]# ps aux | grep my_app
root 12457 0.0 3.2 3342440 333336 ? Sl Mar06 21:01 java -cp /usr/local/bin/my_app...
Now when I know pid I can use netstat:
[root#test1 ~]# netstat -tnp | grep 12457
tcp 0 0 ::ffff:169.0.1.71:55850 ::ffff:169.0.1.74:9088 ESTABLISHED 12457/java
From this output I can see that Infomix probably works on port 9088 of 169.0.1.74 machine.
On Windows you can use TCPView from SysInternals to see similar things.
On Windows you can also check ODBC Data Source Administrator (both 32 and 64 bit) to see if there is Informix driver in use.