How can I run the osh command of the InfoSphere Parallel Engine?

The osh command is the main program of the InfoSphere Parallel Engine. This command is used by DataStage to perform several different tasks including parallel job execution and dataset management. Normally, there is no need to run this command directly but sometimes it is useful to use it for troubleshooting purposes.

To run this command there are 3 environment variables that must be set. These are:

1. APT_ORCHHOME should point to Parallel Engine location
2. APT_CONFIG_FILE should point to a configuration file
3. LD_LIBRARY_PATH should include the path to the parallel engine libraries. Please note that the name of this environment variable may take a different name (such as LIBPATH in AIX or SLIB_PATH in HP-UX) depending on your Operating System. Note: This variable does not need to be set in Windows environments.

Here is an example on how to set these variables for Unix or Linux environments:

APT_ORCHHOME=/IBM/InformationServer/Server/PXEngine; export APT_ORCHHOME
APT_CONFIG_FILE=/IBM/InformationServer/Server/Configurations/1.apt; export APT_CONFIG_FILE
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$APT_ORCHHOME/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH;export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Here is an example for Windows:

set APT_ORCHHOME=C:\IBM\InformationServer\Server\PXEngine
set APT_CONFIG_FILE=C:\IBM\InformationServer\Server\Configurations\default.apt

In addition to these variables it is also recommended to add the location of the osh command to the $PATH so you can execute it regardless of where you are located.

Example for Unix/Linux:

PATH=$APT_ORCHHOME/bin:$PATH;export PATH

Example for Windows:

set PATH=%APT_ORCHHOME%/bin;%PATH%

If you don't set variable you will have to either cd to $APT_ORCHHOME/bin or to provide the full location to run osh.

To test if you can execute osh simply run it without parameters. If it returns with the syntax of the osh command then the environments are properly set.