This page provides important information for users of the Ice binary distributions on Linux platforms.

On this page:

Overview of the Ice Binary Distributions for Linux

Ubuntu Packages

ZeroC provides the following packages for Ubuntu:

Debian Packages

ZeroC provides the following packages for Debian:

RPM Packages

ZeroC provides the following RPMs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and Amazon Linux:

ZeroC also supplies RPMs for the following third-party packages:

The db53 packages are supplied only for Amazon Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. The db53-devel and the mcpp-devel RPMs are only necessary for building Ice from source.

On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Berkeley DB 5.3 is available as packages libdb-cxx, libdb-java and libdb-utils; some of these packages are in the  rhel-7-server-optional-rpms repository that you may need to enable on your system.

Bi-Arch Support

Recent Linux releases such as RHEL 7 are moving away from separate 64-bit and 32-bit distributions and migrating to a single 64-bit release that includes support for 32-bit packages. On these systems, all of the Ice packages listed above are provided for the x86_64 architecture, along with a limited subset of packages for the x86 architecture. The subset includes C++ run-time and development libraries, along with 32-bit versions of the IceBox server and IceStorm service. The 32-bit IceBox package installs the executables as icebox32 and icebox32++11; the latter is used for IceBox services built in C++11 mode, as described in the C++ section below.

For development purposes, you will still need to install the 64-bit development kit packages: the 32-bit development kit packages complement these 64-bit packages.

On other systems, such as Amazon Linux and SLES 12, we only provide packages for the x86_64 architecture.

Installing the Linux Packages

This section describes how to install Ice binary packages for all of the supported Linux platforms.

Installing Ice on Ubuntu

Follow the instructions below to install Ice on Ubuntu.

1. Install ZeroC's key to avoid warnings with unsigned packages:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 5E6DA83306132997

2. Add the Ice repository to your system:

sudo apt-add-repository "deb http://zeroc.com/download/Ice/3.6/ubuntu`lsb_release -rs` stable main"

3. Update the package list and install:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install zeroc-ice-all-runtime zeroc-ice-all-dev

Refer to the package summary if you would like to install fewer packages.

The metapackages zeroc-ice-all-runtime and zeroc-ice-all-dev reference the required Berkeley DB dependencies from the Universe repository. You need to install db5.3-util separately to perform admin tasks such as hot backups on your Berkeley DB databases with command-line utilities:

sudo apt-get install db5.3-util

4. Install the source package (optional):

sudo apt-get source zeroc-ice3.6

Installing Ice on Debian 9 (stretch)

Ice is included in the Debian 9 (stretch) distribution: https://packages.debian.org/source/stretch/zeroc-ice.

You can install all Ice packages with:

sudo apt-get install zeroc-ice-all-runtime zeroc-ice-all-dev

Refer to the package summary if you would like to install fewer packages.

The metapackages zeroc-ice-all-runtime and zeroc-ice-all-dev reference the required Berkeley DB dependencies. You need to install db5.3-util separately to perform admin tasks such as hot backups on your Berkeley DB databases with command-line utilities:

sudo apt-get install db5.3-util

Installing Ice on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

Follow the instructions below to install Ice on RHEL 7:

1. Add the Ice repositories to your system: 

cd /etc/yum.repos.d
sudo wget https://zeroc.com/download/Ice/3.6/el7/zeroc-ice3.6.repo

2. Install Ice:

 sudo yum install ice-all-runtime ice-all-devel

Refer to the package summary if you would like to install fewer packages.

The yum documentation provides more information about installing packages on RHEL 7.

Notes:

• Although RHEL 7 is a 64-bit operating system, we continue to support 32-bit applications by providing i686 versions of IceBox, IceStorm, C++ run-time libraries, and C++ development libraries, for example:

  sudo yum install libzeroc-ice-dev.i686
  

• This distribution depends on the Berkeley DB packages included with RHEL 7:

  sudo yum list 'libdb*'
  

  You will need to install libdb-utils to perform admin tasks such as hot backups on your Berkeley DB databases with command-line utilities:

  sudo yum install libdb-utils

Installing Ice on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Follow the instructions below to install Ice on RHEL 6:

1. Add the Ice repositories to your system: 

cd /etc/yum.repos.d
sudo wget https://zeroc.com/download/Ice/3.6/el6/zeroc-ice3.6.repo

2. Install Ice:

 sudo yum install ice-all-runtime ice-all-devel

Refer to the package summary if you would like to install fewer packages.

The yum documentation provides more information about installing packages on RHEL 6.

Notes:

• This distribution depends on Berkeley DB packages included in our third-party repository:

  sudo yum list 'db53*'
  

  You will need to install db53-utils to perform admin tasks such as hot backups on your Berkeley DB databases with command-line utilities:

  sudo yum install db53-utils

Installing Ice on Amazon Linux

Follow the instructions below to install Ice on Amazon Linux:

1. Add the Ice repositories to your system: 

cd /etc/yum.repos.d
sudo wget https://zeroc.com/download/Ice/3.6/amzn1/zeroc-ice3.6.repo

2. Install Ice:

sudo yum install ice-all-runtime ice-all-devel

Refer to the package summary if you would like to install fewer packages.

The EC2 documentation provides more information about installing packages on Amazon Linux.

Notes:

• This distribution depends on Berkeley DB packages included in our third-party repository:

  sudo yum list 'db53*'
  

  You will need to install db53-utils to perform admin tasks such as hot backups on your Berkeley DB databases with command-line utilities:

  sudo yum install db53-utils

Installing Ice on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12

Follow the instructions below to install Ice on SLES 12:

1. Add the Ice repositories to your system: 

sudo rpmkeys --import https://zeroc.com/download/GPG-KEY-zeroc-release-5E6DA83306132997
wget https://zeroc.com/download/Ice/3.6/sles12/zeroc-ice3.6.repo
sudo zypper addrepo zeroc-ice3.6.repo

2. Install Ice:

sudo zypper install ice-all-runtime ice-all-devel

Refer to the package summary if you would like to install fewer packages.

Notes:

• This distribution depends on Berkeley DB packages included in our third-party repository:

  sudo zypper search 'db53*'
  

  You will need to install db53-utils to perform admin tasks such as hot backups on your Berkeley DB databases with command-line utilities:

  sudo zypper install db53-utils

Installing Ice on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11

Follow the instructions below to install Ice on SLES 11:

1. Add the Ice repositories to your system: 

wget https://zeroc.com/download/Ice/3.6/sles11/zeroc-ice3.6.repo
sudo zypper addrepo zeroc-ice3.6.repo

2. Install Ice:

sudo zypper install ice-all-runtime ice-all-devel

Refer to the package summary if you would like to install fewer packages.

Notes:

• This distribution depends on Berkeley DB packages included in our third-party repository:

  sudo zypper search 'db53*'
  

  You will need to install db53-utils to perform admin tasks such as hot backups on your Berkeley DB databases with command-line utilities:

  sudo zypper install db53-utils
  

Setting up your Linux environment to use Ice

After installing Ice, read the relevant language-specific sections below to learn how to configure your environment and start programming with Ice.

C++

A C++ program needs to link with at least libIce and libIceUtil, so a typical link command would look like this:

c++ -o myprogram myprogram.o -pthread -lIce -lIceUtil

Additional libraries are necessary if you are using an Ice service such as IceGrid or Glacier2.

C++11 Libraries

If you build your C++ program in C++11 or C++14 mode (with -std=c++0x, -std=gnu++0x, -std=c++11, -std=gnu++11, -std=c++14, -std=gnu++14), and this mode is not your compiler's default mode, we recommend you link your application with the Ice C++11 libraries included in your binary distribution. For 32-bit programs:

c++ -std=c++11 -o myprogram myprogram.o -pthread -L/usr/lib/c++11 -lIce -lIceUtil

For 64-bit programs:

c++ -std=c++11 -o myprogram myprogram.o -pthread -L/usr/lib64/c++11 -lIce -lIceUtil

Linking with Static Libraries

The Ice C++ packages always include shared libraries. On Debian 8 (jessie), the Ice C++ package also includes static libraries.

The static library libIce.a contains the symbols for Ice and IceUtil, and also for all Ice plug-ins (IceSSL, IceDiscovery and IceLocatorDiscovery). Other libraries (libIceGrid.a, libIceStorm.a etc.) contain symbols for applications that call IceGrid, IceStorm, etc.

Use the following command to link your application with the static Ice library (libIce.a):

c++ -o client Hello.o Client.o -Wl,-Bstatic -lIce -Wl,-Bdynamic -lcrypto -lssl -pthread -lbz2 -ldl -lrt

c++ -std=c++11 -o client Hello.o Client.o -Wl,-Bstatic -L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/c++11/lib -lIce -Wl,-Bdynamic -lcrypto -lssl -pthread -lbz2 -ldl -lrt

PHP

The Ice extension for PHP is loaded automatically when the interpreter loads the contents of the file /etc/php.d/ice.ini (on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Amazon Linux) or /etc/php5/conf.d/ice.ini (on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Ubuntu). This file contains the line shown below:

extension=IcePHP.so

php -i | grep include_path

include_path = /usr/share/php:...

ini_set('include_path', ini_get('include_path') . PATH_SEPARATOR . '/usr/share/php');
require 'Ice.php'; // Load the core Ice run time definitions.

setenforce 0

Using the sample programs on Linux

Sample programs for all programming languages are available in a separate GitHub repository. Simply clone this repository and use its 3.6 branch:

git clone -b 3.6 https://github.com/zeroc-ice/ice-demos.git
cd ice-demos

Starting IceGrid Admin on Linux

You can launch IceGrid Admin with the icegridgui command. IceGrid Admin is a Java program and requires JRE 7u6 or later.

Startup scripts for IceGrid and Glacier2 services

All distributions include the following service configuration files:

• /etc/icegridregistry.conf
• /etc/icegridnode.conf
• /etc/glacier2router.conf

Distributions which use sysvinit or upstart contain the following sample scripts:

• /etc/init.d/icegridregistry 
• /etc/init.d/icegridnode 
• /etc/init.d/glacier2router 

Distributions which use systemd contain the following services:

• icegridregistry.service
• icegridnode.service
• glacier2router.service

The installation also creates a user account and group for running these services (account ice and group ice), and data directories for icegridregistry and icegridnode (/var/lib/ice/icegrid/registry and /var/lib/ice/icegrid/node1).

By default, all these services are off at all runlevels. You need to manually switch on one or more runlevels, for example:

#
# On a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 system, configure the icegridregistry
# to start at runlevel 3 and 5:
#
sudo chkconfig --level 35 icegridregistry on

#
# On a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 system, configure the
# icegridregistry to start at runlevel 3 and 5:
#
sudo chkconfig icegridregistry 35
 
#
# On an Ubuntu system, configure the icegridregistry to start at the
# default run levels:
#
sudo update-rc.d icegridregistry defaults
 
#
# On systems using systemd, start icegridregistry with the multi-user target
#
sudo systemctl enable icegridregistry.service

Before doing so, please review the script itself and its associated configuration file.