Starting Brokers Interactively

You can start a broker interactively from the command line, using the Broker utility (imqbrokerd). (Alternatively, on Windows, you can start a broker from the Start menu.) You cannot use the Administration Console (imqadmin) or the Command utility (imqcmd) to start a broker; the broker must already be running before you can use these tools.

On the Solaris and Linux platforms, a broker instance must always be started by the same user who initially started it. Each broker instance has its own set of configuration properties and file-based message store. When the broker instance first starts, Message Queue uses the user’s file creation mode mask (umask ) to set permissions on directories containing the configuration information and persistent data for that broker instance.

A broker instance has the instance name imqbroker by default. To start a broker from the command line with this name and the default configuration, simply use the command

imqbrokerd

This starts a broker instance named imqbroker on the local machine, with the Port Mapper at the default port of 7676 (see Port Mapper).

To specify an instance name other than the default, use the- name option to the imqbrokerd command. The following command starts a broker with the instance name myBroker:

imqbrokerd -name myBroker

Other options are available on the imqbrokerd command line to control various aspects of the broker’s operation. The following example uses the- tty option to send errors and warnings to the command window (standard output):

imqbrokerd -name myBroker -tty

You can also use the -D option on the command line to override the values of properties specified in the broker’s instance configuration file (config.properties). This example sets the imq.jms.max_threads property, raising the maximum number of threads available to the jms connection service to 2000:

imqbrokerd -name myBroker -Dimq.jms.max_threads=2000

See Broker Utility for complete information on the syntax, subcommands, and options of the imqbrokerd command. For a quick summary of this information, enter the command

imqbrokerd -help

If you have a Sun Java System Message Queue Platform Edition license, you can use the imqbrokerd command’s- license option to activate a trial Enterprise Edition license, allowing you to try Enterprise Edition features for 90 days. Specify try as the license name:

imqbrokerd -license try

You must use this option each time you start a broker; otherwise the broker will default to the standard Platform Edition license.