File Permimission Requirements for the Instance and Database Directories

The DB2 database system requires that your instance and database directories have a minimum level of permissions.

Note: When the instance and database directories are created by the DB2 database manager, the permissions are accurate and should not be changed.

The minimum permissions of the instance directory and the NODE000x/sqldbdir directory on UNIX and Linux machines must be: u=rwx and go=rx. The meaning of the letters is explained in the following table:

Character Represents:
u User (owner)
g Group
o Other users
r Read
w Write
x Execute

For example, the permissions for the instance, db2inst1, in /home are:
drwxr-xr-x 36 db2inst1 db2grp1 4096 Jun 15 11:13 db2inst1

For the directories containing the databases, each and every directory level up to and including NODE000x needs the following permissions:
drwxrwxr-x 11 db2inst1 db2grp1 4096 Jun 14 15:53 NODE0000/

For example, if a database is located in /db2/data/db2inst1/db2inst1/NODE0000 then the directories: /db2, /db2/data, /db2/data/db2inst1, /db2/data/db2inst1/db2inst1 and /db2/data/db2inst1/db2inst1/NODE0000 need drwxrwxr-x.

Within the NODE000x directory, the sqldbdir directory requires the permissions drwxrwxr-x, for example:
drwx------ 5 db2inst1 db2grp1 256         Jun 14 14:17 SAMPLE/
drwxr-x--- 7 db2inst1 db2grp1 4096 Jun 14 13:26 SQL00001/
drwxrwxr-x 2 db2inst1 db2grp1 256         Jun 14 13:02 sqldbdir/