UPDATED: Building a channel under the SEA
MISSION: REDUNDANCY Once you start thinking about redundancy, your pulse beats fast every time you have a whiff of what might be a S ingle P oint of F ailure. When that happens to you, then deep in your heart you know you have a mission in life. IBM Power Virtualisation will help you with that mission, because it allows you to set up a really robust network configuration from the Power Systems end. Between the SEAs With a dual-VIO server configuration (only available on the HMC, not IVM), you can set up a Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) in... [More]
Tags:  link_aggregation control_channel failover vio aix etherchannel shared_ethernet_adapter trunk virtual_adapter vlan |
Let urgent = urgent + 20 minutes
The "clean_dos" script which wiped out a Unix system Around 7:15 one morning, a large Australian retailer called to say they couldn't access their production system, and most stores were opening at 9:00am. We had to go on site in those days, so it was 8 am before we got there. The operating system was accessible via the console, but it was in a very sick state as many major files had been simply wiped out. Preparing for a Post mortem We had to restore from a good mksysb and the store opening was approaching quickly. Before we did the... [More]
Tags:  script expectations temproary_solution trouble_shooting problem_solving permanent_solution 20_minutes aix good unix urgent time practice |
Sizing up your file system space (and your worth)
YOUR TIME IS PRECIOUS! When you need to increase a file system, you can use our old friend smitty. But stepping through the SMIT menus could take a good 3 seconds (at least!) And as a good AIX guru, your time is precious. In a perfect world AIX gurus like you should charge your time by the nanosecond! (Just go tell your boss that the bloke who writes AIX Down Under said so.) Alas, the world is not perfect, as you may have discovered after that friendly chat with the boss. Even so, you can save a few seconds when you have to increase a file... [More]
Tags:  system decrease jfs2 disk nanoseconds guru chfs gigabyte space lv increase logical_volume aix jfs precious block_size file |
Check hair, nails, teeth, socks, bootlist
Nice clean boots I once had a boss who told me that the first rule of public speaking was to have clean boots. I can't say I've ever scientifically tested his theory, although I can certainly affirm that one clean boot a good speaker does not make. But it does remind me that it's nice to check your boots are nice and clean. So, here's how you how to check your boot images on AIX. diag You can use the diag command to step through the menus to the bootlist. Tip for SMIT and diag: you can page down in diag and SMIT using Ctrl-v page up is Esc-v... [More]
Tags:  aix bootlist bosboot normal diag service mode vios |
Roll out them changes, smitty, s'il vous plait!
The challenge You have several Unix print queues to create. Some are of type HP JetDirect, others ASCII. Some have customised settings for page width, lines per page and so on. The best way is through SMIT, but it takes a long time to step through the menus. And you have to replicate this onto several LPARs. Using smit.script The initial print queues on the first LPAR might take some time, but once you've got them all in place, you can rerun the SMIT commands on the target LPARs exactly as they were done on the source LPAR. Let me explain.... [More]
Tags:  configuration rollout aix-en-provence distribution smit script aix ssh queues unix print changes smitty printers dsh |
Global footprints: a Whodunnit for VIO server commands
VIO Server command history using lsgcl You'll pardon my dedicating two posts in a row to the VIO Server, but I had to share this one with my loyal readers. You can get a history of all commands on the VIO server command line by logging in as padmin and running the command lsgcl . That's to l ist the G lobal C ommand L og. Here's an extract from one I've just run: <!--
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Tags:  aix padmin lsmap history lsvg command shell vio |
UPDATED: Console access from VIO to LPAR
See update at end of post. From the HMC, you can open a terminal session to the console of an LPAR.
I reminisced about green screens and different console connections available to AIX in this
post . But I didn't take account of one of them: you can create a
virtual terminal session from the VIO Server to an LPAR. When you're logged in as padmin on the VIO Server you can create a terminal session using the mkvt command . mkvt command Purpose Create a virtual terminal connection to a partition. Syntax mkvt { -id lparID } To terminate... [More]
Tags:  lpar padmin terminal_session aix hmc mkvt console vio modem |
How big is AIX 6.1?
Even virtualisation has its limits There are a lot of sites out there that are on AIX 5.3 and are only now thinking about dipping their toes into AIX 6.1. Isn't it about time? And it's not that hard. As you've seen on AIX Down Under, installing a new LPAR in a virtualised environment is so easy that the temptation may be just to go creating LPARs straight away and keep going till you run out of time. Alas, even virtualisation has limitations. They're called hardware. Bare minimum CPU, memory and disk For an LPAR with a base AIX installation on... [More]
Tags:  requirements tl4 aix disk file minumum install 6100-04 memory cpu system rootvg |
Bloggers can be chusers
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Listing and
changing user details When
you add a Unix user, you probably use SMIT. That allows you to set or
list user details, such as the user's full name, password
restrictions, home directory and so on. If you're doing this for lots
of users, you'll probably want to use the command line and ideally do
it in a script. To list a user's details, use the lsuser
command . ( ls is... [More]
Tags:  ad list authentication user unix lsuser change_user_details smit aix pgrp gecos chuser active_directory |
cfgmgr error on uncabled FC port (bonus coffee time quiz)
A client writes: Every time I run cfgmgr I get the following error message: Method error (/usr/lib/methods/cfgefscsi -l fscsi1 ): 0514-061 Cannot find a child device. Method error (/usr/lib/methods/cfgefscsi -l fscsi3 ): 0514-061 Cannot find a child device. SHORT ANSWER The fibre channel adapter ports reporting errors are not cabled up to the SAN switch. Nothing to worry about. Enjoy your day. Skip down to the free Coffee Time Quiz at the end of this post if you've got nothing else * to do . LONG ANSWER (verbose mode is... [More]
Tags:  config channel 0514-061 manager fibre coffee cfgefscsi aix cfgmgr |