So, someone asked you to clean up a file system on your AIX logical partition. And you did. Now when you cd to the mount point, there's nothing in it. Zilch. Zip. Nada. Not even that mysterious lost+found directory. THIS IS BAD But don't worry. Help is on the way.   What's the deal with lost+found?   Someone once decided that it would be a great idea to have an AIX directory with a plus sign in its name. So every journaled file system (and enhanced journaled file system - also known as "JFS2") should have a... [More]

One of the benefits of the Virtual I/O server is the predictability of its commands. Commands to list something start with  ls  and device names are prefixed with the pretty guessable  -dev   In fact, I once wrote an article in praise of the VIOS command line interface (CLI).   But [language warning] boy, oh boy, do I find it confusing remembering whether I'm using the restricted shell (logged in as the user  padmin ) or switching to the full-blooded, no decaf, root access.... [More]

Tags:  ibm padmin vios ibm_i virtual_io_server aix oem_setup_env i

One of the benefits of the Virtual I/O server is the predictability of its commands. Commands to list something start with  ls  and device names are prefixed with the pretty guessable  -dev   In fact, I once wrote an article in praise of the VIOS command line interface (CLI).   But [language warning] boy, oh boy, do I find it confusing remembering whether I'm using the restricted shell (logged in as the user  padmin ) or switching to the full-blooded, no decaf, root access.... [More]

The growth in online courses is truly amazing. You can learn pretty much anything. I think that people with extensive IT experience in an enterprise environment are perfectly situated to create courses, provided they avoid some of the beginners' pitfalls (all of them mistakes which I have made). These tips are aimed at the very many IT people who are able to offer online training through a series of emails, short videos or podcasts. But the following tips (mainly the result of the lessons I've needed to learn) aren't just for online... [More]

Tags:  content_creation online_course blogging pain_point blog content_marketing

If you're a technical person, chances are you're very comfortable talking tech, but not so strong on the self-marketing side of things. Not always true but maybe you could do with some ideas on how to promote yourself and what you do.   This is my first blog entry for 18 months and I cover one simple strategy you can use to help others understand the value you bring. As an example of this, I mention this blog. Although I haven't updated it for a year and a half, I still get work from it, including writing regular paid articles... [More]

Tags:  yourself hunting job to how aix self-promotion sell

"Nothing has changed, but suddenly a service has stopped working." My colleague assured me that no changes had been made on AIX. I had good reason to believe him, as he was a cautious, experienced sys admin, and was in the middle of a change freeze anyway in the leadup to Christmas. In Australia, it is common for companies to have skeleton staff and many people taking their summer holidays, so many companies keep any configuration changes to a minimum. For retail businesses which may have increased sales around the end of December,... [More]

We geeks are special people, aren't we? While the rest of the world is occupied with big issues, we're fascinated with dates. Or at least with date and time patterns. In Australia, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and many other countries, we put the date in the format of dd/mm/yy. In other words, 11/12 means 11 December, not 12 November. So today, Wednesday 11 December 2013, we have these fantastic date and time combinations: 08:09:10 11/12/13 And then, exactly 3 hours 3 minutes and 3 seconds later: 11:12:13 11/12/13 Another 3:03:03 after... [More]

Tags:  date numbers magic

We’ve all met them: gurus who are technically brilliant, and who don’t suffer fools gladly. They are technological dragon-slayers with the ability to untangle any problem, and leave everyone else feeling a mixture of admiration, embarrassment ("why didn't I think of that?") and perhaps even a little resentment. Well, here’s some news for the gurus and the heroes: leave your superhero suit in the wardrobe. Customers don’t want heroes.   Humility Sure, it’s always good to have someone who can... [More]

After upgrading from AIX 5.2 to 6.1, a customer tried to run the lsof command  (that's the command to list open files on the system) and came across this error: The lsof was compiled for AIX 5.2. The customer tried to run this lsof command from an application GUI. The solution's obvious, right? Upgrade the lsof command to the version for AIX 6.1. You'll find the links to do that in the article at the end of the page. However, that lsof upgrade already had been done, and when I logged in via the command line as a different... [More]

Tags:  path environmental alias aix script variables .profile command cli schell env /etc/profile