IBM made some announcements today relating to their latest POWER7 server offerings. The new line of systems includes new entry level systems and the highly anticipated high-end system, the POWER7 795 !   They also officially outlined some of the new features available in AIX 7.1. You can review the details here . I’ve discussed some of these new features here and here . The official AIX 7.1 announcement details are available here .   The announcement got me thinking about my recent customer engagements and why some have chosen to deploy... [More]

Tags:  chris linux gibson ibm power aix

After updating my NIM master to AIX 7.1 TL2 SP1 (7100-02-01-1245), I noticed a problem. Whenever I installed a new AIX partition using NIM, the resources allocated to the NIM client were not being de-allocated, even though the installation was completing successfully. Also, if I tried to run my usual ‘NIM client reset’ script (below), the resources were still allocated.   #!/usr/bin/ksh # Reset a NIM client.   if [[ "$1" = "" ]] ; then   echo Please specify a NIM client to reset e.g. aixlpar1. else   if lsnim -l $1... [More]

Tags:  nim not working tl2 issue 7.1 chris_gibson aix resources de-allocate

Do you use SSL with nimsh on AIX? No? Well, you might want to consider it. If you regularly use LPM to migrate AIX partitions from one server to another, you may have found that, on occasion , your NIM master has trouble communicating with its NIM clients afterwards. This is by design, as nimsh uses the NIM clients cpuid to authenticate with the NIM master. During an LPM operation, the cpuid of the NIM client changes and its possible the NIM master may reject the client as a result. This problem can occur even when CPU validation is disabled on... [More]

Tags:  processing error aix blog encountered on ssl lpm chris "master": nim: gibson nimsh nim 0042-001

IBMs PowerVP tool became available in November 2013. It was designed to provide Power Systems administrators with performance information in an enhanced visual format. The aim was to accelerate the identification of performance bottlenecks so that performance analysts could make better decisions based on more detailed and comprehensive data from POWER7 (and POWER8) systems. PowerVP presents both System (frame) and Partition level views of performance data. This has not been possible in the past using any single tool. Administrators would... [More]

Tags:  aix chris java powervp gibson

  After updating my AIX 7.1 TL3 system to service pack 4 , I noticed that each time I started a new ssh session with this system, there was a noticeable delay before the login prompt was displayed. I initially thought there was a network or host name resolution (DNS) problem, but after thoroughly checking related files, such as /etc/hosts , /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/netsvc.conf , I started looking for a problem elsewhere.   I used truss to assist me in my investigation. I found that the each time an ssh client connected to the sshd... [More]

Tags:  ssh truss security.pkcs11 usepkcs gibson sshd aix chris

Recent releases of AIX installation media (for 7.1 and 6.1) now contain the OpenSSH base installation filesets. This is very handy; we no longer need to download or locate the software from other sources.   One thing to consider is what this means for future AIX migrations.   If you are migrating a system (that already has a version of SSH installed) to AIX 7.1 then you may notice that the first time you attempt to connect to the server (after the 7.1 migration) the following ssh message appears:   root@nim1 : / # ssh aixlpar1... [More]

Tags:  warning: has host aix remote identification nim changed lppsource migration ssh

The latest versions of AIX now allow largesend on virtual adapters to remain persistent across reboots. I can’t find any information for this attribute in the AIX 7.1 Information center yet.   The new attrribute is called mtu_bypass and can be changed with the chdev command. e.g   ; AIX 7.1 TL1 SP2. # oslevel -s 7100-01-02-1150   ; LARGESEND is off . # ifconfig en1 en1: flags=1e080863,480<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,GROUPRT,64BIT, CHECKSUM_OFFLOAD(ACTIVE),CHAIN >         inet 10.153.20.46 netmask 0xffff0000... [More]

Tags:  aix mtu_bypass on virtual adapters largesend ethernet chris_gibson

I just had to share this entertaining presentation with everyone.   http://gibsonnet.net/AIX/ibm/Journey_in_VLAN_world.pps   Or the PDF. It's not as interesting or fun, as the animations don't work but you get the idea. I'm sharing the PDF because it appears that you can open this file on Windows fine (in read-only mode) but on a Mac it prompts for a password without an option for opening in read-only. Shame.   https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/cgaix/resource/Journey_in_VLAN_world.pdf   It was... [More]

Tags:  powervm lemal chris aix vlan vio ibm bernard gibson

The first time I ran the ’ viostat   –adapter’ command I expected to find non-zero values for kbps , tps , etc, for each vfchost adapter. However, the values were always zero, no matter how much traffic traversed the adapters.                                                                                                           $ viostat -adapter 1 10                                                   ...                                                                       vadapter:                   Kbps       tps      bkread    ... [More]

Tags:  virtual vios powervm channel vfchost aix fibre viostat vfc -adapter npiv

So, your root volume group is called old_rootvg not rootvg?   Wait……what!?   aixlpar1 : # lspv hdisk0           00c342c68dfcbdfb              old_rootvg       active   < This is BAD! hdisk1           00c342c6161c6b47              appvg            active   How did you end up in this situation? Did you reinstall AIX with some strange incantation or did some alternate disk activity go horribly wrong? Not sure? Me neither!   Fortunately the following tech-note and associated script can help.  ... [More]

Tags:  aix importvg old_rootvg chris_gibson rootvg synclvodm odmdelete

I received the following question from an AIX administrator in Germany.   “ Hi Chris,   on your blog, you explain how to find out the active value of num_cmd_elems of an fc-adapter by using the kdb. So you can decide, if the value of lsattr is active or not ... I wonder if you can find out the values fc_err_recov and dyntrk of the fscsiX device.?   # lsattr -El fscsi0 attach       switch       How this adapter is CONNECTED         False dyntrk       yes          Dynamic Tracking of FC Devices        True fc_err_recov delayed_fail FC... [More]

Tags:  fc_error_recov chris_gibson dyntrk fscsi num_cmd_elems attributes kdb aix

Make sure you are monitoring file system space on your VIOS.   Why?   If you run out of space in the root file system, odd things can happen when you try to map virtual devices to virtual adapters with mkvdev .   For example, a colleague of mine was attempting to map a new hdisk to a vhost adapter on a pair of VIOS. The VIOS was running a recent version of code. He received the following error message (see below). It wasn’t a very helpful message. At first I thought it was due to the fact that he had not set the reserve_policy attribute... [More]

Tags:  this_may_or_may_not_indic... root_filesystem_is_full vios aix mkvdev cli_debug=33 powervm 0514-548 chris_gibson the_command's_response_wa...

Here’s a question I received recently, that relates to virtual SCSI hdisk path priority.   Hi, Chris, I use MPIO for our virtualization environment. I'd like to check which path is currently used. How can I get the result? For example:   [nim:/]# lspath Enabled hdisk0 vscsi0 Enabled hdisk0 vscsi1 Enabled hdisk2 vscsi2 Enabled hdisk1 vscsi1 Enabled hdisk1 vscsi0 Enabled hdisk3 vscsi2 Enabled hdisk2 vscsi3 Enabled hdisk3 vscsi3   How can I determine vscsi0 or vscsi1 is currently carrying data through VIOS and VIOC. Thanks a lot!   By default... [More]

Tags:  priority aix hdisk gibson vios vscsi chris

A customer was attempting to move an LPAR from one POWER7 750 to another POWER7 750 using Live Partition Mobility (LPM). But he was receiving the following error message when performing an LPM validation.     This was an easy one to fix. The reserve policy on the hdisk on the VIOS (yes, it was a single VIO server not dual VIOS, don’t ask why!) was set to PR_exclusive instead of no_reserve.   $ lsmap –vadapter vhost0 SVSA             Physloc                                       Client Partition ID... [More]

Tags:  aix live mobility lpm partition gibson reserve_policy hscla27c chris