Whilst working with one of my AIX customers recently I discovered a problem with NIMSH and SSL. The customer had updated their NIM master from AIX 7.1 TL4 SP1 to AIX 7.1 TL4 SP3 . After the SP update, any attempt to connect to a NIM client (over NIMSH+SSL), from the NIM master, would simply hang. For example, we tried to list the filesets on the NIM client with this command, which never returned any output.   [root@750lpar4]/ # nim -o lslpp 750lpar9   The /var/adm/ras/nimsh.log file, on the NIM client, showed that the NIMSH session... [More]

Tags:  nimsh nim sp3 hang lslpp chris ssl 7.1 aix 7100-04-03-1642 tl4 gibson iv93152 -o libssl.so

At the IBM Technical Symposium in Sydney last week, a person approached me to discuss NIM and some of its capabilities. During the conversation we discussed how NIM could be used to copy files from the NIM master to its NIM clients. I promised to send them some information on how to achieve this ASAP. They were smart and followed up with an email the next day! They’d even tried to configure this on their systems but hit a small problem.   "Hello Chris,   So trying to push out a new netbackup tar file to one of our nim... [More]

Tags:  resource files server copy master sync blog chris aix client gibson nim

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

On the odd occasion, NIM may report that a resource is allocated to a NIM client, when, in fact, it is not. Typically, you’d check that the resource was, in fact, not allocated for use to any NIM client and if it was, you would reset the client; and this would resolve the issue. But if that doesn’t work, you may need to take an additional action to resolve the problem. This doesn’t happen very often but it can frustrate you when it does.   Here’s an example of the problem. I try to remove an lpp_source resource but... [More]

Tags:  blog currently nim client is 0042-001 /usr/lpp/bos.sysmgt/nim/m... gibson aix for 0042-061 chris use allocated m_chattr

There’s a new NIM HTTP service handler included with AIX 7.2 (due for release next month, December 2015).  This new service is designed “…….to help Clients better conform to emerging data center policies restricting the use of NFS, NIM will now have support to apply updates to AIX or install new packages over HTTPs.   Initial AIX installs will still require the use of NFS version 3 or the more secure NFS version 4 protocol.   In addition to fileset installs, NIM customization activities such as script... [More]

Tags:  chris gibson nim blog http aix

In my previous post on AIX Live Updates I discussed how to use the geninstall command to perform a non-disruptive (ifix) update on an AIX system. In this post I wanted to show you how to perform the same task using NIM.   NIM can be used to start an AIX Live Update operation on a target machine (NIM client) either from a NIM master or from the NIM client itself (with nimclient ).   Note: The AIX Live Update operation started by NIM calls the hmcauth command during the cust operation to authenticate to the NIM client with the HMC by... [More]

Tags:  lku aix blog chris nimclient nim 7.2 live update gibson

I was contacted recently by a customer who was attempting to restore an AIX 5.3 Versioned WPAR (VWPAR) from backup using NIM. The restore worked OK but the data was restored to the wrong volume group!   When the VWPAR was created, the –g option was specified with mkwpar to force the creation of the VWPAR file systems in a separate volume group (named wparvg) rather than the default location of the Global root volume group (rootvg).   # mkwpar - g wparvg -n p8vw2 -B /cg/53gibbo.mksysb  -C -O   Running lsvg against... [More]

Tags:  vwpar gibson chris iv68299 blog wpar mkwpar aix restore volume wparvg group rootvg nim

I received the following errors whilst running dsh on a NIM master recently.   root@nim1 : / # dsh -waixlpar1 date 0042-053 lsnim: there is no NIM object named "aixlpar1" The node aixlpar1 is not defined in NIM database. aixlpar1: Mon Aug  4 14:01:57 EET 2014   I had to set the following environment variable, shown below. By setting DSH_CONTEXT to DSH this prevented the dsh command from referring to the NIM database and instead forced it to query a user-defined node list.   root@nim1 : / # export DSH_CONTEXT=DSH... [More]

Tags:  dsh gibson chris there 0042-053 no 22 aix different lsnim dsh_remote_opts object dsh_context named port nim is

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

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

I’ve received a couple of requests for an example of using a post migration script with nimadm . What follows is a simple example of using such a resource with NIM. If you are not familiar with the nimadm tool then perhaps you’d like to start first by reading my article on using nimadm to migrate to AIX 6.1.   The nimadm utility can perform both pre and post migration tasks. This is accomplished by running NIM scripts either before or after a migration. The tool accepts the following flags for pre and post migration script resources:  ... [More]

Tags:  script aix post-migration nim chris_gibson nimadm

It’s no secret that I like NIM. I’ve written about NIM on several occasions, in Redbooks, technical articles and on my blog. It’s a great tool for installing and maintaining AIX. Occasionally though, it can throw you an unusual error or two when things go wrong. For the uninitiated resolving these errors can be challenging.   Here’s a couple of NIM related questions I received recently. Both are troubleshooting queries.   “I'm getting the following error when trying to create a NIM lpp_source for AIX 6.1” :  ... [More]

Tags:  resource to filesystem m_mk_lpp_source: oslevel space failed all check a "master" 0042-185 on nim already copy due not exists aix c_ch_nfsexp: instfix rest or permissions link filesets 0042-081 nfs found. for /etc/.tmp.nim.exports export were and

OK, so I had a NIM master with two network interfaces, en0 and en1. The en0 interface was connected to the 192.168.10.0 network and the en1 interface was   connected to the 10.1.1.0 network. When the master was initially configured, we chose en0 as the primary install interface. The master could now install NIM clients on the 192.168.10.0 network, without any additional NIM network configuration.   root@nim1 / # ifconfig –a en0:... [More]

Tags:  new gibson network install nim installation chris interface manager aix

  WARNING! Let me make this perfectly clear! The procedure that is shown below is NOT SUPPORTED by IBM. If you choose to follow these procedures, DO NOT contact IBM support for help. They will not be able to assist you. They will ask you to change the nimsh port numbers back to the defaults. They will ask you to change your SAP application to use a different port number. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!   Here’s a problem I’ve encountered more than once.   Someone installs SAP onto an AIX system and decides to use TCP port 3901... [More]

Tags:  aix nim chris sap 3901 gibson nimsh