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aix
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kdb and fscsi attributes
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 |
SSH Host keys and AIX 7.1 Migration.
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 |
SMS SAN zoning support
Until recently, if you were
configuring a new LPAR with virtual FC adapters you couldn’t force it to log
into the SAN before an operating system (such as AIX) was installed. I’ve
written about this before (see link below). I also offered a way to work around
this issue. https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/cgaix/entry/new_hmc_commands_chnportlogin_and_lsnportlogin_login_in_virtual_fibre_channel_adapters_for_npiv_client_lpars1?lang=en As mentioned in my post, there are
new HMC commands to force a new LPAR to connect... [More]
Tags:  npiv virtual_fibre_channel powervm chris_gibson aix power_systems vios vfc |
New virtual Ethernet adapter attribute for largesend on AIX
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 ethernet largesend chris_gibson |
Convert rootvg file systems to JFS2 using alt_disk_copy
Q: Does
alt_disk_copy convert JFS filesystems to JFS2? A: Yes! Starting at 6100-04 , a new
flag was introduced that would convert JFS filesystems to JFS2. We now have the
-T which does the conversion. http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=isg3T1011055 Here’s an example of converting
rootvg file systems from JFS to JFS2 using alt_disk_copy .
My lab system was migrated from AIX
5.3 to 7.1 via nimadm . Unfortunately, nimadm does not convert JFS file
systems to JFS2 during the migration. So, in this case, even though... [More]
Tags:  convert chris_gibson aix jfs2 alt_disk_copy jfs conversion |
DLPAR and AIX 5.3
I’ve shared
my tips for resolving DLPAR problems in the past . So this week, when one of my
colleagues was experiencing an issue with DLPAR, I referred him to my blog post
and suggested he follow the troubleshooting steps. He did so and I went about
my business. Later that same day I asked him how he had fared. He told me that
DLPAR was still not working on his particular AIX LPAR. It was an AIX 5.3
system and he was attempting to another Virtual Processor to the LPAR. He
expressed his frustration with the situation, so I offered to take... [More]
Tags:  ibm.drm csm.client csm_core aix lssrc dlpar csm_client lpar lsrsrc chris_gibson |
Using a post-migration script with nimadm
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 nim post-migration chris_gibson nimadm |
Make sure you monitor file system space on your VIOS.
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... |
Tuning Virtual Ethernet adapters for (even) better backup performance.
Are you backing up your AIX systems
over Virtual Ethernet adapters? Of course you are, who isn’t right? Are your
backup server and clients on the same physical POWER system? You are most
likely backing up over Virtual Ethernet to another AIX LPAR that is running
your enterprise backup software, such as TSM or Legato Networker for example.
And you probably have a dedicated private virtual network (and adapters) on
both the clients and the server to handle the traffic for the nightly backups.
The next question is, have you tuned your... [More]
Tags:  min_buf_huge=96 backup netstat slow hypervisor -a max_buf_huge=128 aix tsm chris_gibson min_buf_large=96 max_buf_large=256 min_buf_medium=512 networker max_buf_medium=1024 adapter -l virtual ent1 chdev –a ethernet |
Checking num_cmd_elems for VFC adapters with kdb
This entry is
similar in theme to one of my previous posts about verifying your hdisk queue_depth settings with kdb . This time we want to check if an attribute for a Virtual FC (VFC)
adapter has been modified and whether or not AIX has been restarted since the
change. The attribute I’m interested in is num_cmd_elems .
This value is often changed from its default settings, in AIX environments, to improve
I/O performance on SAN attached storage. From
kdb you can identify the VFC
adapters configured on an AIX system using the vfcs... [More]
Tags:  odm -p kdb lsattr chris_gibson num_cmd_elems adapter vfcs aix chdev reboot vfc |
Managing users with dsh and chpasswd - (plus info on DSM and dping).
Starting with AIX 7.1, CSM is no
longer supported or available. It has been replaced by Distributed Systems
Managment (DSM). Section 5.2 of the IBM AIX 7.1 Differences Guide Redbook provides
details of the new DSM capabilities.
Fortunately DSM still provides access
to the dsh command. I’ve written about how I’ve used this utility
in the past . The new dsh command (and other tools) are
provided in the new DSM filesets named dsm.core and dsm.dsh . root@nim# lslpp -L dsm*
Fileset
Level State Type... [More]
Tags:  run remote if exit installed pwdadm a accepted. expired code dping has csm been not aix you have license had dsh shell -l new admchg release csmconfig 255 2651-095 or chpasswd |
PowerHA: lssrc and clinfoES
So you’re configuring
a new PowerHA 6.1 cluster and you
decide to check if the clinfoES subsystem is running. You run the following command: #
lssrc -a | grep cluster clstrmgrES
cluster
2883628 active Hmmm, clinfoES is not listed. To ensure that
is clinfoES is shown in lssrc output, in both inactive and
active states, run the following command on all nodes in the cluster: #
chssys -s clinfoES –d And now clinfoES is shown: #lssrc
-a | grep cluster clstrmgrES
cluster
2883628 active... [More]
Tags:  inactive -d aix output hacmp chris_gibson when appearing powerha clinfoes chssys lssrc in not clstrmgres -s |
Does AIX support passwords longer than 8 characters? Yes!
Prior to AIX 5.3 TL7 and AIX 6.1,
there was an 8 character limit on AIX user passwords. If you need passwords of
greater than 8 characters then you must enable one of the supplied Loadable
Password Algorithms (LPAs). The following table lists the available algorithms
and the limitations of each: For example, to enable the MD5 algorithm
I can modify /etc/security/login.cfg file with the chsec command as follows:
# chsec -f
/etc/security/login.cfg -s usw -a pwd_algorithm=smd5 # tail -2
/etc/security/login.cfg
... [More]
Tags:  /etc/security/pwdalg.cfg characters smd5 pwd_algorithm /usr/lib/security/smd5 aix /etc/security/login.cfg support 8 gibson clpasswd chris greater than for passwords |
More NIM troubleshooting....some basics...
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 |
Can't change max_transfer for a VSCSI hdisk? Check your vtopt devices!
When attempting to change the max_transfer attribute on a VSCSI hdisk, the following error was displayed: #
chdev -l hdisk0 -a max_transfer= 0x100000 -P Method
error (/etc/methods/chgdisk):
0514-018 The values specified for the following attributes
are not valid: max_transfer
Maximum TRANSFER Size The
desired value, 0x100000, was an allowed value for this type of device (as shown
in the lsattr output below): #
lsattr -El hdisk0 PCM
PCM/friend/vscsi
Path Control... [More]
Tags:  rmdev max_transfer vtopt0 rmvdev aix vios chdev hdisk cd0 virtual_optical vio |
Upgrading PowerHA? Don't forget your TSM client!
When you upgrade
PowerHA (formerly HACMP) don’t forget to check/update your TSM client as well! We successfully upgraded from
PowerHA 5.4 to PowerHA 6.1 SP6 first. #
halevel -s 6.1.0
SP6 We found that our
DB2 backups to TSM were no longer working. $ db2adutl query Error: Initialize environment failed with TSM return code 4602 In the TSM error log file we also
saw the following message repeated over and over: # tail -1 dsmerror_db2_ha.log 10/17/11 12:42:57 ANS1478E CLUSTERNODE is set to YES
but the cluster software is not... [More]
Tags:  ans1677w 6.1 5.4 powerha 4602 gibson aix return chris mailprog ans1478e tsm clusternode code hacmp |
Flicking through the latest AIX enhancements.
After reading about
the latest AIX updates here: http://t.co/bkIpnXkS I decided to download and install the latest TL & SP for AIX 6.1 and 7.1
and take a peek at some of the latest features. Here’s what I found
so far. There appears to be
some new integration between NIM and the VIOS. The nim command now has an updateios option e.g. nim
–o updateios. So you can update
your VIO servers from NIM now. This is nice. On my lab NIM master
I checked the nim man page and found
the following new information: NIM
[/] # oslevel -s... [More]
Tags:  chris updates 6100-07-02-1150 aix 7100-01-02-1150 gibson 2011 |
Checking your queue depth with kdb.
Just say you
change the queue_depth on a hdisk
with chdev –P . This updates the devices
ODM information only, not its running configuration. The new value will take
effect next time I reboot the system. So now I have a different queue_depth in the ODM compared to the
devices current running config (in the kernel). What if I
forget that I’ve made this change to the ODM and forget to reboot the system
for many months? Someone complains of an I/O performance issue....I check the
queue_depths and find they appear to be set appropriately... [More]
Tags:  lsattr chris 7.1 chdev queue_depth odm aix -p kdb gibson 6.1 |
nimadm - multibos error!?
I’ve been working with a customer recently on
an issue with nimadm . They were
attempting to migrate a system from AIX 5.3 to 7.1 using nimadm . The NIM client AIX
level was 5.3 TL12 SP4 and the NIM master was running AIX 7.1 TL1 SP1. lpar1
: / # oslevel -s 5300-12-04-1119 root@nim1
: / # oslevel -s 7100-01-01-1141 They were
running the following nimadm command: #
nimadm -j nimadmvg -c lpar1 -s spotaix710101 -l lpp_sourceaix710101 -d hdisk1
-Y The nimadm operation would always fail at phase 11: ... [More]
Tags:  altinst_rootvg attention: client nimadm: cloning error returned multibos 6 unexpected init_multibos() 11 7.1 phase alt_disk_copy: nimadm on result an .1 0505-218 5.3 aix 0505-187 |
Working with AIX scalable volume groups - Part 2 - converting to scalable.
Following on
from my previous post, on working with scalable VGs. https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/cgaix/entry/working_with_aix_scalable_volume_groups1?lang=en You may find
yourself in a situation where you’d like to convert a VG to scalable. For example,
you might start off with a normal VG i.e. one that can support a maximum of 256
LVs and 32 PVs. # mkvg -s
512M -y myvg hdisk5 myvg # lsvg myvg VOLUME
GROUP: myvg VG IDENTIFIER: 00f6027300004c0000000133aa24d1f6 VG
STATE:... [More]
Tags:  aix lvm chvg pv gibson convert -g mkvg manager hdisk scalable chris conversion group groups volume max vg physical lv logical |
Working with AIX scalable volume groups.
Scalable volume groups first appeared in AIX 5.3. They allow
a maximum of 1024 physical volumes and 4096 logical volumes per volume group.
This is pretty cool for large systems. In the ‘old days’ we could end up in
situations where we’d reached the maximum PV count (32 or 128) for a VG and
have to create a new VG to work around the issue. I use scalable VGs for all my new large AIX system builds. The following command will create a scalable VG (named svg ) on hdisk4. You’ll notice that MAX
PVs is set to 1024 and MAX LVs is set to 256.... [More]
Tags:  gibson vg aix manager lvm pv chris chvg hdisk max physical scalable lv groups mkvg group logical volume |
IVM and VLAN Tagging
I was working
with a customer recently on a Power Blade that was running the Integrated
Virtualisation Manager (IVM). They’d installed a VIO partition onto the Blade
and had hoped to install a couple of AIX LPARs on the system. However they didn’t
get very far. As soon as they
attempted to NIM install the LPARs, they would get stuck at trying to ping the
NIM master from the client. Basically, the Shared Ethernet Adapter (SEA) was
not working properly and none of the LPARs could communicate with the external
network. So they asked for... [More]
Tags:  ivm chhwres vlan lshwres tag aix vios sea |
VSCSI hdisk path priority - which path am I using?
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 |
New HMC commands: chnportlogin and lsnportlogin - Login in Virtual Fibre Channel adapters for NPIV client LPARs.
There are two new HMC (V7.7.3.0) commands that can force a client Virtual Fibre Channel adapter to log into a SAN. This should make the life of the AIX and SAN administrator easier, as they will no longer need to install AIX in order for the new VFC adapters to log into the SAN. Although there was an unsupported method* for doing this already (see links below). Nor will the SAN admins need to “blind” zone the WWPNs. There was some indication of this in the latest VIOS FP readme: ... [More]
Tags:  virtual gibson aix chnportlogin lsnportlogin channel npiv chris adapter fibre |
Configuring AIX as an iSCSI target.
Configuring
AIX as an iSCSI target. On
the iSCSI target host (server). Host
is running AIX 7.1. Install
the devices.tmiscsw.rte fileset. This fileset can be found on the AIX 7.1
Expansion Pack CD. l273pp043_pub[/]
> oslevel -s 7100-00-02-1041 l273pp043_pub[/]
> lslpp -l devices.tmiscsw.rte
Fileset
Level State Description
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Path:
/usr/lib/objrepos
devices.tmiscsw.rte 7.1.0.0
COMMITTED iSCSI Target... [More]
Tags:  iscsi target chris aix gibson |
lsdevinfo
The lsdevinfo utility
appears to an undocumented command. However it looks like it could come in
handy occasionally. Here are some examples of using it on AIX 7.1: # oslevel
-s 7100-00-01-1037 #
lslpp -w /usr/sbin/lsdevinfo File
Fileset Type
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- /usr/sbin/lsdevinfo bos.rte.methods File #
lsdevinfo -h Usage: lsdevinfo
[-q Criteria] [-F Format] [-R] [-c] [-h] ... [More]
Tags:  chris aix gibson lsdevinfo |
How much memory or CPU will that CoD code activate anyway?
This little tip was passed on to me by
a friendly IBM hardware engineer many years ago. When entering a capacity on demand
(CoD) code into a Power system, you can tell how many processors and how much
memory will be activated, just by looking at the code you’ve given by IBM. For example, the following codes, when
entered for the appropriate Power system, will enable 4 processors (POD) and
64GB of memory (MOD). I can also tell* that once the VET code is entered, this
system will be licensed for PowerVM Enterprise Edition (2C28). ... [More]
Tags:  power cod gibson mod demand activation aix pod capacity chris code on powervm vet |
Querying the Cluster Aware AIX solidDB database.
Did you
know that you can connect to and query the new solidDB database used by Cluster
Aware AIX (CAA)? You can
connect to the solidDB instance and issue SQL queries against the database. In
the following example, I issued two queries: one to list the tables in the
database and another to query information relating to the nodes in the cluster.
The formatting in the second query is a mess, but you get the idea. root@node1:/>
/opt/cluster/solidDB/bin/solsql
-x pwdfile:/etc/cluster/dbpass 'tcp localhost 2188' caa IBM
solidDB SQL... [More]
Tags:  soliddb aware solsql caa gibson chris /opt/cluster/soliddb/bin/... cluster aix |
JFS2 logging disabled during mksysb restore.
While attending the IBM Power Systems
Symposium this week, I learnt that starting with AIX 7.1 (and AIX 6.1 TL6) JFS2
logging is disabled during a mksysb restore. You may be familiar with disabling
JFS2 logs, if not, take a look at this IBM technical note: https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=isg3T1012643 I’ve been unable to find any official
documentation from IBM that mentions this new enhancement to the mksysb restore
process. However, when I checked my own AIX 7.1 system I found the following
statement/code in the... [More]
Tags:  mksysb log=null disabled logging jfs2 chris aix gibson |
Creating a CAA cluster on AIX 7.1.
In this post I’ll demonstrate how to
create a Cluster Aware AIX (CAA) cluster on AIX 7.1. I’ll create a simple
two-node CAA cluster. I’ll then check the cluster status and, finally, remove
the cluster. Before I start, I make sure that both
nodes have entries in /etc/hosts on both systems. node1[/] > grep node /etc/hosts 172.29.134.169
node1 172.29.152.160
node2 node2[/] > grep node /etc/hosts 172.29.134.169
node1 172.29.152.160
node2 I verify that cluster services are not
active on both nodes. node1[/tmp/cg]... [More]
Tags:  creating mkcluster lscluster caavg_private caa cluster 7.1 chris gibson creation aware aix |
HSCLA27C, reserve_policy and LPM validation error.
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 |
Convert rootvg JFS file systems to JFS2 with alt_disk_copy
Starting with AIX 6.1 (TL4?), you can use the alt_disk_copy command to convert rootvg
file systems from jfs to jfs2. The man page for the alt_disk_copy command
states the following: -T
Indicates that you want to convert JFS file systems to JFS2 file systems during
the process of recreating the rootvg volume group on target disks. As an example, to clone a running systems rootvg to hdisk2, and convert
the rootvg file systems from JFS to JFS2, you would run the following command: #
alt_disk_copy -T -d hdisk2 Good to know!
Tags:  alt_disk_copy chris aix jfs2 convert gibson jfs |
A letter from Pavel Hampl - LPAR2RRD creator.
Interested in paid support for LPAR2RRD tool? Let’s all support Pavel and spread the word! From: Pavel
Hampl < pavel.hampl@cz.ibm.com > Date: 21 July 2011 3:00:19 AM AEST To: undisclosed-recipients:; Subject: LPAR2RRD professional support announcement Hi Everyone, You are receiving that mail because we have been either in touch in regards of LPA2RRD tool about year ago or you are on LPAR2RRD mailing list. I’ve decided to make professional paid support of LPAR2RRD. Here are my reasons which led me to that thought: - I have not... [More]
Tags:  lpar2rrd chris aix gibson |
Defining a new Network Install Interface on a NIM master.
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 aix manager |
nmon, AIX and iscsi0
If you have the AIX iSCSI Software Initiator (iscsi0) configured
on your system, you may find that nmon reports some “funny” information under the Disk Adapter (a) and Disk I/O (d) screens,
such as: ┌─topas_nmon──4=Top-by-RAM-use───Host=aix1
Refresh=2 secs───15:09.41──────────────────────────┐ │ Disk-Adapter-I/O ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────│ │Name
%busy read
write xfers Disks
Adapter-Type
│ │vscsi1
0.0 ... [More]
Tags:  i/o iscsi iscsi0 aix nmon adapter disk stats |
Updating AIX Virtual SCSI adapter attributes without an outage
Need to update the running attributes of a virtual SCSI adapter on
an AIX system? Try these steps. I want to change value for the vscsi_err_recov attribute
to fast_fail .
I can’t do this if the adapter is busy i.e. has open/available paths to a disk device. #
lsattr -El vscsi2 vscsi_err_recov
delayed_fail
N/A
True vscsi_path_to
0 Virtual
SCSI Path Timeout True #
chdev -l vscsi2 -a vscsi_err_recov=fast_fail Method
error (/usr/lib/methods/chggen):
0514-029 Cannot perform the requested... [More]
Tags:  vscsi cfgmgr gibson chdev aix chris rmpath lspath |
Is there a way to find on which processor a process is executing?
A question I received this week from a customer. Hi Chris, Is there a way to find on which processor a process is executing?
If I’ve used binprocessor, ps –emo THREAD, would show which processor a
process is bound too. But when that’s not been used, what are the options? The ps command will
only help if we bind a process to a specific CPU. For example, here we can see
that the bootpd process has been
bound (and then un-bound) on processor 3: # bindprocessor -q The available processors are: 0 1 2 3 # bindprocessor 8585302 3 ... [More]
Tags:  chris trace gibson aix curt |
Has your IBM XL C/C++ for AIX software evaluation license expired?
Has your IBM XL C/C++ for AIX software evaluation license expired? You can work around this little problem temporarily by placing the following environment variable in /etc/profile. XLC_EXTEND_EVAL=yes According to the IBM support site, this will extend the XLC license to a total of 74 days. https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21498670 It appears to work. Before the change, I was unable to compile anything. Note the highlighted text below. # /usr/vac/bin/xlc cgc.c The license for... [More]
Tags:  chris aix evaluation expired gibson xlc license |
nimsh and SAP
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 |
mkwpar, truss and coffee!
A colleague was attempting to recreate a WPAR. The WPAR had previously
been removed using the WPAR Manager Web GUI. This worked, or so he tells me! Anyway, when he tried to create the WPAR again from the GUI, using
the same WPAR name ( wpar20 ), it
failed. The error claimed that /wpars/wpar20 already existed. But it didn’t! Now, before I go any further, looking back at the issue now, it is
pretty obvious what the problem might have been. However, the solution was not
evident at first. This proves one thing for certain: some problems... [More]
Tags:  0960-288 /wpars/wpar20 mkwpar: gibson file system mkwpar chris wpar exists. already the aix |
0042-358 niminit: The connect attribute may only be assigned a service value of "shell" or "nimsh".
I was working at a client site today, on a NIM master that I
configured a month or so ago. I was there to install the TSM backup client
software on about 30 or so LPARs. Of course I was going to use NIM to
accomplish this task. The software install via NIM worked for the majority of the LPARs
but I noticed a few of them were failing. This was very odd, as the last time
I’d use the same NIM method to install software, everything was fine. I suspected that perhaps something had changed on the client
LPARs...maybe with their /etc/niminfo... [More]
Tags:  chris nimsh gibson nim 3902 3901 aix |
Experience with RootVG WPARs
I finally got access to a system where I could test RootVG WPARs
a little more extensively than I have in the past. If you are not sure what a RootVG WPAR is then I suggest you
take a look at the following IBM documentation: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/aix/v6r1/topic/com.ibm.aix.wpar/rootvg-wpars.htm I performed the following test today, just to prove a theory. The
result was interesting, so I thought I would share it with you on my blog. First, I started with an AIX 7.1 (7100-00-01-1037) system that
had one spare vscsi... [More]
Tags:  chris rootvg gibson aix workload partitions wpars |
Collecting WWPNs for new Virtual Fibre Channel Adapters
I was
collecting a list of WWPNs for a bunch of new AIX LPARs I was installing from
scratch. There were two ways I could find the WWPN for a virtual Fibre Channel
adapter on a new LPAR i.e. one that did not yet have an operating system
installed. I started by
checking the LPAR properties from the HMC (as shown below). To speed
things up I moved to the HMC command line tool, lssyscfg , to display the
WWPNs (as shown below). hscroot@hmc1:~> lssyscfg -r prof -m 750-2
-F virtual_fc_adapters --filter lpar_names=lpar1... [More]
Tags:  wwpn vfc sed lssyscfg aix fibre gibson channel hmc chris virtual |
AIX Double Boot!
This is something
that I experience on all new Power/AIX systems that I install: System migrated to AIX
5.3 (or later) might experience double boot When booting AIX Version 5.3 (or
later) on a system that has previously been running an earlier release of AIX, you
may notice that the system automatically reboots and restarts the boot process.
This is how the firmware processes changed information in the boot image. This
reboot also occurs if the process is reversed. A system previously running AIX
5.3 (or later) that is booting a... [More]
Tags:  boot chris gibson double aix |
DLPAR not doing it for you anymore?
I received an email from one of my customers recently that simply said: “mate …on lpar30, for some reason the IBM.DRM and others are failing to start .. um .. any chance you could have a quick look at that ?” So I asked, “OK, so this use to work right?”. To which I received a relatively confused reply, ” .....yep it did....actually no....it’s never worked....or has it???...I’m not sure... ”. Based on my experience, the most common issue that prevents DLPAR operations... [More]
Tags:  gibson chris dlpar aix |
AIX multibos mksysb migration
I’ve
written about multibos before, here and here . But recently I
started experimenting with multibos mksysb migration. A customer asked me how
this worked and apart from a high-level view I wasn’t able to provide any real
world experience, so I thought I’d give it a try. What follows is just a ‘brain
dump’ from my quick test. First of all
this isn’t really a migration. It just simply populates a second instance of
AIX with a higher-version. It doesn’t really migrate (or merge) your existing
configuration into the second instance. So... [More]
Tags:  mksysb aix migration multibos chris gibson |
Virtual I/O Server and DS5020 disk.
Recently I
had the pleasure of configuring a couple of POWER7 720s for a customer. Each
720 was to host roughly 12 LPARs each. There were two VIO servers and a NIM
server per 720. Everything
went along nicely and according to plan. In a few days we had both systems
built. My steps for building the systems were almost identical to those
described by Rob McNelly in a recent post . All four
VIO servers were running the latest VIOS code i.e. 2.2.0.10-FP-24 SP-01 . All the client LPARs were running AIX 6.1 TL6 SP3 . Each VIOS... [More]
Tags:  ds5020 aix vios |
Migrating to AIX 7.1 with nimadm.
Last year I wrote an article on using nimadm
to migrate to AIX 6.1 . The procedures outlined how to migrate a live system with nimadm and a spare disk. Another method that I have found to be extremely useful is
the migration of mksysb images from one version of AIX to another using (you
guessed it) nimadm . In the following example I migrated an AIX 6.1 mksysb image
to AIX 7.1 and then used that image to install a new LPAR via NIM. The source LPAR was running AIX 6.1 TL6 SP3. I took a mksysb
of this system to my NIM master. # oslevel -s... [More]
Tags:  gibson migration chris nimadm aix |
VIOS/AIX Matrix
Here’s a nice little matrix of current VIOS levels and the corresponding
AIX level. The following link also has some fantastic information
relating to NIM installation and backup of a Virtual I/O Server (VIOS). https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=isg3T1011386 It has an official answer for one of the questions I’m asked
the most: Q: Do I need to use
an lpp_source to install the VIO server using NIM? A: No. All of the
device drivers and software packages needed to install the VIO server are in
the VIO server mksysb. I also... [More]
Tags:  nim vios aix |
AIX 7.1 – DSM dgetmacs.
I received an email this week from a
colleague that worked with me on the NIM
Redbook back in 2006. He was experiencing an issue with DSM and NIM. He was
attempting to use the dgetmacs command to obtain the MAC address of the network adapters on an LPAR. The
command was failing to return the right information. This was the output from his attempt
with dgetmacs : # dgetmacs -n lpar1 Using an adapter type of "ent". Could not dsh to node lpar1. Attempting to use openfirmware method to
collect MAC addresses. Acquiring adapter... [More]
Tags:  nim aix chris dgetmacs 7.1 gibson dsm |