The AIX minidump facility was introduced with AIX 5.3 TL3. A mini dump is a small compressed dump that is stored to NVRAM when a system crashes or a dump is initiated, and then written to the AIX error log on reboot. It can be used to see some of the system’s state and do some debugging when a full dump is not available. It can also be used to get a quick snapshot of a crash without having to transfer the entire dump from the crashed system to IBM support.   Please refer to the following, official guide, on " How to examine a... [More]

Tags:  sdduserinterfac pcmusergetdevin gibson power8 crash trc_generate minidump aix dump wpar errpt chris 128 blog system e880 mdmprpt sddpcm cores trc_inmem_recor

The latest release of the VIOS provides a way to automatically backup your virtual device configuration whenever it changes. From the IBM Knowledge Center for POWER8:   https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/POWER8/p8hcg/p8hcg_viosbr.htm   "The viosbr command automatically creates a backup, whenever there are any configuration changes. This functionality is known as the autoviosbr backup. It is triggered every hour, and checks if there are any configuration changes, or any other changes. If it detects any changes, a backup... [More]

Tags:  blog autobackup /usr/ios/sbin/autoviosbr vios chris autoviosbr aix powervm gibson viosbr

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 use chris 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 aix http

Last year I was working for a customer that was upgrading several AIX 5.3 systems to AIX 6.1 . The migrations were successful for the most part, but we did encounter one issue that took a little time to resolve.   The customer was using nimadm to migrate. This process worked fine, however, on a couple of systems a strange error was encountered after the migration. The LPAR was booted into AIX 6.1 and everything came up fine. The applications were started and users started accessing the system.   It was several days later, when the AIX... [More]

Tags:  device specified liblpp.a does configuration odm hds the gibson customized not error 0514-023 vsp method database. exist /usr/lib/methods/cfgscsid... in pdpathat chris aix

My team and I have recently been trying to stream line our AIX disaster recovery process. We’ve been looking for ways to reduce our overall recovery time. Several ideas were tossed around such as a) using a standby DR LPAR with AIX already installed and using rsync/scp to keep the Prod & DR LPARs in sync and b) using alt_disk_copy (with the –O flag for a device reset) to clone rootvg to an alternate disk which is then replicated to DR. These methods may work but are cumbersome to administer and (in the case of alt_disk_copy) require... [More]

Tags:  chris led recovery hds rootvg fc support ghostdev lpar replication hung gibson 554 boot replicated chris_gibson vfc vsp aix channel san virtual fibre dr disaster hang npiv

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

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 disabled log=null logging jfs2 chris aix gibson

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

I like lsof .   Whenever I’m building a new AIX system I always make sure to install it. I really like the fact that I can quickly list processes that are connected to TCP and UDP ports on my system. For example, to check for the current SSH connections on my system I can run lsof and check port 22 (SSH). Immediately I have a good idea of the existing SSH sessions/connections. I can also check to see if the SSH server (sshd daemon) is running and listening (LISTEN) on my AIX partition.   # lsof -i tcp:22 Value of I :77    np:0 COMMAND... [More]

Tags:  rmsock gibson aix netstat lpar wpar lsof chris

OK, it’s official. The AIX 7 Open Beta is now available for testing!   An overview of the program is available here:   https://www14.software.ibm.com/iwm/web/cc/earlyprograms/websphere/aix7ob/index.shtml   Essentially this program is designed to give IBM customers, ISVs and IBM BPs the opportunity to gain early experience with the latest release of AIX prior to general availability. This is a great time to join forces and help IBM mould the next generation of the AIX OS.   I got involved in the AIX 6 Open Beta back in 2007 . It was a... [More]

Tags:  chris 7 beta gibson aix open

If you are a system administrator that is responsible for managing AIX systems that run SAP, then you’ve probably had an experience similar to the following?   OK, so one day my SAP Basis administrator contacts me and says “ I can’t start saposcol ......can you please reboot the system? ” I quickly reply, “ Was there an error message when trying to restart saposcol ?”. He replies, “ No ”. Again I return very quickly, “ OK, have you checked to see if there are any shared memory segments left for saposcol? ”.   Just as quick, he replies “... [More]

Tags:  aix ipcs ipcrm memory gibson chris shared saposcol