AIX tricks

AIX is IBM's UNIX. It is weird but delightful. Unlike Solaris it's small, but, also unlike Solaris, it somehow manages to have usefull stuff anyway.

Installing

Install 5.3, then upgrade it to TL7, then to the latest service pack level. Go here: http://www-933.ibm.com/eserver/support/fixes/fixcentral/pfixpacks/53 then download the most recent Technology Level (5300-07-00-0747 currently) then 5300-07-03-0811 or whatever. Warning, huge downloads. TL7 is like 1.8G and 5300-07-03-0811 like 260M.

Many things that are broken in 5.3 are fixed by these updates, like topas(1) and X11 ssh forwarding and various other things you may want to use. So do it.

When installing 5.3 you're asked if you want 64 bit kernel and JFS2 resize support or something and it makes it somehow sound like you might not want this, but you do.

Freeware

(Mostly free software, but SGI and IBM and stuff likes to call it freeware, because they're giving it to you for omgnomoney).

The list they have on their website is outdated, you will find newer versions of some things on this super secret ftp address: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/freeSoftware/aixtoolbox/RPMS/ppc/

Yes, they're distributed as RPM. No idea either.

SMIT

smit is AIX's management menu system. It can be a bit daunting at first, but it's actually quite useful because most things you might want to do are in there and at any time you can press Esc+6 to see what command it's building. It also makes a log in the current dir of whatever you've done and what commands it has executed so you can know what's going on behind the façade. Smit is both X11 and console, you can force console version by writing smitty instead.

Security

Like most kommerzunices AIX is kinda all over the place when you install it with open ports and weird services listening for everyman and his dog, http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/p/os/aix/whitepapers/aix_security.html is a nice little guide to tighten things up. One word of warning though, it suggests you remove some unused accounts such as uucp and lpd, but don't do this, it'll make software updates poop their pants.

Various things learned

• IBM's proprietary compiler is called XL and costs ~$1000, they won't do you a hobbyist license but there's a 60 day trial version that blows itself up. I haven't bothered with it since I don't like to feel like James Bond defusing a bomb.
• If you prefer a normal top(1) to topas(1), http://www.unixtop.org/ works fine.
• #aix on freenode has some people in it, some of them seem to know a thing or two.
• The amount of statistics and system information AIX will give you is truly astonishing, try stuff like netstat -p tcp, netstat -D, no -a, netstat -m, prtconf, lscfg -vp, etc, etc, etc.
• If you install on JFS2 with 64 bit kernel, and you feel one of the file systems are too large or too small, no problem! chfs -a size=+100M /home etc will adjust things on the fly. smit will auto-grow file systems that are too small when installing software, as well.
• To find out what actual patch level your os is on, oslevel -s.