You can automatically forward all error report entries to your email. This next part describes how to do that.

Create a file like this:

# cat /tmp/mailgeorge
errnotify:
  en_name="mailgeorge"
  en_persistenceflg=1
  en_method="errpt -a -l $1|mail -s \"errpt: $9\" george@email.com"

# odmadd /tmp/mailgeorge

# errlogger "My coffee is cold"

# errpt -a
----------------------------------------------------
LABEL:          OPMSG
IDENTIFIER:     AA8AB241

Date/Time:       Tue Oct  6 15:57:58 CDT 2009
Sequence Number: 585
Machine Id:      0004D6EC4C00
Node Id:         hostname
Class:           O
Type:            TEMP
Resource Name:   OPERATOR

Description
OPERATOR NOTIFICATION

User Causes
ERRLOGGER COMMAND

        Recommended Actions
        REVIEW DETAILED DATA

Detail Data
MESSAGE FROM ERRLOGGER COMMAND
My coffee is cold

# errclear 0

# odmdelete -q 'en_name=mailgeorge' -o errnotify

A "how-to" restore a mksysb through NIM:

• Create a mksysb resource in NIM: Logon to the NIM server as user root. Run smitty nim, Perform NIM Administration Tasks, Manage resources, Define a resource, select mksysb, type name mksysb_, enter "master" as Server of Resource, enter the full path to the mksysb file at Location of Resource: e.g. /backup/hostname.image.
• Add the mksysb resource to the defined machine in NIM, together with the original SPOT and LPP source of the host: Run: smitty nim, Perform NIM Administration Tasks, Manage Machines, Manage Network Install Resource Allocation, Allocate Network Install Resources, select the machine, select the mksysb resource defined in the previous step, along with the correct SPOT and LPP_SOURCE of the oslevel of the system.
• Do a perform operation on the machine in NIM and set it to mksysb: Run smitty nim, Perform NIM Administration Tasks, Manage Machines, Perform Operations on Machines, select the machine, select bos_inst, set the Source for BOS Runtime Files to mksysb, set Remain NIM client after install to no, set Initiate Boot Operation on Client to no, set Accept new license agreements to yes.
• Start up the system in SMS mode and boot from the NIM server, using a virtual terminal on the HMC. Select the disks to install to. Make sure that you set import user volume groups to "yes". Restore the system.

# smitty nim_bosinst

AIX is short for Advanced Interactive eXecutive.

AIX is the UNIX operating system from IBM for RS/6000, pSeries and the latest Power systems. Currently, it is called "System P". IBM is nowadays the largest UNIX hardware vendor worldwide. AIX and RS/6000 was released on the 14th of February, 1990 in London.

Currently, the latest release of AIX is version 6.1. Also AIX 5.3 exists and is still supported by IBM. Older versions (e.g. 3.2.5, 4.3.3., 5.1 and 5.2) have reached end-of-program services and thus are no longer supported by IBM.

AIX supports Logical Partioning (short: LPAR). With LPAR you can create mulitple system environments on a single machine, thus sharing the processor and memory resources of a single machine by several operating system instances. From AIX 5.2 on, AIX supports DLPAR, Dynamic Logical Partitioning, which enables administrators to add, remove or move system resouces such as memory, adapters and CPU between partitions without the need to reboot each partion. From AIX 5.3, AIX supports micro-partitioning. With LPAR, a single CPU can only be used by a single Operating System instance. With micro-partitioning, a CPU can be shared by up to 10 operating system instances. From AIX 5.3 also the sharing of disk and network resources by several operating system instances is supported. Later versions of AIX and Power hardware now also include the ability to share I/O amongst several operating system images, through the use of a Virtual I/O server (VIO).

IBM used to supply Maintenance Levels for AIX. Nowadays, they supply Technology Levels, one in February and one in July each year.

When you suspect a performance problem, PerfPMR can be run. This is a tool generally used by IBM support personal to resolve performance related issues. The download site for this tool is:

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/tools/perftools/perfpmr

Where did all these routes come from & why is my system sending ICMP packets every 10 minutes? This is caused by path MTU discovery. If your AIX system is sending ICMP packets, you can disable it:

AIX has a feature called path MTU discovery which is based on ICMP packets in order to learn MTU sizes on the LAN. Path MTU discovery is a way of finding out the maximum packet size that can be sent along a network using ICMP packets and is enabled on AIX by default. This is done to avoid IP fragmentation on heterogenous networks (ie, an ATM network connected to an ethernet network) and is described in RFC 1191.

# no -a | grep discover

# no -p -o tcp_pmtu_discover=0
# no -p -o udp_pmtu_discover=0

Often when you run vmstat, the output may be looking very disorganized, because of column values not being shown properly under each row. A very simple solution to this issue is to run the same command with the "-w" flag, which will provide you with a wide vmstat output:

# vmstat -w

To check on the status of a NIM client, for example, when doing a mksysb restore through NIM:

# lsnim -l hostname

To resolve a stuck printer, do the following:

Check the status of the queue:

# lpstat -W -p[queue-name]

# ps -ef | grep pio

# kill [process-number]

# lpstat -W -p[queue-name]

# enable [queue-name]

Default compression of system dump isn't turned on, which may cause a lot of error report entries about your system dump devices being too small.

Check if the compression is on/off:

# sysdumpdev -l

# sysdumpdev -C

To measure network throughput independantly from disk I/O:

Set up an FTP connection from machine A to machine B.

bin
put "|dd if=/dev/zero bs=32k count=1024" /dev/null