Migrate/Move PPs in AIX LVM

Today I needed to replace a disk which is used by AIX LVM and which wasn't mirrored. Of course all data should remain.
The first thing I did was to list all volumes on the specific disk (in my case hdisk2):

importvg failed

The situation so far: a customer has two systems with a couple of luns presented to them. Two luns (hdisk2 and hdisk7) were imported as testvg on Node 2. Exporting the VG on Node 2 worked fine, importing on Node 1 failed (unfortuanatly I've no error message here). First I checked the physical volumes (note that I only take a closer look at hdisk2 and hdisk7 which belongs to the VG testvg):

Change Core behaviour in AIX

When you need to change the core behaviour in AIX then run lscore the check the current settings, eg.:

# lscore
compression: off
path specification: off
corefile location: not set
naming specification: off

Extend a AIX LVM Volume

Today I had a customer who asked me to extend a database volume (if possible). The customer couldn't tell me if there is space available for extending the volume. So I had to check by my self again. After logging into the customers machine the first I ran was df to get the current size and usage of the volume:

# df -k /oradata
Filesystem    1024-blocks      Free %Used    Iused %Iused Mounted on
/dev/oravol01    47185920   5880024   88%       50     1% /oradata

Scan for new Lun(s) in AIX

After creating a Lun in a storage and mapping the new Lun to a AIX server you should list the current disks:

# vxdisk -e list
...

Change user properties in AIX

Today I needed to change the umask value for a user in AIX. It was set to default: 022
That means that files will be created with 644 permissions. To allow the user to create files with 666 permissions by default I needed to change the umask value for the user. First I checked the current umask value:

# lsuser sneill
... umask=22 ...

IMM

Yesterday I had the 'pleasure' to play with an IMM - one of these dinosaur management processors shipped by IBM. The system was still online so I couldn't do too much. Here is what I could do:

Connect and help: 

Getting used memory slots in AIX

Today a customer wanted to know if he could expand his memory in one of his IBM PPC machines. Of course the customer didn't know anything (machine type, memory size etc.) so I took a look. The first thing I needed to know was the machine type:

# prtconf | head -1
System Model: IBM,9131-52A

Which port is used by a process in AIX?

Today I installed samba and tried to starting it but it refuses to start:

# /etc/inetd/samba start
Starting SMB services
# ps -ef | grep smb
    root 811496 860488   0 14:15:39  pts/0  0:00 grep smb

Extend dump devices in AIX

If you see a message in AIX like this:

LABEL:          DMPCHK_TOOSMALL
IDENTIFIER:     E87EF1BE

Date/Time:       Sun Jun  1 12:00:00 GMT+00:00 2012
Sequence Number: 182200
Machine Id:      XXXXXXXXXXXX
Node Id:         db03
Class:           O
Type:            PEND
WPAR:            Global
Resource Name:   dumpcheck

Description
The largest dump device is too small.

Obtaining CPU information in AIX

To obtain CPU information use the AIX command prtconf: 

DNS lookup in AIX

To configure AIX for use with DNS create the /etc/resolv.conf first:

Available, used and free memory in AIX

Use lsattr to get the size of your memory:

# lsattr -E -l sys0 | grep realmem
realmem         32636928           Amount of usable physical memory in Kbytes        False

Configuring network in AIX

Configuring your AIX machine for network acces isn't real hard. First get all available network devices:

# lsdev -Cc if
en0 Defined   02-08 Standard Ethernet Network Interface
en1 Defined   02-09 Standard Ethernet Network Interface
et0 Defined   02-08 IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Network Interface
et1 Defined   02-09 IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Network Interface
lo0 Available       Loopback Network Interface

Changing the boot order in AIX

I have here two AIX machines, one seems to be broken nut the other works fine (so far...). I need to reinstall the operating system but the machine always boots from harddisk by default. The solutions to this is the command bootlist. The following examples show the current boot order: